Literature for composition 11th edition pdf

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An Introduction to Literature

LITERATURE FOR COMPOSITION

ELEVENTH EDITION

SYLVAN BARNET WILLIAM BURTO WILLIAM E. CAIN CHERYL NIXON

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LITERATURE FOR COM POSITION

A n Introduction to Literature

ELEVENTH EDITION

BARNET BURTO CAIN

NIXON

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E L E V E N T H E D I T I O N

Literature for Composition An Introduction to Literature

Sylvan Barnet Tufts University

William Burto University of Massachusetts at Lowell

William E. Cain Wellesley College

Cheryl L. Nixon University of Massachusetts at Boston

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Names: Barnet, Sylvan, editor. | Burto, William, editor. | Cain, William E., date-editor. | Pearson, Cheryl L. Nixon, editor. Title: Literature for composition : an introduction to literature / [edited by] Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, William E. Cain, Cheryl L. Nixon Pearson. Description: Eleventh edition. | Boston : Pearson, 2016. | Previous editions had other title information: essays, stories, poems, and plays. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015048640| ISBN 9780134099149 (student edition) | ISBN 0134099141 (student edition) | ISBN 9780134101774 (exam copy) | ISBN 0134101774 (exam copy) Subjects: LCSH: College readers. | English language—Rhetoric—Problems, exercises, etc. | Criticism—Authorship—Problems, exercises, etc. | Academic writing—Problems, exercises, etc. Classification: LCC PE1417 .L633 2016 | DDC 808/.0427—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048640

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Contents

Contents by Genre xxiii Preface xxvii

P A R T I

Thinking Critically about Literature

C H A P T E R 1 How to Write an Effective Essay about Literature: A Crash Course 1

The Basic Strategy 1 Reading Closely: Approaching a First Draft 2

✔ Checklist: Generating Ideas for a Draft 5 Writing and Revising: Achieving a Readable Draft 6

✔ Checklist: Writing and Revising a Draft 9 Revising: Working with Peer Review 9 Preparing the Final Draft 10

C H A P T E R 2 How to Engage in Critical Thinking about Literature: A Crash Course 11

The Basic Strategy 11 What Is Critical Thinking? 12 How Do We Engage in Critical Thinking? 13 Close Reading 14

✔ Checklist: Close Reading 15 Analysis: Inquiry, Interpretation, Argument 15

Inquiry 16 ✔ Checklist: Inquiry and Question-Asking 17 Interpretation 18 ✔ Checklist: Interpretation 19 Argument 19 ✔ Checklist: Argument 20

Comparison and Synthesis 21 ✔ Checklist: Comparison and Synthesis 22

Revision and Self-Awareness 22 Standing Back: Kinds of Writing 23 Nonanalytical versus Analytical Writing 23

v

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C H A P T E R 3 The Writer as Reader 25 Reading and Responding 25

KATE CHOPIN • Ripe Figs 25 Reading as Re-creation 26 Reading for Understanding: Collecting Evidence and Making Reasonable

Inferences 27 Reading with Pen in Hand: Close Reading and Annotation 28 Reading for Response: Recording First Reactions 29 Reading for Inquiry: Ask Questions and Brainstorm Ideas 30 Reading in Context: Identifying Your Audience and Purpose 31

From Reading to Writing: Developing an Analytical Essay with an Argumentative Thesis 32

Student Analytical Essay: “Images of Ripening in Kate Chopin’s ‘Ripe Figs’” 32 The Analytical Essay: Argument and Structure Analyzed 34 The Writing Process: From First Responses to Final Essay 35 Other Possibilities for Writing 37

From Reading to Writing: Moving from Brainstorming to Analytical Essay 37 BRUCE HOLLAND ROGERS • Three Soldiers 37 The Writing Process: From Response Writing to Final Essay 38 Student Analytical Essay: “Thinking about Three Soldiers Thinking” 39 The Analytical Essay: The Development of Ideas Analyzed 42

From Reading to Writing: Moving from Preliminary Outline to Analytical Essay 43 RAY BRADBURY • August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains 43 The Writing Process: From Outlining to Final Essay 47 Student Analytical Essay: “The Lesson of ‘August 2026’” 48

Your Turn: Additional Stories for Analysis 51 MICHELE SERROS • Senior Picture Day 51 HARUKI MURAKAMI • On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful

April Morning 56 JOHN UPDIKE • A & P 59

C H A P T E R 4 The Reader as Writer 64 Developing Ideas through Close Reading and Inquiry 64

Getting Ideas 64 Annotating a Text 64 KATE CHOPIN • The Story of an Hour 65 Brainstorming Ideas 66 Focused Freewriting 67 Listing Ideas, Details, and Quotations 67 Asking Questions 68 Keeping a Journal 69

Developing a Thesis through Critical Thinking 70 Arguing with Yourself 70 Arguing a Thesis 71 ✔ Checklist: The Thesis Sentence 72

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From Reading to Writing to Revising: Drafting an Argument in an Analytical Essay 72 Student Analytical Essay: “Ironies in an Hour” (Preliminary Draft) 73 Revising an Argument 75 Outlining an Argument 75 Soliciting Peer Review, Thinking about Counterarguments 76

From Reading to Writing to Revising: Finalizing an Analytical Essay 77 Student Analytical Essay: “Ironies of Life in Kate Chopin’s ‘The Story of an

Hour’” (Final Draft) 77 The Analytical Essay: The Final Draft Analyzed 80

From Reading to Writing to Revising: Drafting an Analytical Essay 80 KATE CHOPIN • Désirée’s Baby 80 Student Analytical Essay: “Race and Identity in ‘Désirée’s Baby’” 84

From Reading to Writing to Revising: Drafting a Comparison Essay 87 KATE CHOPIN • The Storm 87 Student Comparison Essay: “Two New Women” 91 The Comparison Essay: Organization Analyzed 94

Your Turn: Additional Stories for Analysis 95 DAGOBERTO GILB • Love in L.A. 95 ELIZABETH TALLENT • No One’s a Mystery 97 JUNOT DíAZ • How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie) 100 T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE • Greasy Lake 103 MARY HOOD • How Far She Went 110

C H A P T E R 5 The Pleasures of Reading, Writing, and Thinking about Literature 116

The Pleasures of Literature 116 ALLEN WOODMAN • Wallet 117

The Pleasures of Analyzing the Texts That Surround Us 118 The Pleasures of Authoring Texts 119 The Pleasures of Interacting with Texts 120 Interacting with Fiction: Literature as Connection 121

JAMAICA KINCAID • Girl 122 Personal Response Essay 123

Student Personal Response Essay: “The Narrator in Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘Girl’: Questioning the Power of Voice” 123

Interacting with Graphic Fiction: Literature as (Making and Breaking) Rules 127 LYNDA BARRY • Before You Write 128

Interacting with Poetry: Literature as Language 129 JULIA BIRD • 14: a txt msg poM 130 BILLY COLLINS • Twitter Poem 131

Interacting with Drama: Literature as Performance 131 OSCAR WILDE • Excerpt from The Importance of Being Earnest 132

Interacting with Essays: Literature as Discovery 134 ANNA LISA RAYA • It’s Hard Enough Being Me 135

Your Turn: Additional Poems, Stories, and Essay for Pleasurable Analysis 138

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Poems JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA • Green Chile 138 ALBERTO RIOS • Nani 140 WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS • This Is Just to Say 141 HELEN CHASIN • The Word Plum 142 GARY SOTO • Oranges 143 SARAH N. CLEGHORN • The Golf Links 145 STEVIE SMITH • Not Waving but Drowning 145

Stories AMBROSE BIERCE • An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 146 MARGARET ATWOOD • Happy Endings 153

Essay GEORGE SAUNDERS • Commencement Speech on Kindness 156

P A R T I I

Writing Arguments about Literature

C H A P T E R 6 Close Reading: Paraphrase, Summary, and Explication 165

What Is Literature? 165 Literature and Form 165 Form and Meaning 167 ROBERT FROST • The Span of Life 167

Close Reading: Reading in Slow Motion 169 Exploring a Poem and Its Meaning 170

LANGSTON HUGHES • Harlem 170 Paraphrase 171 Summary 173 Explication 175

Working toward an Explication 176 Student Explication Essay: “Langston Hughes’s ‘Harlem’” 178

Explication as Argument 180 ✔ Checklist: Drafting an Explication 182 Student Argumentative Explication Essay: “Giving Stamps Personality in

‘Stamp Collecting’” 182 CATHY SONG • Stamp Collecting 183

Your Turn: Additional Poems for Explication 187 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE • Sonnet 73 188 JOHN DONNE • Holy Sonnet XIV 189 EMILY BRONTË • Spellbound 189 LI-YOUNG LEE • I Ask My Mother to Sing 190 RANDALL JARRELL • The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner 191

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C H A P T E R 7 Analysis: Inquiry, Interpretation, and Argument 192

Analysis 192 Understanding Analysis as a Process of Inquiry, Interpretation, and Argument 193 Analyzing a Story from the Hebrew Bible: The Judgment of Solomon 194

The Judgment of Solomon 194 Developing an Analysis of the Story 195 Opening Up Additional Ways to Analyze the Story 196

Analyzing a Story from the New Testament: The Parable of the Prodigal Son 197 The Parable of the Prodigal Son 198 Asking Questions that Trigger an Analysis of the Story 198

From Inquiry to Interpretation to Argument: Developing an Analytical Paper 199 ERNEST HEMINGWAY • Cat in the Rain 200 Close Reading 202 Inquiry Questions 203 Interpretation Brainstorming 204 The Argument-Centered Paper 205 Student Argument Essay: “Hemingway’s American Wife” 206 From Inquiry to an Analytical Paper: A Second Example 208 Student Analytical Essay: “Hemingway’s Unhappy Lovers” 210

Breaking Down the Analytical Essay 213 Choosing a Topic and Developing a Thesis 213 Developing an Argument 215

Introductory Paragraphs 215 Middle Paragraphs 217 Concluding Paragraphs 218 Coherence in Paragraphs: Using Transitions 219 ✔ Checklist: Revising Paragraphs 219

From Inquiry to Interpretation to Argument: Organizing Ideas in an Analytical Paper 220

JAMES JOYCE • Araby 220 Finding and Organizing an Interpretation 224 Student Analytical Essay: “Everyday and Imagined Settings in ‘Araby’” 226

From Inquiry to Interpretation to Argument: Maintaining an Interpretation in an Analytical Paper 231

APHRA BEHN • Song: Love Armed 231 Maintaining Interpretive Interest Notes 231 Student Analytical Essay: “The Double Nature of Love” 233 ✔ Checklist: Editing a Draft 235

Your Turn: Additional Short Stories and Poems for Analysis 236 Stories

EDGAR ALLAN POE • The Cask of Amontillado 236 LESLIE MARMON SILKO • The Man to Send Rain Clouds 242

Poems BILLY COLLINS • Introduction to Poetry 245 ROBERT FROST • The Road Not Taken 246

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JOHN KEATS • Ode on a Grecian Urn 247 MARTÍN ESPADA • Bully 249

C H A P T E R 8 Pushing Analysis Further: Reinterpreting and Revising 251

Interpretation and Meaning 251 Is the Author’s Intention a Guide to Meaning? 252 What Characterizes a Sound Interpretation? 252 Interpreting Pat Mora’s “Immigrants” 253 PAT MORA • Immigrants 254 ✔ Checklist: Developing an Interpretation 255

Strategy #1: Pushing Analysis by Rethinking First Responses 255 JEFFREY WHITMORE • Bedtime Story 257 DOUGLAS L. HASKINS • Hide and Seek 258 MARK PLANTS • Equal Rites 258

Strategy #2: Pushing Analysis by Exploring Literary Form 259 ✔ Checklist: Using Formal Evidence in an Analytical Essay 260 LANGSTON HUGHES • Mother to Son 261 Student Analytical Essay: “Accepting the Challenge of a Difficult Climb in

Langston Hughes’s ‘Mother to Son’” 264 Strategy # 3: Pushing Analysis by Emphasizing Concepts and Insights 268

ROBERT FROST • Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening 269 Student Analytical Essay: “Stopping by Woods—and Going On” 270 Analyzing the Analytical Essay’s Development of a Conceptual

Interpretation 273 Student Analytical Essay: “‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ as a

Short Story” 274 Strategy #4: Pushing Analysis through Revision 278

Revising for Ideas versus Mechanics 278 Revising Using Instructor Feedback, Peer Feedback, and Self-Critique 278 Examining a Preliminary Draft with Revision in Mind 279 HA JIN • Saboteur 280 Student Analytical Essay: “Morals in Ha Jin’s ‘Saboteur’” (Preliminary Draft) 287 Developing a Revision Strategy: Thesis, Ideas, Evidence, Organization, and

Correctness 288 ✔ Revision Checklist 289 Student Analytical Essay: “Individual and Social Morals in Ha Jin’s ‘Saboteur’”

(Final Draft) 291 Your Turn: Additional Poems and Story for Interpretation 297 Poems

T. S. ELIOT • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 297 THOMAS HARDY • The Man He Killed 301 ANNE BRADSTREET • Before the Birth of One of Her Children 302 CHRISTINA ROSSETTI • After Death 303 FRED CHAPPELL • Narcissus and Echo 304

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Story JOYCE CAROL OATES • Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? 305

C H A P T E R 9 Comparison and Synthesis 317 Comparison and Critical Thinking 317 Organizing a Comparison Essay 318 Comparison and Close Reading 320 Comparison and Asking Questions 322 Comparison and Analyzing Evidence 323 Comparison and Arguing with Yourself 323

E. E. CUMMINGS • Buffalo Bill ’s 324 ✔ Checklist: Developing a Comparison 328

Synthesis through Close Reading: Analyzing a Revised Short Story 328 RAYMOND CARVER • Mine 329 RAYMOND CARVER • Little Things 330

Synthesis through Building a Concept Bridge: Connecting Two Poems 332 THYLIAS MOSS • Tornados 333 KWAME DAWES • Tornado Child 333

Synthesis Using Theme 336 SANDRA CISNEROS • Barbie-Q 337 MARYANNE O’HARA • Diverging Paths and All That 338 JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS • Sweethearts 339

Synthesis Using Form 341 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE • Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a

Summer’s Day? 342 HOWARD MOSS • Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? 342 Student Comparison Essay: “Condensing Shakespeare: A Comic Re-writing of a

Shakespeare Sonnet” 342 ✔ Checklist: Revising a Comparison 348

Your Turn: Additional Poems and Stories for Comparison and Synthesis 348 Carpe Diem (“Seize The Day”) Poems

ROBERT HERRICK • To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time 348 CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE • The Passionate Shepherd to His Love 349 SIR WALTER RALEIGH • The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd 350 ANDREW MARVELL • To His Coy Mistress 351 JOHN DONNE • The Bait 353

Poems about Blackberries GALWAY KINNELL • Blackberry Eating 354 SYLVIA PLATH • Blackberrying 355 SEAMUS HEANEY • Blackberry-Picking 356 YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA • Blackberries 357

Poems about America WALT WHITMAN • I Hear America Singing 359 LANGSTON HUGHES • I, Too [Sing America] 359

Stories about Reading and Writing

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JULIO CORTÁZAR • The Continuity of Parks 361 A. M. HOMES • Things You Should Know 362

Stories about Grandmothers LAN SAMANTHA CHANG • Water Names 364 KATHERINE ANNE PORTER • The Jilting of Granny Weatherall 368

C H A P T E R 10 Research: Writing with Sources 374 Creating a Successful Research Plan 374

