Am i blue alice walker

• THE READING/WRITING CONNECTION 1. Gloss and annotate the text of the speech—concentrate on the symbolism of the bii^

in preparation for class discussion of question 3 in Explorations of the Text. 2. Draft a letter from Toni Morrison to Hally in "Master Harold." Or imagine that HallyJ

read Morrison's speech. Write a letter in his voice to Morrison. 3. After reading this speech, list several questions that you have about the work. ThenanJ

swer one of your questions in the form of a paragraph.

• IDEAS FOR WRITING 1. Choose one of Morrison's controversial statements about language. Agree ordisagittl

with her. Your response may take the form of a letter to Morrison. 2. Continue exploring question 4 in Explorations of the Text. Is Morrison's essay a parabd

allegory, or something else? Defend your choice. 3. Is Morrison's speech effective? Convincing? Evaluate her work. Refer to the studed

portfolio in chapter 12 for ideas.

ALICE WALKER

Alice Walker (1944- ) was bom in Eatonville, Georgia. After attending Spelman College and Sarah Lawrence College, Walker, influenced by her involvement in voter registration in Georgia and in welfare programs in Mississippi, began to write. Her first volume of poetry, Once: Po- ems (1968), contains accounts of her work and her travels to Africa. In 1 979, she edited I Love Myself When I Am Laughing, a selection from the writings ofZora Neale Hurston thatwasre- sponsible for new interest in and appreciation ofHurston's work. The author of more than ten books of fiction, Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1982 for her third novel, The Color Purple. Her most recent novel is Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart (2004). Her essays have been collected in In Search of Our Mother's Gardens (1983) and Liv- ing by the Word: Selected Writings 1973-1987 (1988). Walker, known as a "womanisfwitht keen connection to nature, displays in her work a sense of hope even in the midst of despair.

19M

AM I BLUE? "Ain't these tears in these eyes tellin'you?"

For about three years my companion and I rented a small house in the country that!stood on the edge of a large meadow that appeared to run from the end of our del straight into the mountains. The mountains, however, were quite far away, and between• and them there was, in fact, a town. It was one of the many pleasant aspects of the hous| that you never really were aware of this.

It was a house of many windows, low, wide, nearly floor to ceiling in the living rooJ which faced the meadow, and it was from one of these that I first saw our closest neighbor,! large white horse, cropping grass, flipping its mane, and ambling about—not over theent* meadow, which stretched well out of sight of the house, but over the five or so fenced-* acres that were next to the twenty-odd that we had rented. I soon learned that the horse! whose name was Blue, belonged to a man who lived in another town, but was boarded bra our neighbors next door. Occasionally, one of the children, usually a stocky teen-ager, I sometimes a much younger girl or boy, could be seen riding Blue. They would appear in ihl meadow, climb up on his back, ride furiously for ten or fifteen minutes, then get off, slal Blue on the flanks, and not be seen again for a month or more.

WALKER: Am I Blue? "1343

There were many apple trees in our yard, and one by the fence Blue could almost reach. We were soon in the habit of feeding him apples, which he relished, especially because by the middle of summer the meadow grasses—so green and succulent since January—had dried out from lack of rain, and Blue stumbled about munching the dried stalks half- heartedly. Sometimes he would stand very still just by the apple tree, and when one of us came out he would whinny, snort loudly, or stamp the ground. This meant, of course: 1 want an apple.

It was quite wonderful to pick a few apples, or collect those that had fallen to the ground overnight, and patiently hold them, one by one, up to his large, toothy mouth. 1 re- mained as thrilled as a child by his flexible dark lips, huge, cubelike teeth that crunched the apples, core and all, with such finality, and his high, broad-breasted enormity, beside which, 1 felt small indeed. When 1 was a child, 1 used to ride horses, and was especially friendly with one named Nan until the day 1 was riding and my brother deliberately spooked her and I was thrown, head first, against the trunk of a tree. When 1 came to, 1 was in bed and my mother was bending worriedly over me; we silently agreed that perhaps horseback rid- ing was not the safest sport for me. Since then I have walked, and prefer walking to horse- back riding—but 1 had forgotten the depth of feeling one could see in horses' eyes.