Enter Research with a Plan of Action 374 What Resources Does Your Institution Offer? 375 What Type of Research Do You Want to Do? 376

Selecting a Research Topic and Generating Research Questions 376 Use Close Reading as Your Starting Point 376 Select Your Topic 377 Skim Resources through Preliminary Research 377 Narrow Your Topic, and Form a Working Thesis 377 Generate Key Concepts as Keywords 380 Create Inquiry Questions 380

Locating Materials through Productive Searches 381 Generate Meaningful Keywords 382 ✔ Checklist: Creating Meaningful Keywords for a Successful Search 382

Using Academic Databases to Locate Materials 382 Search the MLA Database 382 Search Full-Text Academic Databases 383 Perform Advanced Keyword Searches 383 Evaluate the Results List, and Revise Your Search 384 Evaluate the Individual Titles 384

Using the Library Catalog to Locate Materials 385 Locate Books and Additional Resources 386 Use a Catalog Entry to Locate More Sources 386

Using the Internet to Perform Meaningful Research 387 Locate Academic Sites on the Internet 388 Locate Information-Rich Sites on the Internet 389 Avoid Commercial Sites on the Internet 389 Locate Well-known Literary Sites on the Internet 389 Locate Primary Sources on the Internet 389

Evaluating Sources for Academic Quality 390 ✔ Checklist: Evaluating Web Sites for Quality 390

Evaluating Sources for Topic “Fit” 392 ✔ Checklist: Evaluating Sources for Topic “Fit” 393

Taking Notes on Secondary Sources 395 A Guide to Note Taking 395

Drafting the Research Paper 399 Focus on Primary Sources 400

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Integrate Secondary Sources 400 Create a Relationship between Your Writing and the Source 400 Surround the Source with Your Writing 401 Agree with a Source in Order to Develop Your Ideas 401 Apply a Source in Order to Develop Your Ideas 401 Disagree with a Source in Order to Develop Your Ideas 402 Synthesize Critics’ Ideas to Show Scholarly Debate 403

Avoiding Plagiarism 403 Student Research Essay: “Dickinson’s Representation of Changing Seasons and

Changing Emotions” 404

P A R T I I I

Analyzing Literary Forms and Elements

C H A P T E R 11 Reading and Writing about Essays 415 Types of Essays 415 Elements of Essays 416

The Essayist’s Persona 416 Voice 417 Tone 417 Topic and Thesis 418 BRENT STAPLES • Black Men and Public Space 419 ✔ Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about Essays 421

Student Writing Portfolio Summary Paper 422 Writing a Summary Paper 422 Annotation: Reading for Information 424 Note Taking: Using Inquiry Notes to Summarize Information 425

Inquiry: Paragraph-by-Paragraph Notes 425 Crafting a Thesis and Creating a Concise Summary 426

Drafting: Crafting a Strong Thesis 426 Drafting: Creating a Concise Summary 428 Student Summary Paragraph: Summary Paragraph on Staples

(Preliminary Draft) 429 Revision: Using a Revision Strategy 430

✔ Revision Checklist 430 Revision: Revising to Integrate Evidence 430 Student Summary Paragraph: “Exploring Racial Fear: A Summary of Brent

Staples’ ‘Black Men and Public Spaces’” (Final Draft) 431 Your Turn: Additional Essays for Analysis 431

LANGSTON HUGHES • Salvation 432 LAURA VANDERKAM • Hookups Starve the Soul 433 STEVEN DOLOFF • The Opposite Sex 435 GRETEL EHRLICH • About Men 437

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C H A P T E R 12 Reading and Writing about Stories 440 Stories True and False 440

GRACE PALEY • Samuel 441 Elements of Fiction 443

Character 443 Plot 444 Foreshadowing 445 Setting and Atmosphere 446 Symbolism 446 Narrative Point of View 448 Style and Point of View 449 Theme 450 WILLIAM FAULKNER • A Rose for Emily 451 ✔ Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing about Stories 457

Student Writing Portfolio Analytical Paper 460 Writing an Analytical Paper 460 Annotation: Reading for Form and Content 461 Note Taking: Using Inquiry Notes to Generate Ideas 462

Inquiry: Double- (or Triple-) Entry Notes 462 Inquiry: Listing Notes 463 Inquiry: Journal Writing 464

Drafting: Creating an Argument and Explaining Your Interpretation 465 Student Analytical Essay: “Homer’s Murder in ‘A Rose for Emily’”

(Preliminary Draft) 466 Revision: Using a Revision Strategy 469

✔ Revision Checklist 470 Revision: Revising to Strengthen the Thesis 470 Revision: Revising to Develop Ideas 471 Revision: Revising to Improve Organization 472 Student Analytical Essay: “The Townspeople’s Responsibility for

Homer’s Murder in ‘A Rose for Emily’” (Final Draft) 474 Your Turn: Additional Stories for Analysis 480

KATHERINE MANSFIELD • Miss Brill 481 TIM O’BRIEN • The Things They Carried 484 GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ • A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings:

A Tale for Children 495 An Author in Depth: Flannery O’Connor 500

FLANNERY O’CONNOR • A Good Man Is Hard to Find 500 Remarks from Essays and Letters 511

From “The Fiction Writer and His Country” 511 From “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction” 512 From “The Nature and Aim of Fiction” 512 From “Writing Short Stories” 513 On Interpreting “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” 513 “A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable” 514

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C H A P T E R 13 Reading and Writing about Graphic Fiction 517

Letters and Pictures, Words and Images 517 Reading an Image: A Short Story Told in One Panel 520

TONY CARRILLO • F Minus 520 Elements of Graphic Fiction 522

Visual Elements 522 Narrative and Graphic Jumps 523 Graphic Style 523

Reading a Series of Images: A Story Told in Sequential Panels 524 ART SPIEGELMAN • Nature vs. Nurture 525 ✔ Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing Arguments about Graphic Fiction 527

Your Turn: Additional Graphic Fiction for Analysis 529 WILL EISNER • Hamlet on a Rooftop 529 R. CRUMB and DAVID ZANE MAIROWITZ • A Hunger Artist 541

C H A P T E R 14 Reading and Writing about Plays 547 Types of Plays 547

Tragedy 547 Comedy 549

Elements of Drama 550 Theme 550 Plot 550 Gestures 552 Setting 552 Characterization and Motivation 553 ✔ Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing Arguments about Plays 554

Thinking about a Film Version of a Play 555 Getting Ready to Write about a Filmed Play 556 ✔ Checklist: Writing about a Filmed Play 556

Student Writing Portfolio Comparison Paper 557 Writing a Comparison Paper 557

SUSAN GLASPELL • Trifles 558 SUSAN GLASPELL • A Jury of Her Peers 567

Annotation: Marginal Notes 582 Comparison as a Form of Critical Thinking 584 Inquiry Notes: Comparison Grid 584 Inquiry Notes: Journal Writing 585 Drafting and Revision: Using Comparison to Create Interpretation and Argument 587

Student Analytical Essay: “Trifles, the Play, versus ‘A Jury of Her Peers,’ the Short Story” (Preliminary Draft) 587

Revision: Using a Revision Strategy 593 ✔ Revision Checklist 593

Revision: Revising to Develop Ideas 594

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Revision: Revising to Clarify Style 595 ✔ Writing Style Checklist 595 Student Analytical Essay: “The Dramatic Action of Trifles: Making the

Audience into Detectives” (Final Draft) 597 Your Turn: Additional Plays for Analysis 605 A Modern Comedy 605

DAVID IVES • Sure Thing 606 A Note on Greek Tragedy 614 A Greek Tragedy 616

SOPHOCLES • Antigone 616 An Author in Depth: William Shakespeare 640

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 640 A Note on the Elizabethan Theater 641 A Note on Hamlet on the Stage 642 A Note on the Text of Hamlet 646 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE • The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 652 ANNE BARTON • The Promulgation of Confusion 756 STANLEY WELLS • On the First Soliloquy 759 ELAINE SHOWALTER • Representing Ophelia 761 BERNICE W. KLIMAN • The BBC Hamlet: A Television Production 762 WILL SARETTA • Branagh’s Film of Hamlet 764

C H A P T E R 15 Reading and Writing about Poems 766 Elements of Poetry 766

The Speaker and the Poet 766 EMILY DICKINSON • I’m Nobody! Who are you? 766 EMILY DICKINSON • Wild Nights—Wild Nights 768 The Language of Poetry: Diction and Tone 769 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE • Sonnet 146 769 Figurative Language 770 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE • Sonnet 130 772 Imagery and Symbolism 773 EDMUND WALLER • Song 773 WILLIAM BLAKE • The Sick Rose 774 Verbal Irony and Paradox 775 Structure 775

Rhythm and Versification: A Glossary for Reference 776 Meter 777 Patterns of Sound 780 Stanzaic Patterns 781 BILLY COLLINS • Sonnet 782 Blank Verse and Free Verse 783 ✔ Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing Arguments about Poems 783

Student Writing Portfolio Explication Paper 785 Writing an Explication Paper 785

✔ Checklist: Explication 786 GWENDOLYN BROOKS • kitchenette building 787

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Annotation: Highlighting First Reactions 788 Explication as a Form of Critical Thinking 789 Annotation: Rereading and Adding Inquiry Questions 790 Inquiry: Mapping, Clustering, and Creating Graphic Notes 791 Inquiry: Journal Writing 793 Drafting and Revision: Explaining a Close Reading 794

Student Explication Essay: “Life in a ‘kitchenette building’” (Preliminary Draft) 795

Revision: Using a Revision Strategy 798 ✔ Revision Checklist 798

Revision: Revising to Strengthen the Thesis 799 Revision: Revising to Integrate and Explain Evidence 800

Student Analytical Essay: “The Contest between Dreams and Everyday Life in Brooks’s ‘kitchenette building’” (Final Draft) 802

Your Turn: Additional Poems for Analysis 807 ROBERT BROWNING • My Last Duchess 807 E. E. CUMMINGS • Anyone Lived in a Pretty How Town 809 SYLVIA PLATH • Daddy 811 GWENDOLYN BROOKS • We Real Cool 813 ETHERIDGE KNIGHT • For Malcolm, a Year After 814 ANNE SEXTON • Her Kind 815 JAMES WRIGHT • Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine

Island, Minnesota 816 An Author in Depth: Robert Frost 817 Robert Frost on Poetry 818

ROBERT FROST • The Figure a Poem Makes 818 ROBERT FROST • The Pasture 819 ROBERT FROST • Mowing 820 ROBERT FROST • The Wood-Pile 820 ROBERT FROST • The Oven Bird 821 ROBERT FROST • The Need of Being Versed in Country Things 822 ROBERT FROST • The Most of It 823 ROBERT FROST • Design 824

P A R T I V

Enjoying Literary Themes: A Thematic Anthology

C H A P T E R 16 The World around Us 825 Essays

HENRY DAVID THOREAU • Where I Lived, and What I Lived For 825 HENRY DAVID THOREAU • The Ponds 825 BILL MCKIBBEN • Now or Never 828

Stories AESOP • The Ant and the Grasshopper 832 AESOP • The North Wind and the Sun 833

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xviii Contents

JACK LONDON • To Build a Fire 833 SARAH ORNE JEWETT • A White Heron 844 PATRICIA GRACE • Butterflies 850

Poems MATTHEW ARNOLD • In Harmony with Nature 852 THOMAS HARDY • Transformations 853 GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS • God’s Grandeur 854 WALT WHITMAN • A Noiseless Patient Spider 855 EMILY DICKINSON • A Narrow Fellow in the Grass 856 EMILY DICKINSON • There’s a certain Slant of light 857 EMILY DICKINSON • The name—of it—is ‘Autumn’ 857 JOY HARJO • Vision 858 MARY OLIVER • The Black Walnut Tree 859 KAY RYAN • Turtle 860

Chapter Overview: Looking Backward/Looking Forward 861

C H A P T E R 17 Technology and Human Identity 862 Essay

NICHOLAS CARR • Is Google Making Us Stupid? 862 Stories

KURT VONNEGUT, JR. • Harrison Bergeron 870 AMY STERLING CASIL • Perfect Stranger 874 MARK TWAIN • A Telephonic Conversation 884 MARIA SEMPLE • Dear Mountain Room Parents 887 ROBIN HEMLEY • Reply All 890 JOHN CHEEVER • The Enormous Radio 895 RAY BRADBURY • The Veldt 902 STEPHEN KING • Word Processor of the Gods 912 KIT REED • The New You 924

Poems WALT WHITMAN • To a Locomotive in Winter 931 EMILY DICKINSON • I Like to See it Lap the Miles 932 DANIEL NYIKOS • Potato Soup 933 A. E. STALLINGS • Sestina: Like 934 MARCUS WICKER • Ode to Browsing the Web 935

Play LUIS VALDEZ • Los Vendidos 937

Chapter Overview: Looking Backward/Looking Forward 946

C H A P T E R 18 Love and Hate, Men and Women 948 Essay

JUDITH ORTIZ COFER • I Fell in Love, or My Hormones Awakened 948 Stories

ZORA NEALE HURSTON • Sweat 953 JHUMPA LAHIRI • This Blessed House 961

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Contents xix

Poems ANONYMOUS • Western Wind 972 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE • Sonnet 116 972 JOHN DONNE • A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning 973 EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY • Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat

nor Drink 975 ROBERT BROWNING • Porphyria’s Lover 976 NIKKI GIOVANNI • Love in Place 978 ANONYMOUS • Higamus, Hogamus 979 DOROTHY PARKER • General Review of the Sex Situation 979 FRANK O’HARA • Homosexuality 980 MARGE PIERCY • Barbie Doll 981

Play TERRENCE MCNALLY • Andre’s Mother 982

Chapter Overview: Looking Backward/Looking Forward 985

C H A P T E R 19 Innocence and Experience 986 Essay

GEORGE ORWELL • Shooting an Elephant 986 Stories

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN • The Yellow Wallpaper 991 JOHN STEINBECK • The Chrysanthemums 1002 ALICE WALKER • Everyday Use 1010

Poems WILLIAM BLAKE • Infant Joy 1016 WILLIAM BLAKE • Infant Sorrow 1017 WILLIAM BLAKE • The Lamb 1018 WILLIAM BLAKE • The Tyger 1018 THOMAS HARDY • The Ruined Maid 1019 E. E. CUMMINGS • in Just- 1020 LOUISE GLÜCK • The School Children 1021 LINDA PASTAN • Ethics 1022 THEODORE ROETHKE • My Papa’s Waltz 1023 SHARON OLDS • Rites of Passage 1024 NATASHA TRETHEWEY • White Lies 1025

Chapter Overview: Looking Backward/Looking Forward 1026

C H A P T E R 20 All in a Day’s Work 1028 Essay

BARBARA EHRENREICH • Wal-Mart Orientation Program 1028 Stories

JACOB GRIMM AND WILHELM GRIMM • Mother Holle 1031 WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS • The Use of Force 1034 WILL EISNER • The Day I Became a Professional 1037 DANIEL OROZCO • Orientation 1041

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xx Contents

Poems WILLIAM WORDSWORTH • The Solitary Reaper 1045 CARL SANDBURG • Chicago 1046 GARY SNYDER • Hay for the Horses 1048 ROBERT HAYDEN • Those Winter Sundays 1049 SEAMUS HEANEY • Digging 1049 JULIA ALVAREZ • Woman’s Work 1050 MARGE PIERCY • To be of use 1051 JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA • So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from

Americans 1052 Plays

JANE MARTIN • Rodeo 1054 ARTHUR MILLER • Death of a Salesman 1057

Chapter Overview: Looking Backward/Looking Forward 1123

C H A P T E R 21 American Dreams and Nightmares 1125 Essays

CHIEF SEATTLE • My People 1125 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON • Declaration of Sentiments and

Resolutions 1128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN • Address at the Dedication of the Gettysburg

National Cemetery 1132 STUDS TERKEL • Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dream 1133 ANDREW LAM • Who Will Light Incense When Mother’s Gone? 1135

Stories SHERMAN ALEXIE • The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven 1137 RALPH ELLISON • Battle Royal 1142 TONI CADE BAMBARA • The Lesson 1152 AMY TAN • Two Kinds 1158

Poems ROBERT HAYDEN • Frederick Douglass 1166 LORNA DEE CERVANTES • Refugee Ship 1167 EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON • Richard Cory 1168 W. H. AUDEN • The Unknown Citizen 1169 EMMA LAZARUS • The New Colossus 1170 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH • The Unguarded Gates 1171 JOSEPH BRUCHAC III • Ellis Island 1172 AURORA LEVINS MORALES • Child of the Americas 1174 GLORIA ANZALDÚA • To Live in the Borderlands Means You 1175 MITSUYE YAMADA • To the Lady 1177 nila northSUN • Moving Camp Too Far 1179 YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA • Facing It 1180 BILLY COLLINS • The Names 1182

Play LORRAINE HANSBERRY • A Raisin in the Sun 1185

Chapter Overview: Looking Backward/Looking Forward 1240

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Contents xxi

C H A P T E R 22 Law and Disorder 1241 Essay

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. • Letter from Birmingham Jail 1242 Stories

ELIZABETH BISHOP • The Hanging of the Mouse 1254 URSULA K. LE GUIN • The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas 1257 SHIRLEY JACKSON • The Lottery 1261 WILLIAM FAULKNER • Barn Burning 1267 TOBIAS WOLFF • Powder 1279

Poems ANONYMOUS • Birmingham Jail 1282 A. E. HOUSMAN • The Carpenter’s Son 1284 A. E. HOUSMAN • Oh who is that young sinner 1285 DOROTHY PARKER • Résumé 1286 CLAUDE MCKAY • If We Must Die 1287 JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA • Cloudy Day 1287 CAROLYN FORCHÉ • The Colonel 1289 HAKI MADHUBUTI • The B Network 1290 JILL MCDONOUGH • Three a.m. 1291

Play BILLY GODA • No Crime 1292

Chapter Overview: Looking Backward/Looking Forward 1296

C H A P T E R 23 Journeys 1297 Essay

JOAN DIDION • On Going Home 1297 Stories

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE • Young Goodman Brown 1299 EUDORA WELTY • A Worn Path 1308 JAMES JOYCE • Eveline 1313 RAYMOND CARVER • Cathedral 1317

Poems JOHN KEATS • On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer 1326 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY • Ozymandias 1327 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON • Ulysses 1328 COUNTEE CULLEN • Incident 1330 WILLIAM STAFFORD • Traveling through the Dark 1331 ADRIENNE RICH • Diving into the Wreck 1332 DEREK WALCOTT • A Far Cry from Africa 1335 SHERMAN ALEXIE • On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City 1336 WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS • Sailing to Byzantium 1338 CHRISTINA ROSSETTI • Uphill 1339

Play HENRIK IBSEN • A Doll’s House 1340

Chapter Overview: Looking Backward/Looking Forward 1390

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xxii Contents

A P P E N D I X A Writing about Literature: an Overview of Critical Strategies 1391

The Nature of Critical Writing 1391 Criticism as Argument: Assumptions and Evidence 1391 Some Critical Strategies 1392

Formalist Criticism (New Criticism) 1393 Deconstruction 1394 Reader-Response Criticism 1394 Archetypal Criticism (Myth Criticism) 1395 Historical Criticism 1396 Biographical Criticism 1397 Marxist Criticism 1397 New Historicist Criticism 1398 Psychological or Psychoanalytic Criticism 1398 Gender Criticism (Feminist, and Lesbian and Gay Criticism) 1399

Your Turn: Putting Critical Strategies to Work 1401

A P P E N D I X B The Basics of Manuscript Form 1403 Basic Manuscript Form 1403 Quotations and Quotation Marks 1404

Quotation Marks or Italics? 1406 A Note on the Possessive 1406

Documentation: Internal Parenthetical Citations and a List of Works Cited (MLA Format) 1406

Internal Parenthetical Citations 1407 Parenthetical Citations and List of Works Cited 1407 Forms of Citation in Works Cited 1409

Citing Internet Sources 1415 ✔ Checklist: Citing Sources on the Web 1415

Credits 1417 Index of Authors, Titles, First Lines 1427 Index of Terms 1435

A01_BARN9149_11_SE_FM.indd 22 03/02/16 1:44 pm

xxiii

Contents by Genre Essays Anne Barton The Promulgation of

Confusion 756 Nicholas Carr Is Google Making Us

Stupid? 862 Judith Ortiz Cofer I Fell in Love, or My

Hormones Awakened 948 Joan Didion On Going Home 1297 Steven Doloff The Opposite Sex 435 Barbara Ehrenreich Wal-Mart

Orientation Program 1028 Gretel Ehrlich About Men 437 Langston Hughes Salvation 431 Martin Luther King Jr. Letter from

Birmingham Jail 1241 Bernice W. Kliman The BBC Hamlet:

A Television Production 762 Andrew Lam Who Will Light Incense

When Mother’s Gone? 1135 Abraham Lincoln Address at the

Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery 1132

Bill McKibben Now or Never 828

George Orwell Shooting an Elephant 986

Anna Lisa Raya It’s Hard Enough Being Me 135

George Saunders Commencement Speech on Kindness 156

Will Saretta Branagh’s Film of Hamlet 764

Chief Seattle My People 1125 Elizabeth Cady Stanton Declaration of

Sentiments and Resolutions 1128 Brent Staples Black Men and Public

Space 419 Elaine Showalter Representing

Ophelia 761 Studs Terkel Arnold Schwarzenegger’s

Dream 1133 Henry David Thoreau From

Walden 825 Laura Vanderkam Hookups Starve the

Soul 433 Stanley Wells On the First Soliloquy 759

Short Stories Aesop The Ant and the Grasshopper 832

The North Wind and the Sun 833 Sherman Alexie The Lone Ranger and

Tonto Fistfight in Heaven 1137 Anonymous The Judgment of

Solomon 194 The Parable of the Prodigal Son 198

Margaret Atwood Happy Endings 152 Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson 1152 Ambrose Bierce An Occurrence at Owl

Creek Bridge 146 Elizabeth Bishop The Hanging of the

Mouse 1254 T. Coraghessan Boyle Greasy Lake 103 Ray Bradbury August 2026: There Will

Come Soft Rains 43 The Veldt 902

Raymond Carver Cathedral 1317 Mine 329 Little Things 330

Lan Samantha Chang Water Names 364 John Cheever The Enormous Radio 894 Kate Chopin Ripe Figs 25

The Story of an Hour 65 Désirée’s Baby 80 The Storm 87

Sandra Cisneros Barbie-Q 336 Julio Cortázar The Continuity of

Parks 360 Junot Diaz How to Date a Brown Girl,

Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie 100 Will Eisner The Day I Became a

Professional 1037 Ralph Ellison Battle Royal 1142

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xxiv Contents by Genre

William Faulkner A Rose for Emily 451 Barn Burning 1267

Amy Sterling Casil Perfect Stranger 874 Dagoberto Gilb Love in L.A. 95 Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow

Wallpaper 991 Susan Glaspell A Jury of Her Peers 567 Patricia Grace Butterflies 850 Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm

Grimm Mother Holle 1031 Ursula K. Le Guin The Ones Who Walk

Away from Omelas 1256 Douglas L. Haskins Hide and Seek 258 Nathaniel Hawthorne Young Goodman

Brown 1299 Ernest Hemingway Cat in the Rain 199 Robin Hemley Reply All 890 A.M. Homes Things You Should

Know 362 Mary Hood How Far She Went 110 Zora Neale Hurston Sweat 952 Shirley Jackson The Lottery 1261 Sarah Orne Jewett A White Heron 843 Ha Jin Saboteur 280 James Joyce Araby 220

Eveline 1313 Jamaica Kincaid Girl 121 Stephen King Word Processor of the

Gods 911 Jhumpa Lahiri This Blessed House 960 Jack London To Build a Fire 833 Katherine Mansfield Miss Brill 480 Gabriel García Márquez A Very

Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children 495

Haruki Murakami On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning 55

Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? 305

Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried 484

Flannery O’Connor A Good Man Is Hard to Find 500

Maryanne O’Hara Diverging Paths and All That 338

Daniel Orozco Orientation 1041 Grace Paley Samuel 440 Dorothy Parker A Telephone Call Edgar Allan Poe The Cask of

Amontillado 236 Mark Plants Equal Rites 258 Jayne Anne Phillips Sweethearts 338 Katherine Anne Porter The Jilting of

Granny Weatherall 367 Kit Reed The New You 924 Bruce Holland Rogers Three Soldiers 37 Maria Semple Dear Mountain Room

Parents 887 Michele Serros Senior Picture Day 51 Leslie Marmon Silko The Man to Send

Rain Clouds 241 John Steinbeck The

Chrysanthemums 1002 Elizabeth Tallent No One’s a Mystery 97 Amy Tan Two Kinds 1158 Mark Twain A Telephonic

Conversation 884 John Updike A & P 58 Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Harrison

Bergeron 869 Alice Walker Everyday Use 1009 Eudora Welty A Worn Path 1308 Jeffrey Whitmore Bedtime Story 257 William Carlos Williams The Use of

Force 1033 Tobias Wolff Powder 1279 Allen Woodman Wallet 117

Drama Susan Glaspell Trifles 558 Billy Goda No Crime 1292 Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the

Sun 1184 Henrik Ibsen A Doll’s House 1340 David Ives Sure Thing 605 Jane Martin Rodeo 1054 Terrence McNally Andre’s Mother 982

Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman 1056 William Shakespeare The Tragedy of

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark 652 Sophocles Antigone 616 Luis Valdez Los Vendidos 937 Oscar Wilde Excerpt from The Importance

of Being Ernest 132

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Contents by Genre xxv

Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Unguarded Gates 1171

Sherman Alexie On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City 1336

Julia Alvarez Woman’s Work 1050 Anonymous Higamus, Hogamus 979

Western Wind 972 Birmingham Jail 1282

Gloria Anzaldúa To Live in the Borderlands Means You 1175

W. H. Auden The Unknown Citizen 1169

Matthew Arnold In Harmony with Nature 851

Aphra Behn Song: Love Armed 231 Julia Bird 14: a txt msg pom 130 William Blake The Sick Rose 774

Infant Joy 1016 Infant Sorrow 1017 The Lamb 1018 The Tyger 1018

Jimmy Santiago Baca Green Chili 138 So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from

Americans 1052 Cloudy Day 1287

Anne Bradstreet Before the Birth of One of Her Children 302

Emily Brontë Spellbound 189 Gwendolyn Brooks kitchenette

building 787 We Real Cool 813

Robert Browning My Last Duchess 807

Porphyria’s Lover 976 Joseph Bruchac III Ellis Island 1172 Lorna Dee Cervantes Refugee

Ship 1167 Fred Chapelle Narcissus and

Echo 304 Helen Chasin The Word Plum 142 Sarah N. Cleghorn The Golf Links 144 Billy Collins Introduction to Poetry 245

Twitter Poem 131 Sonnet 782 The Names 1181

Countee Cullen Incident 1330 E. E. Cummings Buffalo Bill ’s 324

anyone lived in a pretty how town 809 in Just- 1020

Kwame Dawes Tornado Child 333

Emily Dickinson I’m Nobody! Who are you? 766

Wild Nights—Wild Nights 768 A Narrow Fellow in the Grass 856 I Like to see it lap the Miles 932 There’s a certain Slant of light 857 The name—of it—is “Autumn” 857

John Donne Holy Sonnet XIV 188 The Bait 352 A Valediction: Forbidding

Mourning 973 T. S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred

Prufrock 297 Martin Espada Bully 249 Carolyn Forché The Colonel 1289 Robert Frost The Span of Life 167

The Road Not Taken 246 Stopping by Woods on a Snowy

Evening 269 The Pasture 819 Mowing 820 The Wood-Pile 820 The Oven Bird 821 The Need of Being Versed in Country

Things 822 The Most of It 823 Design 824

Nikki Giovanni Love in Place 978 Louise Glück The School Children 1021 Thomas Hardy The Man He Killed 301

Transformations 853 The Ruined Maid 1019

Joy Harjo Vision 858 Robert Hayden Those Winter

Sundays 1048 Frederick Douglass 1166

Seamus Heaney Blackeberry-Picking 356 Digging 1049

Robert Herrick To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time 348

Gerard Manley Hopkins God’s Grandeur 853

A. E. Housman The Carpenter’s Son 1283

Oh who is that young sinner 1285 Langston Hughes Harlem 170

Mother to Son 261 I, Too [Sing America] 359

Randall Jarrell The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner 191

Poetry

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xxvi Contents by Genre

John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn 247 On First Looking into Chapman’s

Homer 1326 Galway Kinell Blackberry Eating 354 Etheridge Knight For Malcolm, a Year

After 814 Yusef Komunyakaa Blackberries 357

Facing It 1180 Emma Lazarus The New Colossus 1170 Li-Young Lee I Ask My Mother to Sing 190 Christopher Marlowe The Passionate

Shepherd to His Love 349 Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress 351 Haki Madhubuti The B Network 1290 Jill McDonough Three a.m. 1291 Claude McKay If We Must Die 1286 Edna St. Vincent Millay Love Is Not All: It

Is Not Meat nor Drink 975 Pat Mora Immigrants 253 Aurora Levins Morales Child of the

Americas 1174 Thylias Moss Tornados 332 Howard Moss Shall I Compare Thee to a

Summer’s Day 342 nila northSun Moving Camp Too

Far 1179 Daniel Nyikos Potato Soup 933 Frank O’hara Homosexuality 980 Sharon Olds Rites of Passage 1024 Mary Oliver The Black Walnut Tree 859 Dorothy Parker General Review of the Sex

Situation 979 Résumé 1286

Linda Pastan Ethics 1022 Marge Piercy Barbie Doll 981

To be of use 1051 Sylvia Plath Blackberrying 355

Daddy 810 Sir Walter Raleigh The Nymph’s Reply to

the Shepherd 350 Alberto Rios Nani 139

Edwin Arlington Robinson Richard Cory 1168

Theodore Roethke My Papa’s Waltz 1023 Christina Rossetti After Death 303

Uphill 1339 Kay Ryan Turtle 860 Carl Sandburg Chicago 1046 Anne Sexton Her Kind 815 William Shakespeare Sonnet 73 187

Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? 342

Sonnet 146 769 Sonnet 130 772 Sonnet 116 (Let me not to the marriage of

true minds) 972 Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias 1327 Stevie Smith Not Waving but Drowning 145 Gary Snyder Hay for the Horses 1047 Cathy Song Stamp Collecting 183 Gary Soto Oranges 143 William Stafford Traveling through the

Dark 1331 A. E. Stallings Sestina: Like 934 Alfred, Lord Tennyson Ulysses 1328 Natasha Trethewey White Lies 1025 Derek Walcott A Far Cry from Africa 1335 Edmund Waller Song (Go, lovely rose) 773 Walt Whitman I Hear America Singing 358

A Noiseless Patient Spider 855 To a Locomotive in Winter (from Leaves of

Grass) 931 Marcus Wicker Ode to Browsing the

Web 935 James Wright Lying in a Hammock at

William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota 816

William Carlos Williams This Is Just to Say 141

Mitsuye Yamada To the Lady 1177 William Butler Yeats Sailing to

Byzantium 1337

Graphic Fiction Lynda Barry Before You Write 128 Tony Carrillo F Minus 520 R. Crumb and David Zane Mairowitz

A Hunger Artist 540

Will Eisner Hamlet on a Rooftop 529 Art Spiegelman Nature vs. Nurture 524 Grant Wood Death on the Ridge Road 518

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Preface to Instructors Literature for Composition is based on the assumption that students in composition or literature courses should encounter first-rate writing—not simply competent prose, but the powerful reports of experience that have been recorded by highly skilled writers of the past and present, reports of experiences that must be shared.