1 was therefore unprepared for the expression in Blue's. Blue was lonely. Blue was horri- bly lonely and bored. 1 was not shocked that this should be the case; five acres to tramp by yourself, endlessly, even in the most beautiful of meadows—and his was—cannot provide many interesting events, and once rainy season turned to dry that was about it. No, I was shocked that 1 had forgotten that human animals and nonhuman animals can communicate quite well; if we are brought up around animals as children we take this for granted. By the time we are adults we no longer remember. However, the animals have not changed. They are in fact completed creations (at least they seem to be, so much more than we) who are not likely to change; it is their nature to express themselves; What else are they going to ex- press? And they do. And, generally speaking, they are ignored.

After giving Blue the apples, I would wander back to the house, aware that he was ob- serving me. Were more apples not forthcoming then? Was that to be his sole entertainment for the day? My partner's small son had decided he wanted to learn how to piece a quilt; we worked in silence on our respective squares as 1 thought . . .

Well, about slavery: about white children, who were raised by black people, who knew their first all-accepting love from black women, and then, when they were twelve or so, were told they must "forget" the deep levels of communication between themselves and "mammy" that they knew. Later they would be able to relate quite calmly, "My old mammy was sold to another good family." "My old mammy was ." Fill in the blank. Many more years later a white woman would say: "1 can't understand these Negroes, these blacks. What do they want? They're so different from us."

And about the Indians, considered to be "like animals" by the "settlers" (a very benign euphemism for what they actually were), who did not understand their description as a compliment.

And about the thousands of American men who marry Japanese, Korean, Filipina, and other non-English-speaking women and of how happy they report they are, "blissful!}'," un- til their brides learn to speak English, at which point the marriages tend to fall apart. What then did the men see, when they looked into the eyes of the women they married, before they could speak English? Apparently only their own reflections.

i I thought of society's impatience with the young. "Why are they playing the music so loud?" Perhaps the children have listened to much of the music of oppressed people their parents danced to before they were born, with its passionate but soft cries for acceptance and love, and they have wondered why their parents failed to hear.

1344" Chapters Strange New Worlds

I do not know how long Blue had inhabited his five beautiful, boring acres before wl moved into our house; a year after we had arrived—and had also traveled to other valleysB other cities, other worlds—he was still there.

But then, in our second year at the house, something happened in Blue's life. On morning, looking out the window at the fog that lay like a ribbon over the meadow, I saw! another horse, a brown one, at the other end of Blue's field. Blue appeared to be afraid of ill and for several days made no attempt to go near. We went away for a week. When we re-l turned, Blue had decided to make friends and the two horses ambled or galloped along to-l gether, and Blue did not come nearly as often to the fence underneath the apple tree.

When he did, bringing his new friend with him, there was a different look in his eyes! A look of independence, of self-possession, of inalienable horseness. His friend eventuallyl became pregnant. For months and months there was, it seemed to me, a mutual feeling beJ tween me and the horses of justice, of peace. I fed apples to them both. The look in Blue« eyes was one of unabashed "this is itness."

It did not, however, last forever. One day, after a visit to the city, I went out to give Bl J some apples. He stood waiting, or so I thought, though not beneath the tree. When I shoofl the tree and jumped back from the shower of apples, he made no move. I carried some ovtfl to him. He managed to half-crunch one. The rest he let fall to the ground. I dreaded lookmJ into his eyes—because I had of course noticed that Brown, his partner, had gone—but 1 dil look. If I had been born into slavery, and my partner had been sold or killed, my eyes woulM have looked like that. The children next door explained that Blue's partner had been "puj with him" (the same expression that old people used, I had noticed, when speaking of a ancestor during slavery who had been impregnated by her owner) so that they could mai and she conceive. Since that was accomplished, she had been taken back by her owner, whi lived somewhere else.