We assume that you share our belief that the study of such writing offers plea- sure and insight into life and also leads to increased skill in communicating. Here, at the beginning, we want to point out that the skills we emphasize in our discus- sions of communication are relevant not only to literature courses but to all courses in which students analyze texts or write arguments.

What Is New in the Eleventh Edition? Instructors who are familiar with earlier editions will notice that we retain our em- phasis on critical thinking and argument. For the convenience of instructors who have used an earlier edition, we briefly summarize here the major changes:

New Essays, Short Stories, Poems

• Essays by Nicholas Carr (“Is Google Making Us Stupid?) and George Saunders (“Commencement Speech on Kindness”).

• Short stories by Haruki Murakami (“On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl…”), Junot Diaz (“How to Date a Brown Girl, Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie”), Jhumpa Lahiri (“This Blessed House”), Dagoberto Gilb (“Love in L.A.”), and Lan Samantha Chang (“Water Names”), among others.

• Poems by Billy Collins (“Twitter Poem”), Walt Whitman (“To a Locomotive in Winter”), Thylias Moss (“Tornados”), Sylvia Plath (“Blackberrying”), Seamus Heaney (“Blackberry-Picking”), Alberto Rios (“Nani”), and Helen Chasin (“The Word Plum”), among others.

New Thematic Chapter on Technology and Human Identity

• A new Chapter 17 in Part 4, comprised of selections from a mix of classic and contemporary authors, provides a lens through which students can see how technology both informs and impedes our lives. Several stories use sci- ence fiction elements to imagine utopian and dystopian futures. Authors in this chapter include Mark Twain, Stephen King, Maria Semple, Ray Brad- bury, John Cheever, and Amy Sterling Casil.

Reimagined Thematic Chapters

• Thematic chapters have been collapsed and combined to promote ease of use and to avoid repetition. Each theme has been carefully cultivated to feature the most representative selections for that theme.

xxvii

A01_BARN9149_11_SE_FM.indd 27 03/02/16 1:44 pm

xxviii Preface

New Chapter on Research

• An extensive new Chapter 10 on research walks students step-by-step through the process, from creating a research plan and selecting a topic to locating and evaluating sources and avoiding plagiarism. Woven throughout the chapter is one student’s writing process, culminating with a paper on Emily Dickinson’s use of nature imagery.

New Chapter on Critical Thinking about Literature

• A streamlined Chapter 2 provides an overview of critical thinking early in the text, defining the term and discussing the importance of close reading, analysis, and synthesis.

New Chapter on Close Reading

• A revised Chapter 6 on close reading now includes discussions of both para- phrasing and summarizing, complete with new student samples.

New Chapter on the Pleasures of Reading, Writing, and Thinking about Literature

• A revised Chapter 5 designed to help students think productively about their writing, this material has been updated to reflect contemporary writing (such as blogging and texting) and now contains examples from each of the genres represented in the text, complete with a new personal response essay and new selections.

New Chapter on Comparison and Synthesis

• A new Chapter 9 on comparison walks students through drafting and revis- ing to final production of this type of paper, with student samples through- out.

New Student Writing Portfolios

• Part 3 contains four unique, genre-specific student writing portfolios. These self-contained portfolios (located in Chapters 11, 12, 14, and 15) each pres- ent one student’s writing process step-by-step, from assignment to finished product. Every portfolio is framed with a brief description of the paper “type,” a short assignment that defines the writing, and helpful marginal an- notations next to each step of the student’s writing process, which highlight notable structures and provide guidance for readers to emulate in their own writing.

New Checklists

• Designed to help students produce successful writing, even more checklists are now included in the text at key points in the writing process, including ideas for generating a draft, revising a comparison essay, and evaluating sources for topic “fit.”

A01_BARN9149_11_SE_FM.indd 28 03/02/16 1:44 pm

Preface xxix

More Student Samples of Works-in-Progress

• Throughout the text, every part of the writing process is demonstrated through student models. In addition, Part 3 contains four self-contained, genre-specific student writing portfolios that each showcase one student’s writing process for a particular assignment.

Key Features Here are the key features of the eleventh edition of Literature for Composition.

Extensive instruction in composition: Students are guided through the entire process of writing (especially writing arguments), beginning with generating ideas (for instance, by listing or by annotating a text), developing a thesis, supporting the thesis with evidence, and on through the final stages of documenting and editing. Twenty-four sample student essays are included; most are prefaced with the stu- dents’ preliminary notes, some include first and revised drafts, and some are annotated or otherwise analyzed. Each literary genre chapter includes a new “Student Writing Portfolio” that collects sample materials generated by each step of the writing process, demonstrating how a paper evolves from initial note taking to a final draft.

Strategies for writing effective arguments: The eleventh edition focuses on argument and evaluation, not only in the case studies, but also in the discussion topics that follow every reading (headed “Joining the Conversation: Critical Thinking and Writing”). We emphasize the importance of questioning one’s own assumptions— a key principle in critical thinking—and we also emphasize the importance of pro- viding evidence in the course of setting forth coherent, readable arguments.

Wide range of literary selections: The book includes some three hundred selections, ranging from ancient classics such as Sophocles’s Antigone to works written in the twenty-first century by authors such as Junot Diaz and Jhumpa Lahiri.

Abundant visual material, with suggestions about visual analysis: The book is rich in photographs. The images are chosen to enhance the student’s understanding of particular works of literature. For example, we include photos of Buffalo Bill and a facsimile of a draft of E. E. Cummings’s poem about Buffalo Bill. This edition also remains strong in its representation of graphic fiction.

Introductory genre anthology: After preliminary chapters on generating ideas and thinking critically, students encounter chapters devoted to essays, fiction, drama, and poetry.

Thematic anthology: The chapters in Part 4 are arranged under eight themes: The World around Us; Technology and Human Identity; Love and Hate, Men and Women; Innocence and Experience; All in a Day’s Work; American Dreams and Nightmares; Law and Disorder; and Journeys.

Case studies: The three case studies presented in this book (“An Author in Depth”) give a variety of perspectives for writing arguments and organizing research: Flan- nery O’Connor (page 500), William Shakespeare (page 640), and Robert Frost (page 817).

A01_BARN9149_11_SE_FM.indd 29 03/02/16 1:44 pm

xxx Preface

Extensive material on research and the Internet: Because instructors are in- creasingly assigning research papers, the eleventh edition includes material on implementing a productive research plan that incorporates electronic resources, provides up-to-date instruction on evaluating, using, and citing electronic sources, and features a new student research paper that uses electronic resources.

Checklists: Twenty-two checklists focus on topics such as revising paragraphs, editing a draft, and using the Internet. Students can use these checklists to become peer readers of their writing.

Resources for Instructors Instructor’s Manual with detailed comments and suggestions for teaching each selection. This important resource also contains references to critical articles and books that we have found to be the most useful. ISBN 0134101642

REVEL™ is Pearson’s newest way of delivering our respected content. Fully digital and highly engaging, REVEL™ offers an immersive learning experience designed for the way today’s students read, think, and learn. Enlivening course content with media interactives and assessments, REVEL™ empowers educators to increase engagement with the course, and to better connect with students.

With an emphasis on critical thinking and argument, REVEL™ for Literature for Composition offers superior coverage of reading, writing, and arguing about literature enhanced by an array of multimedia interactives that prompt student engagement. Throughout REVEL’s™ flexible online environment, the authors dem- onstrate that the skills emphasized in their discussions of communication are rel- evant not only to literature courses, but to all courses in which students analyze texts or write arguments.

Acknowledgments We would like to thank the following reviewers, who provided their feedback during the revision of the eleventh edition: Karen Guerin, Bossier Parish Commu- nity College; Mary Hubbard, Northwest Arkansas Community College; Jennifer Laufenberg, Bossier Parish Community College; Megan Looney, Northwest Arkan- sas Community College; Joanna Mann, Northwest Arkansas Community College; Timothy McGinn, Northwest Arkansas Community College; Tabitha Miller, Pitt Community College; Stephanie Noll, Texas State University—San Marcos; John Padgett, Brevard College; and Jennifer Wiley, Pima Community College.

In preparing the first eleven editions of Literature for Composition, we were indebted to Cieltia Adams, Elizabeth Addison, Jonathan Alexander, James Allen, Alexander Ames, Kathleen Anderson-Wyman, Larry Armstrong, William D. Atwill, Patricia Baldwin, Mary J. Balkun, Daniel Barwick, David Beach, Daniel Bender, Billie Bennet, Mary Anne Bernal, Phyllis Betz, Kenneth R. Bishop, Margaret Blayney, Bertha Norman Booker, John P. Boots, Paul Keith Boran, Pam Bourgeois, Noelle Brada- Williams, Carol Ann Britt, Jennifer Bruer, Robin W. Bryant, Sharon Buzzard, Kathleen Shine Cain, Diana Cardenas, William Carpenter, Evelyn Cartright, Allan Chavkin, Mike Chu, Alan P. Church, Melinda Cianos, Dennis Ciesielski, Arlene Clift-Pellow,

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Preface xxxi

Walter B. Connolly, Stanley Corkin, Linda Cravens, Morgan Cutterini, Donald A. Daiker, Bruce Danner, Phebe Davidson, Thomas Deans, Beth DeMeo, John Desjar- lais, Emily Dial-Driver, John Dobelbower, Ren Draya, James Dubinsky, Gail Duffy, Bill Elliott, Leonard W. Engel, William Epperson, Gareth Euridge, Martin J. Fertig, Shelley Fischer, Elinor C. Flewellen, Kay Fortson, Marie Foster, Donna Friedman, Larry Frost, Loris Galford, Charlene Gill, Esther Godfrey, Dwonna Goldstone, Jes- sica Beth Gordon, Kim Greenfield, Chris Grieco, Susan Grimland, Debbie Hanson, Dorothy Hardman, Sandra H. Harris, Syndey Harrison, Sally Harrold, Tom Hayes, Keith Haynes, Michael Hennessey, Mary Herbert, Ana B. Hernandez, Maureen Hoag, Allen Hoey, Diane Houston, Elizabeth Howells, Clayton Hudnall, Joyce A. Ingram, Craig Johnson, Michael Johnson, Angela Jones, Kristianne Kalata, Rodney Keller, Beth Kemper, Glenn Klopfenstein, Alison Kuehner, Donya Lancaster, The- resa René LeBlanc, Regina Lebowitz, Margaret Lindgren, John Loftis, Robert Lynch, Maria Makowiecka, Twister Marquiss, Phil Martin, Kate Massengale, Dennis McDon- ald, Sara McKnight Boone, Delma McLeod-Porter, Linda McPherson, Bill McWil- liams, Martin Meszaros, Zack Miller, JoAnna S. Mink, Dorothy Minor, Owen Mon- roe, Wayne Moore, Charles Moran, Patricia G. Morgan, Nancy Morris, Jonathan Morrow, Christina Murphy, Richard Nielson, Sean Nighbert, David Norlin, Torria Norman, Marsha Nourse, Shanna O’Berry, John O’Connor, Chris Orchard, Phyllis Orlicek, Eric Otto, Suzanne Owens, Janet Palmer, James R. Payne, Stephanie Pel- kowski, Elizabeth Gassel Perkins, Don K. Pierstorff, Gerald Pike, Kenneth Poff, Louis H. Pratt, John Prince, Sharon Prince, Michael Punches, David Raymond, Samantha Regan, Bruce A. Reid, Thomas Reynolds, Linda Robertson, Lois Sampson, Terry Santos, Daniel Schierenbeck, Jim Schwartz, Sigmar J. Schwarz, Robert Schwe- gler, Linda Scott, Herbert Shapiro, William Shelley, David Slater, Janice Slaughter, Martha Ann Smith, Tiga Spitsberg, Judith Stanford, Pam Stinson, Darlene Strawser, Geri Strecker, Jim Streeter, Timothy Stuart, Anthony Stubbs, David Sudol, Beverly Swan, Leesther Thomas, Raymond L. Thomas, Susan D. Tilka, Mary Trachsel, Dorothy Trusock, Billie Varnum, John H. Venne, Mickey Wadia, Nancy Walker, Betty Weldon, Patrick White, Jonathon Wild, Bertha Wise, Arthur Wohlgemuth, Cary Wolfe, Linda Woodson, Sallie Woolf, Kathy J. Wright, Rebecca Wright, Carlson Yost, Dennis Young, and Gary Zacharias.

No book of this kind gets done without a great deal of assistance from the publisher. We received insightful editorial guidance from Joe Terry and Anne Brunell Ehrenworth. Donna Campion (project manager at Pearson) kept things moving smoothly, and Donna Conte expertly copyedited the manuscript. Lois Lombardo (project manager at Cenveo) efficiently solved innumerable last-minute problems, and Gina Cheselka handled the difficult job of securing text permissions.

Sylvan Barnet William Burto

William e. Cain Cheryl l. Nixon

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1

C h a p t e r 1

How to Write an Effective Essay about Literature: A Crash

Course

Chapter Preview

After reading this chapter, you will be able to

• Approach the first draft of an essay purposefully

• Revise a draft effectively

• Participate in the peer review process

• Prepare a final draft of an essay

The Basic Strategy Students have assured us that the following suggestions for writing analytical essays are helpful.

• Choose a topic and a tentative thesis, generating an argument. Aim to explore concepts that can be interpreted and developed rather than to sum- marize information.

• Generate ideas through analysis, engaging in a process of inquiry, inter- pretation, and argument. For instance, ask yourself inquiring questions such as “Why did the author—a woman—tell the story from the point of view of this male character rather than that female character?” and “Does this story give me some insight into family relationships?” Formulate interpretations based on your best questions and answers.

• Select and evaluate evidence, using specific details from the text to develop and support your ideas.

• Make a tentative outline of points that you plan to make. • Rough out a first draft, working from your outline (don’t worry about

spelling, punctuation, etc.), but don’t hesitate to depart from the outline when new ideas come to you in the process of writing.

• Make large-scale revisions in your draft by reorganizing, adding details to clarify and support assertions, or deleting or combining paragraphs.

• Make small-scale revisions by revising and editing sentences, and check- ing spelling and grammar.

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2 Chapter 1 How to Write an Effective Essay about Literature: A Crash Course

• Revise your opening and concluding paragraphs. Be certain that they are interesting, not mere throat-clearing and not a mere summary.

• Have someone read your revised draft and comment on it. • Revise again, taking into account the reader’s suggestions. Read this latest

version and make further revisions as needed so that your thesis—your argument—is evident.

• Proofread your final version.

All writers must work out their own procedures and rituals, but the following basic suggestions will help you write effective essays. They assume that you have made annotations in the margins of the literary text and have jotted notes in a journal, on index cards, or in a file of documents on your computer. If your paper involves using sources, consult also Chapter 10, “Research: Writing with Sources.”

Reading Closely: Approaching a First Draft

1. Carefully read and reread the work or works you will write about, annotating as you read. Read with a pen in hand, and take notes in the margins of the text. Do not hesitate to reread the sections of the work that are most relevant to your subject, jotting down new notes and brainstorm- ing new interpretations.

2. Keep your purpose in mind. Although your instructor may ask you, per- haps as a preliminary writing assignment, to jot down your early responses— your initial experience of the work—it is more likely that he or she will ask you to write an analysis in which you will connect details, draw inferences, and argue that such and such is the case. That is, almost surely you will be asked to do more than write a summary or to report your responses; you will be asked to engage with the conceptual ideas raised by the work. You prob- ably will be expected to support a thesis, to make a claim, and offer an argu- ment, for example: “The metaphors are chiefly drawn from nature and, broad- ly speaking, they move from sky and sea to the earth and to human beings, which is to say that they become closer at hand, more immediate, more personal.”

3. Choose a worthwhile and interesting subject, and work to generate a thesis argument about that subject. As you determine what you will write about, choose something that interests you and is not so big that your handling of it must be superficial. As you work, shape your topic, narrow- ing it, for example, from “Characterization in Updike’s ‘A & P’” to “Updike’s Use of Contrasting Characters in ‘A & P.’”

Don’t expect to have a sound thesis at the very beginning of your working on an essay. The thesis will probably come to you only after you have done some close reading and have stimulated ideas by asking yourself questions. Almost surely you will see that the initial thesis needs to be modified in the light of evi- dence that you encounter. It might be helpful to think of this writing as creating a working thesis, knowing that you will modify, expand, contract, and change the focus of your thesis as your ideas develop. In short, your thesis will evolve in the course of thinking about what you are reading.

An essay that analyzes a work will not only offer an argument but will also support the argument with evidence. Even an explication—a sort of line-by-line

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Reading Closely: Approaching a First Draft 3

paraphrase (see Chapter 6)—presents an argument, holding that the work conveys a certain meaning. Your analysis will break down the whole of the work into parts and investigate the relationships among those parts. Your argument will show off your critical thinking about the literary work, demonstrating how you engage in original interpretation by highlighting meaningful aspects of the text, drawing inferences, connecting details, and extrapolating larger concepts.

In thinking about your purpose, remember, too, that your audience will, in effect, determine the amount of detail that you must give. Although your instructor may, in reality, be your only reader, probably you should imagine that your audi- ence consists of people like your classmates—intelligent but not especially familiar with the topic on which you have recently become a specialist. In putting yourself into the shoes of your imagined readers, think of reasonable objections the readers might raise, and respond appropriately to these objections.

4. Keep looking at the literary work you are writing about, jotting down brainstorming notes on all relevant matters.

• You can generate ideas for writing about the issues raised by essays, stories, plays, and poems by asking yourself questions such as those given in the Checklists on pages 419–20, 455–57, 525–27, 554–55, and 783–85.

• As you look and think, reflect on your observations, and record them. • As you look and think, move beyond plot summary and information-

based reading. Move toward engagement with the concepts—the most compelling ideas, issues, and concerns—raised by the literary work.

• When you have an idea, jot it down as a marginal annotation on the book or on a Post-it note attached to the margin of the book page. Don’t assume that you will remember your ideas when you begin writing. Develop a strategy for collecting ideas that move beyond marginal anno- tations, allowing your notes to becoming more detailed and interpretive. Many people will keep a journal to jot down brainstorming ideas, develop a system of using 4-by-6-inch index cards, or take notes in electronic files on a laptop or iPad or similar tablet device.

• As you develop your note-taking and brainstorming record, embed orga- nizational techniques within it. For example, if you use index cards, put only one point on each card, and write a brief caption on the card (e.g., “Significance of title,” or “Night = death???” Later you can arrange the cards so that relevant notes are grouped together. Similarly, if you take brain- storming notes in a journal, leave room to label each page or document; if you take notes on a computer, create a system of clearly labeled files and folders.

• Become comfortable rereading your own notes and marking them up. Circle or highlight your best ideas. Jot down more notes next to your original notes, continuing to develop your thinking.

5. When you are taking notes from secondary sources, do not simply highlight or photocopy.

• Take brief notes, summarizing important points and jotting down your own critiques of the material.

• Read the material analytically, thoughtfully, and with an open mind and a questioning spirit.

• When you read in this attentive and tentatively skeptical way, you will find that the material is valuable not only for what it tells you but also for the ideas that you yourself produce in responding to it.

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4 Chapter 1 How to Write an Effective Essay about Literature: A Crash Course

6. Sort out your notes, putting together what belongs together. The process of rereading and rethinking your own ideas allows you to hone and strengthen your ideas as you organize them. As a first step, create groupings of like ideas. Three notes about the texture of the materials of a building, for instance, probably belong together. Note cards can easily be rearranged to bring connected ideas together. If you are working on a com- puter, cut and paste similar ideas into one document or one subsection of a document. If you are taking notes in a journal, skim through your earlier notes, and rewrite connected ideas on a fresh page. As you select your best ideas, set aside your weakest ideas. Don’t hesitate to delete ideas, moving them into a different file, knowing that you can always return to them later. Reject notes that are irrelevant to your topic.

7. Organize your notes into a reasonable sequence. Your notes contain ideas (or at least facts that you can think about); now the notes have to be put into a coherent sequence. Think of the relationships among your ideas: Is one idea the overarching idea and must come first? Does one idea lead to the next, creating a sequence? Does one idea offer a minor observation and might best become a subpoint presented “under” a more important argument? Does one idea rely on information that is presented in another section and thus could come later in the argument? When you have made a tentative arrangement, review it; you may discover a better way to group your notes, and you may even want to add to them. If so, start reorganizing.

A tripartite organization for your analytical essay usually works. For this struc- ture, tentatively plan to devote your opening paragraph(s) to a statement of the topic or problem and a proposal of your hypothesis or thesis. The essay can then be shaped into three parts:

• a beginning, in which you identify the work(s) that you will discuss, giving the necessary background and, in a sentence or two, setting forth your un- derlying argument, your thesis;

• a middle, in which you develop your thesis in a series of well-organized para- graphs, chiefly by explaining the ideas central to your argument, by offering evidence, and by taking account of possible objections to your argument; and

• a conclusion, in which you wrap things up, perhaps by giving a more gen- eral interpretation or by setting your findings in a larger context.

In general, organize the material from the simple to the complex in order to ensure intelligibility. For instance, if you are discussing the structure of a poem, it will probably be best to begin with the most obvious points and then to turn to the subtler but perhaps equally important ones. Similarly, if you are comparing two characters, it may be best to move from the most obvious contrasts to the least obvious. When you have arranged your notes into a meaningful sequence, you have begun a key step: dividing your material into paragraphs.

8. Get it down on paper. Most essayists find it useful to jot down some sort of outline, a map indicating the main idea of each paragraph and, under each main idea, supporting details that give it substance. An outline will help you to overcome the paralysis called “writer’s block” that commonly afflicts professional as well as student writers. It does not necessarily have to be anything formal, with capital and lowercase letters and Roman and Arabic numerals, but merely key phrases jotted down in some sort of order. We provide numerous examples of jotted notes and outlines that lead to a rough draft and then a polished essay.

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A page of paper with ideas listed in some sort of sequence, however rough, ought to encourage you. You will discover that you do have something to say. And so, despite the temptation to sharpen another pencil, surf the Internet, or have another cup of coffee, follow the advice of Isaac Asimov, author of 225 books: “Sit down and start writing.”

If you do not feel that you can work from notes and a rough outline, try another method: Get something down on paper, writing (in a journal or on a com- puter) freely, sloppily, automatically, or whatever, but allowing your ideas about what the work means to you and how it conveys its meaning—rough as your ideas may be—to begin to take visible form. If you are like most people, you cannot do much precise thinking until you have committed to paper at least a rough sketch of your initial ideas. At this stage, you are trying to find out what your ideas are, and in the course of getting them down on paper, you will find yourself generating new ideas. We think with words. Capture your ideas in words, and then turn them into phrases and sentences. Later you can push and polish your ideas into shape, per- haps even deleting all of them and starting over, but it is a lot easier to improve your ideas once you see them in front of you than it is to do the job in your head. On paper, one word leads to another; in your head, one word often blocks another.

You may realize, as you near the end of a sentence, that you no longer believe it. Okay; be glad that your first idea led you to a better one, and pick up your better one and keep going with it. What you are doing, by trial and error, is moving not only toward clear expression but also toward sharper ideas and richer responses.

✔ C H E C K L I S T : Generating Ideas for a Draft

Have I asked myself the following questions?

Have I double-checked my assignment, knowing what the purpose of my reading and writing is?

Am I engaged in an active reading process? Have I read and reread the liter- ary work that I am writing about?

Have I annotated the literary work and written down brainstorming notes? Have I selected an interesting subject for my paper? Can I start to generate a

working thesis for my paper, knowing that I will continue to revise it? Do my notes move beyond recording information and start to engage with

conceptual ideas? Am I capturing my best ideas in my notes? Have I generated notes that explore

the most compelling issues and concerns raised by the literary work? Are my note-taking techniques efficient? Do my notes allow me to sort and

organize my ideas? Can my notes be organized into a sequence that has a beginning, a middle,

and an end? Can I develop an outline from my notes, mapping the main idea of each para-

graph and the supporting evidence that will be presented in each paragraph? Have I gotten ideas down on paper, no matter how rough they are? Can I

move my ideas from words to phrases to sentences? Can I collect and reflect on my annotations, brainstorming notes, thesis, and

outline, and start drafting my paper?

Reading Closely: Approaching a First Draft 5

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6 Chapter 1 How to Write an Effective Essay about Literature: A Crash Course

Writing and Revising: Achieving a Readable Draft

Good writing is rewriting. The evidence? Heavily annotated drafts by Chekhov, Keats, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Woolf—almost any writer you can name. Of course, it is easy enough to spill out words, but, as the dramatist Richard Sheridan said 200 years ago, “Easy writing’s curst hard reading.” Good writers find writing is dif- ficult because they care; they care about making sense, so they will take time to answer reasonable objections to their arguments and to find the exact words that will enable them to say precisely what they mean so that their readers will under- stand their key ideas in the right way. And they care about holding a reader’s atten- tion; they recognize that part of their job is to be interesting.

1. Keep looking and thinking, asking yourself questions and providing tentative answers, searching for additional material that strengthens or weakens your main point, and taking account of it in your outline or draft. As you return to the literary work and your outline, continue to add more ideas to it. Your draft will grow organically out of these notes.

2. Continue to hone your thesis and develop your argument. Generate a thesis that captures your main argument, making sure that your thesis engages with the most important conceptual ideas that you want to explore and makes a claim about those ideas. Your thesis paragraph should pre- view your development of your argument. Continue to revise your thesis as your paper evolves.

Now is probably the time to think about a title for your essay. It is usually a good idea to let your reader know what your topic is—which works of literature you will discuss—and what your approach will be. For instance, your topic might be Kate Chopin’s “Désirée’s Baby”—a story about the response to a white woman who gives birth to a mixed-race infant—and your approach might be that the story’s theme of racial prejudice is still meaningful today. At this stage, your title is still tentative, but thinking about the title will help you to organize your thoughts and to determine which of your notes are relevant and which are not. Rather than the title “Chopin’s Story about Race,” a title “Chopin’s ‘Désirée’s Baby’ and Lessons about Racial Prejudice and Ignorance” starts to capture your unique ideas about the work. Remember, the title is the first part of the paper that your reader encoun- ters. You will gain the reader’s goodwill by providing a helpful, interesting title.

3. With your outline or draft in front of you, write a more lucid version of your paper, checking your notes for fuller details. If you wrote your draft on a computer, do not revise it on screen. Print a hard copy, and revise it with a pen or pencil. You need to read the essay more or less as your instructor will read it. True, the process of revising by hand takes more time than revising on a computer, but time is exactly what you need to devote to the process of revision. Time spent developing and clarifying your ideas is time well spent; it will save you time in the later stages of finalizing and editing the draft. When you wrote your first draft, you were eager to find out what you thought, what you knew, and what you did not know. Now, in the revising stage, you need to write slowly, thoughtfully. Later, you will type the handwritten revisions into the computer.

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Writing and Revising: Achieving a Readable Draft 7

When you are revising an early draft, it is probably best to start by concentrat- ing on large-scale revisions—reorganization and additions (for instance, you may now see that you need to define a term, or to give an example, or to quote further from the work that you are discussing). You will probably also make substantial deletions because you will now see that some sentences or paragraphs, although interesting, are redundant or irrelevant.

Although it is best to start with large-scale revisions (what teachers of com- position somewhat grandly call “global revision”), the truth is that when most writers revise, whether they are experienced or inexperienced, they do not pro- ceed methodically. Rather, they jump around, paying attention to whatever attracts their attention at the moment, like a dog hunting for fleas—and that is not a bad way to proceed. Still, you might at least plan to work in the following sequence:

• Introductory and concluding sections: Make sure that your title and opening paragraph(s) give your readers an idea of where you will be taking them. Is your thesis evident? Your concluding paragraph should tell them where they’ve been. Is your concluding paragraph conclusive without being merely repetitive?

• Organization: If some of your material now seems to be in the wrong place, move it by cutting and pasting. The Golden Rule is “Put together what belongs together.” Make sure your ideas have a logical sequence or follow a natural flow in which one idea leads to the next.

• Development: Your ideas should not be repetitive and should not remain surface level. Rather, you should be presenting new but related ideas that add layers of depth and insight to your thesis.

• Evidence: Make sure that your assertions are supported by evidence and that the evidence is of varying sorts, ranging from details in the works to quotations from appropriate secondary sources.

• Counterevidence: Consider the objections that a reasonable reader might raise to some or all of your points, and explain why these objections are not substantial.

• Coherence in sentences, in paragraphs, and between paragraphs: Usually, this is a matter of adding transitional words and phrases ( further- more, therefore, for instance, on the other hand ).

• Tone: Your sentences inevitably convey information not only about your topic but also about yourself. Do the sentences suggest stuffiness? Or are they too informal, too inappropriately casual?

• Editorial matters: Check the spelling of any words that you are in doubt about, check the punctuation, check sentence structure, and check the form of footnotes and bibliography (list of works cited).

If you find that some of your earlier notes are no longer relevant, eliminate them, but make sure that your argument flows from one point to the next. It is not enough to keep your thesis in mind; you must keep it in the reader’s mind. As you write, your ideas will doubtless become clearer, and some may prove to be poor ideas. (We rarely know exactly what our ideas are until we write them down on paper or on the computer. As the little girl said, replying to the suggestion that she should think before she speaks, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”) Not until you have written a draft do you really have a strong sense of what you feel and know and of how good your essay may be.

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8 Chapter 1 How to Write an Effective Essay about Literature: A Crash Course

At this point, you can engage in a practice termed “reverse outlining.” You read your draft and pull an outline out of it, in order to make sure that the draft is rea- sonably organized. A reverse outline works to capture what is actually written on the page. Jot down, in sequence, each major point and each subpoint as it is writ- ten in the draft. You may find that some points need amplification, that you have forgotten a key point, or that a point made on one page really ought to go on another page.

Later you will concern yourself with small-scale revisions (polishing sentences, clarifying transitions, varying sentence structure if necessary, checking spelling and documentation).