15 Will she be back? I asked. They didn't know. Blue was like a crazed person. Blue was, to me, a crazed person. He galloped furiousW

as if he were being ridden, around and around his five beautiful acres. He whinnied until hei couldn't. He tore at the ground with his hooves. He butted himself against his single shadfl tree. He looked always and always toward the road down which his partner had gone. Anl then, occasionally, when he came up for apples, or I took apples to him, he looked at me. Itl was a look so piercing, so full of grief, a look so human, I almost laughed (I felt too sad A cry) to think there are people who do not know that animals suffer. People like me whfl have forgotten, and daily forget, all that animals try to tell us. "Everything you do to uswfl happen to you; we are your teachers, as you are ours. We are one lesson" is essentially it,• think. There are those who never once have even considered animals' rights: those whl have been taught that animals actually want to be used and abused by us, as small child™ "love" to be frightened, or women "love" to be mutilated and raped. . . . They are thegreai grandchildren of those who honestly thought, because someone taught them this: "Won™ can't think," and "niggers can't faint." But most disturbing of all, in Blue's large brown eyfl was a new look, more painful than the look of hatred: the look of disgust with human H ings, with life; the look of hatred. And it was odd what the look of hatred did. It gave hin for the first time, the look of a beast. And what that meant was that he had put up a barrifl within to protect himself from further violence; all the apples in the world wouldn't chanjB that fact.

And so Blue remained, a beautiful part of our landscape, very peaceful to look at Imm the window, white against the grass. Once a friend came to visit and said, looking out on thn soothing view: "And it would have to be a white horse; the very image of freedom." Andl thought, yes, the animals are forced to become for us merely "images" of what theyonceS

MELVILLE: The Encantadas "1345

beautifully expressed. And we are used to drinking milk from containers showing "con- tented" cows, whose real lives we want to hear nothing about, eating eggs and drumsticks from "happy" hens, and munching hamburgers advertised by bulls of integrity who seem to command their fate.

As we talked of freedom and justice one day for all, we sat down to steaks. I am eating misery, I thought, as I took the first bite. And spit it out.

• EXPLORATIONS OF THE TEXT 1. React to the opening paragraph. Why does Walker describe the setting? What does the

setting reveal about her psyche? Her place in the world? 2. How does Walker characterize "Blue"? Discuss the significance of his name. Why does

she refer to his "companion" as "Blue's friend"? 3. What is the relationship of the examples given in paragraphs 7-10 to the main story

line? Are these paragraphs tangential or relevant to her argument? 4. Is Walker projecting her own feelings onto the horse? 5. Walker's essay uses an extended analogy as the basis of her argument. Summarize her

argument. Is this strategy effective? 6. Discuss the significance of the concluding sentence: "I am eating misery. . . ." Why is

she upset? 7. Compare Walker's essay with Anna Lee Walter's poem, "My Name Is 'I Am Living,'" and

Scott Russell Sanderss "Wayland."

• THE READING/WRITING CONNECTION 1. Do you believe that animals "suffer"? Are you an animal rights activist? Respond in a

freewrite. 2. "Think" Topic: Interpret the title of the essay. Connect the title with themes of the poem. 3. Journal Entry: Alice Walker recognizes that Blue, a social animal, needs companionship

to live happily. She relates this need to that of humans, another social animal. Do you think that humans are similar to other social animals? If so, which ones? Write a jour- nal entry with your thoughts, referring to Walker or Sanders.

• IDEAS FOR WRITING 1. Create an argument based on an analogy. Use Walker's essay as a model. 2. Discuss Walker's essay and Marquez's story, "The Handsomest Drowned Man" as

Utopian visions.

HERMAN MELVILLE

Herman Melville (1819-91) was bom in New York City, where he lived until his father's finan- cial difficulties forced the family to move to Albany, New York. Melville attended Columbia College and Albany Academy. His writing career began after the first of many sea voyages in 1839, and in 1841, he joined the crew of a whaling ship, an experience that influenced the writing of his most famous novel, Moby Dick (1851). Though known for his novels and short fiction, Melville's earliest books were travel narratives, and later in his career, Melville wrote poetry. His first two publications were Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, During a Four Months Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas (1846) and Oomo: A Narrative of Adven- tures in the South Seas (1848). "The Encantadas" (1854) is believed to be part of a longer work on tortoise hunting that was never completed and is an example of Melville's travel writing.

1854