4. After a suitable interval, preferably a few days, again revise the draft. To write a good essay, you must be a good reader of the essay that you are writing. (We are not talking at this stage about proofreading or cor- recting spelling errors). Van Gogh said, “One becomes a painter by painting.” Similarly, one becomes a writer by writing—and by rewriting and revising. In revising their work, writers ask themselves many questions:

• Do I mean what I say? • Do I say what I mean? (Answering this question will generate other

questions: Do I need to define my terms? Do I need to add examples to clarify? Do I need to reorganize the material so that a reader can grasp it?)

A Rule for Writers: Put yourself in the reader’s shoes to make sure not only that the paper has an organization but also that the organization will be clear to your reader. If you imagine a classmate as the reader of the draft, you may find that you need to add transition words ( for instance, on the other hand ), clarify definitions, and provide additional supporting evidence.

During this part of the process of writing, read the draft in a skeptical frame of mind. You engaged in critical thinking when you made use of the literary work and any secondary sources; now apply the same questioning spirit to your own writing. In taking account of your doubts, you will probably unify, organize, clarify, and polish the draft.

Reminder: If you have written your draft on a computer or a tablet, do not try to revise it on screen. Print the entire draft, and then read it—as your reader will be reading it—page by page, not screen by screen. Almost surely you will detect errors in a hard copy that you miss on screen. Only by reading the printed copy will you be able to see if, for instance, the ideas on page two are repeated on page four.

5. With your draft in near-final form, turn to editing for correctness. After producing a draft that seems good enough to show to someone, writ- ers engage in yet another activity: They edit. Editing includes such work as checking the accuracy of quotations by comparing them with the origi- nal, checking a dictionary for the spelling of doubtful words, and checking a handbook for doubtful punctuation—for instance, whether a comma or a semicolon is needed in a particular sentence.

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Revising: Working with Peer Review 9

Revising: Working with Peer Review Almost all professional writers get help—from friends, from colleagues, and espe- cially from editors who are paid to go over their manuscripts and call attention to matters that need clarification. If possible, get a fellow student to read your manu- script and give you his or her responses. Do not confuse this sort of help— recommended by all instructors—with plagiarism, which is the unacknowledged use of someone else’s words or ideas. Your reader is not rewriting the paper for you but merely suggesting that (for instance) your title is misleading, that here you need a clear example, that there you are excessively repetitive, and so forth. If you are unfamiliar with the process of peer review and uncertain about the nature of plagiarism, we urge you to read the discussions on pages 403-04.

If peer review is a part of the writing process in your course, the instructor may arrange for writing workshops to be held in or out of class. The instructor may also distribute a guide for peer review that offers suggestions and questions. The preceding checklist is an example of such a guide.

✔ C H E C K L I S T : Writing and Revising a Draft

Have I asked myself the following questions?

Does the draft fulfill the specifications (e.g., length, scope) of the assignment? Does the draft have a thesis—a central focusing argument that gives my paper

a purpose? Is the title interesting and informative? Does my title create a favorable first

impression? Are the early paragraphs engaging, and do they give the reader a good idea

of what will follow, naming the works of literature, the approach, and the argument?

Are key concepts explained clearly and then developed with supporting ob- servations, insights, and analysis?

Is the organization clear, reasonable, and effective? Can I check the organiza- tion by making a quick reverse outline?

Are arguable assertions supported with evidence? Is the evidence explained? Are my readers kept in mind, for instance, by defining terms that they may be

unfamiliar with? Are possible objections faced and adequately answered? If quotations are included, are they introduced rather than just dumped into

the essay? Are quotations as brief as possible? Might summaries (properly credited to the sources) be more effective than long quotations?

Are all sources cited, including Internet material? Does the final paragraph nicely round off the paper, or does it merely restate—

unnecessarily—the obvious? Does the paper include whatever visual materials the reader may need to

see?

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10 Chapter 1 How to Write an Effective Essay about Literature: A Crash Course

Preparing the Final Draft 1. If you have received comments from a reader, consider them care-

fully. Even when you disagree with them, they may alert you to places in your essay that need revision or clarification.

When a friend, a classmate, or another peer reviewer has given you help, acknowledge that person in a footnote or an endnote. (If you look at almost any book, you will notice that the author acknowledges the help of friends and col- leagues. In your own writing, follow this practice.) Here are sample acknowledg- ments from papers by students:

I wish to thank Anna Aaron for numerous valuable suggestions.

I thank Paul Gottsegen for calling my attention to passages that needed clarifica- tion, and Jane Leslie for suggesting the comparison between Sammy in Updike’s “A & P” and the unnamed narrator in Joyce’s “Araby.”

2. If you have borrowed ideas, be sure to give credit, usually in foot- notes, to your sources. Remember that plagiarism is not limited to the unacknowledged borrowing of words; a borrowed idea, even when put into your own words, requires acknowledgment. (On giving credit to sources, see Appendix B.)

3. Print a clean copy of your final draft, following the principles concern- ing margins, pagination, footnotes, and so on, set forth in Appendix B.

4. Proofread the hard copy, make corrections as necessary, and print it out again.

All of this adds up to a recipe found in a famous Victorian cookbook: “First catch your hare, then cook it.”

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11

C h a p t e r 2

How to Engage in Critical Thinking about

Literature: A Crash Course

Chapter Preview

After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

• Define critical thinking

• Use close reading to investigate a literary work

• Engage in analysis, using inquiry, interpretation, and argumentation to come to a deeper understanding of a literary work

• Use comparison and synthesis to connect your ideas to other sources

• Reflect on your ideas and continually revise them to improve your writing

• Identify the differences between nonanalytical and analytical writing

The Basic Strategy In order to develop your critical thinking skills, we suggest that you try the follow- ing strategies:

• Annotate the literary work as you read, engaging in active reading. Take notes in the margins of the text as you read; this will help you to remember key details but will also help to trigger insightful thinking as you read.

• Make sure that you can summarize the literary work, demonstrating that you understand its key ideas. If there is a passage that confuses you or a detail that you have forgotten, go back and reread the passage and clarify your thinking before you start to develop an interpretation of the text.

• Ask questions about the literary work, using an analytical approach to the text by asking conceptual “why” and “how” questions, rather than by asking informational “what” questions.

• Argue with yourself as you generate ideas. Continue to revise your understanding of the text by scrutinizing your assumptions, testing your evidence, thinking of counterarguments, and asking yourself follow-up questions.

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12 Chapter 2 How to Engage in Critical Thinking about Literature: A Crash Course

• Create an interpretation that captures your sense of the meaning of the work. As you write your paper, develop a focused analysis of the work by selecting a key idea for exploration. Define, explain, and add depth to that idea.

• Develop your interpretation by exploring both literary content and form. Literary analysis examines both literary content (the thematic ideas presented by the work) and literary form (the structuring of those ideas through literary elements, such as voice, imagery, and symbolism, among many others). How does the form of the text shape its ideas?

• Collect evidence that supports your interpretation. Look “inward” to literary form and content, and look “outward” to literary contexts and criticism. As you develop your ideas, support them with details from the literary work and, if your assignment allows, information about the cul- tural context of the work or literary criticism written by scholars about the work.

• Create an argument that captures your most important analytical ideas about the text. Develop a thesis that takes a stand. Present your point of view on the key idea that you have selected for analysis.

• Use comparison and contrast to develop relationships among texts and to connect two or more texts by analyzing their similarities and differences. A comparison paper should lead to new insights about each text, clarifying the key ideas that you see in each.

• When performing research, synthesize your sources. Create relation- ships among your ideas and those of critics, working to interweave your sources in your paper.

• Revise your ideas as you revise your writing. An essential component of critical thinking is the ability to revisit and “re-see” your own ideas. Become your own best critic, and revise your ideas as you develop them.

What Is Critical Thinking? When we engage in critical thinking, we are keenly aware of what we are doing. We are, for instance, studying an effect and searching for its causes. “This story bores me, but exactly why does it bore me?” “Is the plot too familiar?” “Are the characters unrealistic?” “Is the language trite?” “Is the language so technical that I can’t follow it?” “Does the author use too many words to say too few?” Or: “I loved the book but hated the movie. Why?” Again, we start to consider the problem closely, probably (again) by examining the parts that make up the whole. And here we are at the heart of critical thinking. Critical thinking is a matter of separating the whole into parts in order to see relationships.

Having said that critical thinking does not necessarily involve faultfinding, we want to modify that statement. There is one writer whose work you should indeed judge severely. That writer is you. When you read a draft of your work, adopt a skeptical spirit. As you read, ask yourself if your assertions are supported with suf- ficient evidence, and ask if other interpretations of the evidence might reasonably be offered. When you engage in this process, you are engaged in critical thinking.

When we engage in critical thinking in an academic setting, we critique in order to come to a deeper understanding of complex ideas. Let’s apply this to

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How Do We Engage in Critical Thinking? 13

literary study: When we engage in critical thinking about literature, we critique in order to come to a deeper understanding of a literary text’s possible meanings, determine what meaning we find most interesting and important, explore how and why a text creates that meaning, and explore how and why that meaning might connect to a larger understanding of the world. Writing takes this critical thinking process one step further: It forces us to slow down and register how we under- stand and evaluate the text, how we develop an interpretation of the text, how we select evidence to support our ideas, how we construct an argument about the text, and how we compare texts and synthesize our ideas with those of others writ- ers. Writing puts our critical thinking skills on display.

How Do We Engage in Critical Thinking? We are constantly engaging with texts, ranging from stories to movies to blogs to YouTube clips, working to understand them and then express our opinions about them. When you go to a movie, you might come out from the screening telling a friend, “I really liked that character, except it was so unrealistic when he was able to overcome that warrior.…” In moments like this, you are engaging in critical thinking without realizing it. You are showing that you understood what happened in the movie, and you are taking the next step of determining what the movie means by questioning its key elements and connecting it to your knowledge about how you think it should work. By explaining your opinions about the movie, you are showing that you’ve created your own interpretation of it. In other words, you’ve generated your own ideas—you’ve used someone else’s work to trigger new ideas of your own.

In academic critical thinking, you take this general process of thinking and make it more directed and purposeful. You aim to understand and organize your thought processes and then apply those processes to challenging texts. You judge and critique those texts in order to hone your ability to develop ideas—and become an idea-creator and text-creator yourself. The process of critical thinking can be broken down into the following simplified stages of thinking:

• Summary, in which you restate the information conveyed by a literary text, demonstrating that you’ve carefully read the text and have fully understood its key ideas

• Analysis, in which you develop your opinion about the meaning of the text by questioning the text, interpreting the text, defining concepts central to the text, locating evidence that supports your ideas, and creating arguments that explain your unique understanding of the text

• Synthesis, in which you connect your reading of the text to other sources, developing relationships among your ideas and the ideas of others (such as critics)

Literature is widely understood to be one of the best ways to develop critical thinking because it is purposefully open-ended and encourages multiple interpre- tations. Literature does not tell you what it means in a straightforward way. It often raises more questions than it answers. It is often purposely complex or unclear. Why? Literature attempts to capture the complexity of the human experi- ence, and human emotions, thoughts, dreams, and memories are far from straight- forward. Crucially, literature does not tell you exactly what to think. Literature is

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14 Chapter 2 How to Engage in Critical Thinking about Literature: A Crash Course

not a lecture, or a sermon, or a political speech, with a clear message or argu- ment. Yet, that is exactly why we read literature—it gives us the freedom to think on our own.

Literature encourages you to come up with your own understanding of it— and this is where critical thinking comes in. When you are reading literature, you are able to develop your interpretation of the text and then create arguments that capture that interpretation.

Literature encourages the development of a particularly rich and multifaceted set of critical thinking skills. Let’s explore these skills in more detail.

Close Reading A strong literary analysis starts with a strong close reading. A close reading takes on a deceptively simple task: It attempts to accurately understand a literary work and then figure out what ideas the work explores. A close reading develops an understanding of the text and investigates how the text makes meaning.

In some ways, the close reading task is straightforward. For example, you know that the sentence, “Go to the store and buy a loaf of bread,” means exactly that, and you do not have to attend to that sentence very closely to understand what it means. When you turn to literature, however, the close reading task gets more complex. For example, take the opening sentence of James Joyce’s short story, “Araby”: “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free.” We can provide a sum- mary of the information in the sentence: A street named North Richmond Street is the site of a boy’s school, and the street is typically quiet except when the boys are leaving school. However, a literary work encourages you to start a process of analysis. Instantly, questions pop up: What does “being blind” mean—how can a street be blind? What are the boys being set free from? Where are we—in what country and in what time period? Asking questions like this starts a process of thinking, interpreting, arguing—the process of critical thinking.

Close reading asks you to become a detective, picking up clues that can help you figure out what you think the text’s meaning is. Annotating the text, marking it up as you read, is the best way to collect those ideas. As you read, “notice what you notice,” and note any interesting, strange, beautiful, or confusing moments.

In literature, the clues are the interesting words and the interesting ways those words are positioned in a text, such as repetition or sentence placement. Literary structure, literary genre, and literary elements call attention to certain ideas. In a poem, for example, the form that words take on a page (such as a sonnet form) is crucial to discovering the poem’s meaning. A close reading examines not just what is being said but how the text is saying it.

If you reread that first sentence from “Araby,” it starts to make sense. The street must be “blind” like a “blind alley” or a dead end; the boys are being set free from their school, which is holding them in like a prison; the school is in a town with clearly named streets and buildings. Slowing down and rereading the text for clues to its meaning is essential to the close reading process.

As you read “Araby,” continue to notice key words and ask questions about them, connecting details to larger concepts. The second sentence reads, “An unin- habited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground.” “Araby” is not describing a street filled with happiness; the words “uninhabited” and “detached” are creating a feeling of loneliness or

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Analysis: Inquiry, Interpretation, Argument 15

uneasiness. The word “blind” seems important: It is repeated in the first two sen- tences. Is a pattern being set up? What does “blind” mean? In the story, maybe someone won’t be seeing things clearly? Creating interpretations based on textual clues is the key outcome of close reading. With only two sentences to go on, we’ve already started to create an interpretation: We can hypothesize that “Araby” is going to explore loneliness or unhappiness, might feature a boy, and might be set in a city.

What literary forms are helping to create the text’s meaning?

✔ C H E C K L I S T : Close Reading

How can I perform a close reading? As you think about your reading and writing process, ask yourself:

Have I read with an open mind, asking questions as I read? Did I annotate the text, capturing my thinking in marginal notes? Have I slowed down my reading process, making sure that I am reading both

to gather information and to generate new ideas? Did I read to understand the text? Make sure that you can accurately sum-

marize the text. Reread passages that might be confusing or unclear on a first reading. Use annotations to keep track of important information about the literary work.

Have I formulated ideas about the text’s larger meaning? Collect clues to the text’s meaning. Make sure to “notice what you notice,” marking down any aspects of the text that you find interesting.

Did I highlight specific evidence—words, phrases, images, structures—that seems to be signaling deeper meaning?

Have I looked for patterns among details? Have I connected details to concepts? Make sure to jot down concept words

in the margins of the text. Did I reread and rethink passages that seem particularly rich and passages

that seem to be most connected to the concepts that I found interesting?

Analysis: Inquiry, Interpretation, Argument Analysis is the process of thinking about (and rethinking and rethinking about!) a literary text in order to explore how it works, to examine the ideas that it raises, and to develop a unique interpretation of its meaning. Analysis asks you to inves- tigate an issue raised by the literary work by breaking down the text into its com- ponent parts; you examine the text’s parts in order to see how the text works as a whole to create its larger conceptual ideas. Analysis includes three critical thinking steps, which lead to and often overlap each other:

• Inquiry: the process of asking questions about a text in order to understand its meaning

• Interpretation: the development of a unique understanding of the text • Argument: the presentation of a claim or a thesis about the text, which is

then explained, developed, and supported with evidence

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16 Chapter 2 How to Engage in Critical Thinking about Literature: A Crash Course

An analysis assignment might ask you to explore the ideal of beauty as pre- sented in Michelle Serros’s “Senior Picture Day,” a short story that appears in Chapter 3. As soon as you start to explore “beauty” as presented in the story, it raises multiple questions and becomes a complex concept: In the story, how is beauty defined—is it defined only as appearance? Why does the narrator think her Mexican or Indian nose is not beautiful? How does American culture define beauty? How does her friend, Terri, reinforce that definition of beauty? Why would Native American beauty not be part of American beauty? How and why does her friend use her looks against her? Is beauty primarily about winning a boyfriend? This is just a start—the questions can keep coming!

As you think through your inquiry questions, you start to hypothesize answers to them. You might determine that you like the questions that connect ideas about friendship to ideas about beauty. Friends using beauty against each other is an unexpected concept. With some more thought, that idea could develop into an interpretation that explores how the story presents a character who uses beauty as a form of competition, showing that ideals of beauty can undermine friendship.

With a clear focusing idea and interpretation in place, you are ready to start writing your paper. When you are writing an analytical paper, you present your interpretation of the text in the form of an argument. You will need to create a central claim—an argument that captures your interpretation and conveys a posi- tion that can be debated. Your paper will work to develop and deepen that one idea. The central claim will become your thesis, serving as your paper’s overarch- ing and organizing principle. As you shape your thesis (such as with the argument that “Senior Picture Day” presents a character who uses beauty as a form of com- petition, showing that ideals of beauty can undermine friendship), you will need to examine any assumptions that you are making (such as the assumption that friendship should not be competitive) and define any terms that are essential to it (such as “beauty” and “American”). You will develop the thesis by explaining the different parts of the text that support your central idea, using details from the text as evidence and using sources that trigger further thinking. Analysis, then, is a process of using your observations about a text to develop a deeper understanding of the text and then presenting your new ideas and insights in a well-organized argument about the text’s form and meaning.

As you read this description of analysis, you can see why it is at the core of critical thinking: It requires determining and exploring ideas, creating concepts, taking ideas apart and putting them back together again, making arguments, find- ing evidence, and developing ideas further. Let’s look at each of these steps in turn.

Inquiry

Inquiry is the process of asking productive questions that lead to further thought and investigation, triggering new ideas and interpretations. The term “inquiry” captures the sense of a curious, inquiring mind asking open-ended questions that will lead to more questions and, ultimately, to the attempt to answer those ques- tions. Inquiry is often positioned as the starting point of a discovery process that generates new ideas—inquiry encompasses a type of activity that we loosely call “brainstorming.”

If you are trying to create new knowledge, you must be able to ask good ques- tions about issues that you are observing, reading about, and researching. So, what is a “good” question? Inquiry-based questions cannot be answered with a quick “yes” or “no.” They cannot be answered with a quick checking of factual information.

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Analysis: Inquiry, Interpretation, Argument 17

They cannot be answered with a plot summary or a restatement of the author’s argument or findings. Instead, inquiry-based questions are often conceptual ques- tions that seek to “open up” a topic to new thinking. Rather than asking for infor- mation, an inquiry-based question asks “why?” or “how?”

You can start to trigger interpretive thinking by asking general questions such as, “What is the main idea of this work?” or “What is the most important issue that this work explores?” and then moving toward more specific questions such as, “How does this story’s character change to create a changing definition of this idea?” or “How does this poem’s imagery show both positive and negative aspect of this idea?”

If we return to the story “Senior Picture Day,” you might question how it presents “beauty,” asking some of the questions that we’ve already noted. Those questions will become more specific as you reexamine the literary work and ques- tion it further. For example, as you reread your annotations on “Senior Picture Day,” you might start to focus on the role the narrator’s friend, Terri, plays in defining beauty. Why does Terri say to the narrator, “you look like you’re more from Mexico than California”? How does the narrator counter that statement—does it show that she understands stereotypical ideals of beauty? When Terri is talking to Lightning Bolt, what are the ideals of female beauty that she references and why? Why does the narrator say about Terri, “She was saying things about a friend, things a real friend shouldn’t be saying?” Why is Terri’s reference to the narrator’s nose the most painful comment? Why does the narrator leave Terri’s house without telling her?

Inquiry-based questions wrestle with the ideas that are at the heart of the issue under consideration. Something meaningful is at stake in an inquiry-based ques- tion: An idea is being discovered and explained, an argument is being proven or disproven, a topic is being redefined, or a finding is being expanded.

✔ C H E C K L I S T : Inquiry and Question-Asking

How can I start my analysis by engaging in inquiry? As you think about your reading and writing process, ask yourself:

Have I approached the text with a curious, inquiring mind? Remember that literary analysis is a process of discovery in which the reader uncovers mean- ings that he or she won’t see at first.

Have I asked as many questions as possible, big and small? Have I asked conceptual questions? Do not ask just fact-based “what” ques-

tions or “yes” and “no” questions. Instead, ask concept-oriented questions or “why” and “how” questions. Ask unexpected questions.

Did I use brainstorming writing—jotting notes, making lists, writing response entries—to formulate answers to my questions?

Have I argued with myself to continue the brainstorming process? Use ques- tions to test your inferences, assumptions, and preexisting knowledge.

Have I defined key terms? Did I use questions and answers to determine what a text might mean? At the

same time, continue to be comfortable with ambiguity and indeterminacy, explore open-ended possibilities, entertain half-formed ideas, investigate opposing ideas, and notice what ideas seem too obvious and what ideas seem richly complex.

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18 Chapter 2 How to Engage in Critical Thinking about Literature: A Crash Course

Interpretation

Analysis encourages you to maintain openness, asking questions while also pre- dicting or hypothesizing the answers that you might discover as you continue your investigation. When you are working with literature, the most obvious outcome of the “questioning and answering” brainstorming process is that you interpret a piece of literature in an analysis paper. You use the annotating process of close reading and the note-taking process of inquiry to figure out what you think that literary text means, and you are then ready to turn to outlining and drafting a paper that solidifies your specific interpretation. Once focused and consolidated, your answers to your inquiry questions become your interpretation; your answers can serve as the arguments that structure your analysis paper.

Central to the interpretative process is evidence. Interpretation works with specific details in the text, asking, “What does this detail mean?” Literature trains you to look carefully at specific words and phrases, and at literary elements such as symbolism, setting, character, plot, and imagery. We discuss the literary elements central to each genre in detail in Chapters 11–15. All of these details become evi- dence for your interpretation, and you will evaluate and select the best evidence to support your ideas, quoting that evidence and citing it in your paper.

Literature also trains you to move back and forth between small details and big conceptual ideas, or to connect literary form (the literary elements) with literary content (the conceptual ideas, such as theme). Your interpretation will determine what ideas are represented by what details and what literary elements of the text are the most important. As you generate ideas, you will employ critical thinking skills, including drawing inferences, uncovering assumptions, connecting details, and entertaining and weighing competing interpretations.

If you look at the questions that we have been asking about “Senior Picture Day,” you can see this movement from small details to larger concepts. An analysis will connect specific words, images, and elements from the story, such as Terri’s comment about the narrator looking “Mexican” and not “blond,” to larger ideas, such as the story’s exploration of American ideals of female beauty and whether Native American women can fit those ideals. As you explore the story, you might analyze Terri’s critique of her friend’s body—how she mentions her being “skinny,” then calls her “flat-chested,” and then labels her nose “Indian.” As you look at those phrases, you might form the opinion that Terri is purposely creating worse and worse insults about her friend. Your interpretation might show that, because the insults are presented in a series (skinny, flat-chested, nose), Terri knows that she is making insulting comments about her friend—they aren’t unintentional. Your inter- pretation might determine that this is a strategic use of beauty by one friend to hurt another friend: Terri seems to move strategically toward the worst insult that she can make—and American ideals of beauty help her to do that.

Interpretation is the process of generating and testing your ideas. As you develop your interpretation, you should work to hone your ideas, making your interpretation more precise. We often think of “going deeper” into a text or “deepening” an inter- pretation, in that we do not want to remain at the surface level of the text and create an obvious or superficial interpretation of it; instead, we want to get to a deeper knowledge of what the text presents and understand its most important ideas. As you finalize your analysis, you will start to sort and organize your questions and answers, finding connections among your ideas. You will discover key ideas that repeat them- selves, revealing that they are central to the literary work. You will also start to discard ideas that seem weak or off-topic. As your interpretation takes shape, it will become an argument, taking the form of a clear statement that will organize your paper.

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Analysis: Inquiry, Interpretation, Argument 19

✔ C H E C K L I S T : Interpretation

How can I continue my analysis, moving from inquiry to interpretation? As you think about your reading and writing process, ask yourself:

Have I developed my understanding of the literary work, aiming for a focused explanation of the work’s larger meaning? It can be helpful to ask, “What is one of the text’s most important main ideas, and how does the text present and develop that idea?”

Did I analyze both literary content and literary form as I created my interpreta- tion? Literature not only presents complex ideas but also presents them in an artistic way, using specific literary forms. Make sure that your interpretation explores how the work makes meaning by attending to both form and content.

Have I broken down the literary work? Separate the whole into parts in order to see relationships among the parts.

Have I worked with concepts? Define, explain, and develop the work’s key ideas.

Have I worked with evidence? Explore the work’s details, noting the ideas that they trigger. As you work with the evidence, you might:

• draw inferences • uncover assumptions • connect details • organize evidence by categorizing it, locating similarities and differences • trace patterns and repetitions • entertain and weigh competing interpretations • note what seems to be missing, locating interesting gaps

Did I create predictions or hypotheses concerning possible meanings? Did I create an interpretation? (Take a leap: What do you think the text means?)

Argument

An argument is a claim that offers a focused presentation of your interpretation of a literary work. A strong paper will take a specific position on, or make a specific proposition about, a carefully selected and narrowed topic, rather than present an obvious idea about a general topic. Your presentation of your claim and the evi- dence for your claim—and your attempt to win your reader over to your side through logical and well-organized writing—is argumentation.

When a main argument or claim is presented in an academic paper, we often label it a “thesis statement.” A thesis statement allows you to show off your analysis by pre- senting it in a concise manner that highlights the strength of your ideas. This argument is then developed, typically through a series of supporting ideas or subpoints that pres- ent evidence and explain the reasoning behind the argument. A successful paper will answer the “so what” question and explain the significance of the argument.

Imagine yourself having to explain your ideas about a literary work to a friend, and then imagine your friend being somewhat resistant to your ideas so that you have to explain them in a more argumentative way, support them with clear evi- dence, and develop them with a series of related ideas. If you were exploring T. Coraghessan Boyle’s “Greasy Lake,” you might say something along the lines of, “The narrator seems really immature.” If your friend questions you on this, you might decide to make your ideas more argumentative, explaining, “The narrator

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20 Chapter 2 How to Engage in Critical Thinking about Literature: A Crash Course

represents immaturity because he doesn’t think of the consequences of his actions—especially his violence toward the ‘greasy character’ and the ‘fox.’” You might have to explain your ideas further, saying, “Although he can’t handle respon- sibility, the narrator thinks that he is superior to everyone; he shows off how smart he is by making reference to art and literature. He thinks he is smart, but he is not smart about his actions and their consequences. Boyle wants to show that imma- turity can’t be rewarded, and that’s why the narrator is punished with his car get- ting wrecked.” With a bit of revision and development, this type of argument is already on its way to becoming a claim—a thesis—that can be further developed in an analytical paper.

Your thesis presents the main idea of your paper; it is the specific argument that you make about your selected topic. The best thesis arguments come from the ideas and evidence that you return to again and again in your brainstorming—the ideas that you are most interested in and passionate about. A thesis can result from your interest in a(n)

• Pattern: such as repeated images, ideas, or literary techniques • Problem: such as a scene that raises but doesn’t quite resolve a difficult issue • Insight: such as a realization that an image might symbolize a specific idea • Question: such as a questioning of a character’s motivation • Formal element: such as a careful charting of voice throughout a story • Conceptual idea: such as a new insight into a universal concept, like love

Although we are concentrating on writing about literature, you can see how this type of writing develops larger critical thinking skills, such as learning to iden- tify and analyze a problem, which are helpful in all fields and careers.

Once you have a thesis, you will want to develop it. The process of inquiry, of asking and answering questions about a text, can generate many insights. Those insights can be shaped—sorted, selected, and consolidated—into a pattern of ideas that can be developed into your argument. As you develop your interpretation of a text, your ideas can follow a logical order; for example, you might organize your ideas by subtopics, by facets of a topic, by “problems and solutions,” from “most important to least important ideas,” or from “big picture to smaller details.”

✔ C H E C K L I S T : Argument

How can I use my analysis to generate an argument? As you think about your reading and writing process, ask yourself:

Have I turned my interpretation into an argument by focusing on a specific aspect of the literary work and developing a position on that aspect?

Did I create a strong thesis that presents a focused claim? Did I create a strong thesis that moves beyond an obvious statement or gen-

eral idea? Have I developed my argument by selecting my best ideas and deepening

them through further analysis? Have I organized my argument, most typically by breaking down my interpre-

tation into a series of subideas or subconcepts, which I then have organized in a logical fashion? Remember to keep similar ideas together and work to

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Comparison and Synthesis 21

create a flow from one set of ideas to the next. You might create an organiza- tion in which you

• move from the most important idea to the least important idea • move from the most obvious or understandable idea to the most complex idea • trace a “cause/effect” or “causal” relationship, in which one idea leads to

another because it causes it to occur • explain the facets of one idea, showing how they connect (for example,

“love” can encompass romantic love, platonic love, and familial love) • perform an analysis of one literary element, such as a character analysis • move from specific details to larger generalizations (“bottom up” or induc-

tive reasoning) • move from a general statement to smaller details (“top down” or deductive

reasoning) • follow a chronological order • use a “pros/cons,” “problem/solution,” or “similarities/differences” structure

Have I supported ideas with meaningful evidence that is analyzed and explained?

Did I consider counterarguments?

Comparison and Synthesis Comparison and synthesis connect together two or more sources, creating a rela- tionship between them. In both comparison and synthesis, you are looking to find common concerns—areas of connection—that will allow different texts, authors, ideas, interpretations, or insights to be brought together.

Comparison is a well-known means of creating connections among sources, as most of us have written “comparison/contrast” papers at some point. Compari- son focuses on finding similarities, while contrast focuses on finding differences among two or more sources. The development of relationships among texts encourages critical thinking; you cannot rely on a summary of the two texts but must evaluate each text in light of the other. Through comparison, you locate ideas and issues that might not be readily apparent in each text but that are revealed and then explored through the relationships you create.

Synthesis typically indicates a research paper in which multiple sources that comment on a topic are brought together in order to develop a new understanding of that topic. Rather than being compared and contrasted, the sources are often interwoven, taking the best ideas from each in order to help build an understand- ing of what has been discovered or debated about the topic at hand. When engaged in synthesis, you are connecting sources to your own thinking, showing how your ideas fit into larger critical debates. A synthesis will often serve as a strong founda- tion for further analysis, allowing you to show that your ideas are strong because they build on the ideas of critics. When working with critics’ ideas, maintain a clear sense of your own ideas and arguments, explaining how you agree, disagree, or both agree and disagree (“Okay, but…”) with the critics; further their ideas through your use of them; or apply their ideas to a new source. Use correct attribution and citation style, as detailed in Appendix B.

Synthesis requires several forms of critical thinking: You understand each source and can accurately convey its key ideas; you select only the most relevant

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22 Chapter 2 How to Engage in Critical Thinking about Literature: A Crash Course

ideas from each source; you bring together sources in a way that clarifies how they agree, disagree, expand, develop, support, or contradict each other; you explain how each source connects to your thesis and arguments; and you create an orga- nization for your synthesis that allows you to bring together sources without over- whelming your own ideas.

✔ C H E C K L I S T : Comparison and Synthesis

How can I engage in comparison and synthesis? As you think about your read- ing and writing process, ask yourself:

Have I collected and selected sources that “speak to each other”—that address shared ideas and information, and thus can create meaningful connections?

Did I create a relationship among my sources, explaining how they connect? Remember that comparison emphasizes similarities among sources, contrast emphasizes differences, and synthesis emphasizes an interweaving of sources.

Have I maintained a strong sense of my own voice when performing research, clarifying how I agree with, disagree with, or further apply the critics’ arguments?

Did I create a strong thesis that emphasizes the relationship that I’ve created? Have I used the relationship that I’ve created to generate new insights into

each text? Did I create a clear argumentative structure in which my paper works to inte-

grate the sources to highlight ideas? Have I selected specific evidence from each source for quotation and analysis? Did I cite each source correctly?

Revision and Self-Awareness An essential part of critical thinking is reflecting on your ideas and continually revising them in order to improve them. Each part of the critical thinking process should be repeated as needed: Reading should include rereading, inquiry should include asking follow-up questions, interpretation should include revisiting insights and reinterpreting evidence, argumentation should include a honing and reorga- nizing of key ideas, and synthesis should include reexamining the relationships created among sources.

The writing process ensures this rethinking by requiring revision. A paper is typically drafted and redrafted, moving from a rough initial draft through several intermediary drafts and then to a final draft that is polished before being submitted. Throughout this book, we provide multiple examples of papers being revised and improved as part of the writing process.

It might be helpful to think of paper “re-vision” as an opportunity to “re-envision” your ideas. Writing captures your thinking on the page. Writing also triggers new thinking: We have all had a lightbulb go off during the process of drafting—our mind is stimulated by the writing process to invent new ideas. When we are revising, we create new opportunities to improve our ideas. Make sure to see revision as an essential critical thinking skill and not a mere afterthought.

Revision forces you to step into the position of critic, asking you to analyze and criticize your own writing. The ability to create your own ideas and then to

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Nonanalytical versus Analytical Writing 23

step outside of yourself, reflect on, and critique those ideas requires advanced criti- cal thinking skills that will serve you well in all of your academic courses and will later transfer into your career and beyond. Critical thinking encourages you to develop a sense of reflective self-awareness of yourself as a reader, writer, and thinker. As you engage in the writing process, use it to think carefully about your audience, the academic context of writing, your strengths and weaknesses as a writer, and how to push yourself to continually improve your thinking processes.

Standing Back: Kinds of Writing Most writing about literature seeks to do one or both of two things:

• to inform (“This play was written only five years ago”; “The images of night suggest death.”)

• to persuade (“This early story is one of her best”; “Despite the widespread view that the images of night suggest death, I will argue that here they do nothing more than indicate a time of day.”)

Whether you are primarily concerned with informing or with persuading (and the two purposes can be nearly indistinguishable, because writers usually want to persuade readers that their information is significant), you ought to be prompted by a strong interest in a work or a body of work. This interest is usually a highly favorable response to the material (essentially, “That’s terrific”), but an unfavorable response (“Awful!”) or a sense of bafflement (“Why would anyone care for that?”) may also motivate writing. In any case, because you have been stimulated by a work, you put words onto paper, perhaps first by jotting down observations in no particular sequence. Later, you will organize them for the benefit of an imagined reader, offering what D. H. Lawrence calls “a reasoned account of the feelings” produced by a work. Don’t be embarrassed if a work produces strong feelings in you, pleasant or unpleasant.

Nonanalytical versus Analytical Writing Writing about literature includes a range of types of writing. Some types of writing are nonanalytical-they try to avoid argument and attempt instead to inform, to describe, or to define. Some types of writing narrate personal responses. Although personal responses can hardly be argued about in rational terms, they can and must be set forth clearly and interestingly so that the reader understands—because the writer points to things in the literary work that evoke the responses—why the writer experiences these responses and why the writer evaluates the work as he or she does. Types of nonanalytical writing include the following:

• Description and summary (“The story is unusually brief, only a page long”; “The narrator explained his morning ritual of making coffee and then described riding the subway to work.”)

• Definition (“The poem is a Shakespearian sonnet, since it is comprised of three quatrains and a couplet, following the rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, gg.”)

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24 Chapter 2 How to Engage in Critical Thinking about Literature: A Crash Course

• personal report or response or what might be called “confession,” a report of one’s immediate response and perhaps of later responses (“The story reminds me of an experience that I had when I was about the age of the central character”).

• Review, evaluation, or judgment (“The story is shocking” or “There is nothing here that holds my interest.”) In Appendix A, we discuss critical strategies that underlie evaluation. Here, it is enough to say that the two most common sources for judging are: (1) a spontaneous personal response (“The death of a child is deeply disturbing”) and (2) a principle that is alleged to be widely held (“A story ought to be unified”).

Most academic writing about literature is chiefly explanatory and argumenta- tive or, we can say, analytical: It is concerned with examining relationships (for instance, of the parts to the whole within a work, or of historical causes and effects) and creating arguments about how those relationships work and what they mean. Your instructors will probably ask you to write papers that are chiefly ana- lytical, although some description, personal response, and review will almost surely be implicit (if not explicit) in your analyses. Analytical writing attempts to win over its audience through an interesting thesis, strong argumentation, compel- ling evidence, original insight, and clear organization.

• Analysis or explanation of the work, typically focusing on the conceptual ideas developed by the work and the internal relationships—the form and structure—of the work (“The second scene in this play has at least three functions”). As we have seen, an analytical paper results from close reading, inquiry, interpretation, and argumentation.

• Comparison (“While both poems present motherhood as challenging, the first emphasizes the negative feelings of overwork and the second empha- sizes the positive emotions of support.”)

• Synthesis (“These critics agree that the story presents a utopian vision of nineteenth-century farm life.”) Synthesis can also include the application of critical concepts or theories to a literary work (“Freud’s concept of the superego offers a way of understanding this character’s motivations”).

These analytical forms of writing aim to convince the reader of your interpre- tation of the work. Argumentation is central to these analytical forms of writing:

• Argument or writing that makes a strong claim and offers reasons advanc- ing that specific understanding of the literary work. The reasons will be supported by evidence, notably references to passages from the literary works that you are discussing.

As you review the critical thinking process outlined in this chapter, the most obvi- ous outcome of these steps is that you interpret a piece of literature—you figure out what you think that literary work means. In a literature-based class, the act of analysis is what it is all about! The ability to come to your own conclusions about a text’s meaning is the foundation for all sorts of activities—class discussions, class debates, class papers—all of which typically present an argument that a text emphasizes as a key idea. More generally, note the skills that this process develops. A critical thinker learns not only to become a better reader and writer but also to notice details and patterns, to feel comfortable asking questions, to develop interpretations, to remain open to alternate interpretations, to test his or her own ideas, and to make arguments. Literature invites you to develop critical thinking skills at the most sophisticated level.

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25

C h a p t e r 3

The Writer as Reader

Chapter Preview

After reading this chapter, you will be able to

• Explain the process of reading and responding to literature

• Use first responses, inquiry notes, and outlining to generate ideas for an essay

• Develop an analytical essay with an argumentative thesis

• Analyze an essay’s argument, structure, and idea development

• Evaluate a student essay

Reading and Responding Learning to write is in large measure learning to read. The text you should read most carefully is the one you yourself write—for example, an essay that makes an argument defending an interpretation. Your writing may start as jotting notes in the margin of a book that you are reading or in a journal, and it will go through sev- eral drafts before it becomes a finished essay. To produce something that another person will find worth reading, you must read each draft with care, trying to imag- ine the effect your words are likely to have on your reader. In writing about litera- ture, you will apply some of the same critical thinking skills to your reading; that is, you will examine your responses to what you are reading, and you will try to account for them.

Let’s begin by looking at a very short story by Kate Chopin.

Kate Chopin Kate O’Flaherty (1851–1904), born into a prosperous family in St. Louis in 1870, married Oscar Chopin, a French-Creole businessman from Louisiana. They lived in New Orleans, where they had six children. Oscar died of malaria in 1882, and in 1884, Kate returned to St. Louis, where, living with her mother and children, she began to write fiction.

Ripe Figs

Maman-Nainaine said that when the figs were ripe Babette might go to visit her cousins down on the Bayou-Lafourche where the sugar cane grows. Not that the ripening of figs had the least thing to do with it, but that is the way Maman- Nainaine was.

It seemed to Babette a very long time to wait; for the leaves upon the trees were tender yet, and the figs were like little hard, green marbles.

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26 Chapter 3 The Writer as Reader

But warm rains came along and plenty of strong sunshine, and though Maman-Nainaine was as patient as the statue of la Madone, and Babette as rest- less as a humming-bird, the first thing they both knew it was hot summertime. Every day Babette danced out to where the fig-trees were in a long line against the fence. She walked slowly beneath them, carefully peering between the gnarled, spreading branches. But each time she came disconsolate away again. What she saw there finally was something that made her sing and dance the whole long day.

When Maman-Nainaine sat down in her stately way to breakfast, the following morning, her muslin cap standing like an aureole about her white, placid face, Babette approached. She bore a dainty porcelain platter, which she set down be- fore her godmother. It contained a dozen purple figs, fringed around with their rich, green leaves.

“Ah,” said Maman-Nainaine arching her eyebrows, “how early the figs have ripened this year!”

“Oh,” said Babette. “I think they have ripened very late.” “Babette,” continued Maman-Nainaine, as she peeled the very plumpest figs

with her pointed silver fruit-knife, “you will carry my love to them all down on Bayou-Lafourche. And tell your Tante Frosine I shall look for her at Toussaint— when the chrysanthemums are in bloom.”

[1893]

Reading as Re-creation

If we had been Chopin’s contemporaries, we might have read this sketch in Vogue in 1893 or in an early collection of her works, A Night in Acadie (1897). However, since we live more than a century later, we inevitably read “Ripe Figs” in a some- what different way. This gets us to an important truth about writing and reading. A writer writes, sets forth his or her meaning, and attempts to guide the reader’s responses, as we all do when we send a text or an e-mail home saying that we’re thinking of dropping a course or asking for news or money. To this extent, the writer creates the written work and puts meaning in it.

But the reader, whether reading that written work as a requirement or for rec- reation, re-creates it in terms of his or her own experience and understanding. For instance, if your appeal for money is too indirect, the reader may miss it entirely or may sense it but feel that the need is not urgent. If, on the other hand, the appeal is direct or demanding, the reader may feel imposed upon, even assaulted. “Oh, but I didn’t mean it that way,” the writer later protests. Nevertheless, that’s the way the reader took it. The text or e-mail is “out there,” a physical reality standing be- tween the writer and the reader, but its meaning is something that both the reader and the writer make.

Since all readers bring themselves to a written work, they each bring some- thing individual. Although many of Chopin’s original readers knew that she wrote chiefly about the people of Louisiana, especially Creoles (descendants of the early French and Spanish settlers), Cajuns (descendants of the French whom the British had expelled from Canada in the eighteenth century), African Americans, and mu- lattoes, those readers must have varied in their attitudes about such people. And many of today’s readers do not (before they read a work by Chopin) know anything

5

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Reading and Responding 27

about her subject. Some readers may know where Bayou-Lafourche is, and they may have notions about what it looks like, but most readers will not. Indeed, many readers will not know that a bayou is a sluggish, marshy inlet or outlet of a river or lake.

Moreover, even if a present-day reader in Chicago, Seattle, or Juneau knows what a bayou is, he or she may assume that “Ripe Figs” depicts a way of life that is still current, whereas a reader from Louisiana may see in the work a lost way of life, a depiction of the good old days (or perhaps the bad old days, depending on the reader’s point of view). Much depends, we can say, on the reader’s storehouse of experience.

Reading for Understanding: Collecting Evidence and Making Reasonable Inferences

As readers, we can and should make an effort to understand what an author is get- ting at. To begin, we should make an effort to understand unfamiliar words. Per- haps we need not look up every word that we don’t know, at least on the first reading, but if certain unfamiliar words are repeated and thus seem especially important, we will want to look them up.

It happens that, in “Ripe Figs” a French word appears: “Tante Frosine,” which means “Aunt Frosine.” Fortunately, the meaning of the word is not crucial, and the context probably makes it clear that Frosine is an adult, which is all that we really need to know about her. However, a reader who does not know that chry- santhemums bloom in late summer or early autumn will miss part of Chopin’s meaning. The point is this: The writer is pitching, and she expects the reader to catch on.

On the other hand, although writers tell us a good deal, they cannot tell us everything. We know that Maman-Nainaine is Babette’s godmother, but we don’t know exactly how old Maman-Nainaine and Babette are. Further, Chopin tells us nothing of Babette’s parents. It sounds as though Babette and her godmother live alone, but readers’ opinions may differ. One reader may argue that Babette’s par- ents must be dead or ill; another may argue that the status of her parents is irrel- evant and that what counts is that Babette is supervised by only one person, a mature woman.

In short, a text includes indeterminacies (passages that careful readers agree are open to various interpretations) and gaps (things left unsaid in the story, such as why a godmother rather than a mother takes care of Babette). As we work our way through a text, we keep reevaluating what we have read, pull- ing the details together to make sense of them, in a process called consistency building.

Whatever the gaps are, careful readers will collect evidence and draw many reasonable inferences about Maman-Nainaine. We can list them:

• She is older than Babette. • She has a “stately way,” and she is “as patient as the statue of la Madone.” • She has an odd way (is it exasperating, engaging, or a little of each?) of

connecting actions with the seasons. • Given this last point, she seems to act slowly, to be very patient. • She is apparently used to being obeyed.

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28 Chapter 3 The Writer as Reader

At this point, you may want to go back and reread “Ripe Figs” to see what else you can say about Maman-Nainaine.

What inferences can we list about Babette?

• She is young. • She is active and impatient (“as restless as a humming-bird”). • She is obedient.

At this point, you may want to add to the list. If you compare your additions with those of a classmate, you may find that the

two of you disagree about what may reasonably be inferred from Chopin’s words. Suppose, for instance, that your classmate says that, although Babette is outwardly obedient, inwardly she probably hates Maman-Nainaine. Would you agree that this is an acceptable inference? If you don’t agree, how might you convince your class- mate that such a response is not justified? What arguments (supported by what evidence) would you offer? We are speaking here of an activity of mind we call critical thinking, a topic outlined in Chapter 2 and that will be discussed through- out this book.

Reading with Pen in Hand: Close Reading and Annotation

It’s probably best to read a work of literature straight through, enjoying it and let- ting yourself be carried along to the end. Then, when you have an overall view, you’ll want to read it again, noticing (for example) how certain innocent-seeming details early in the work prove to be important later.

Perhaps the best way to read attentively is, after a first reading, to mark the text, underlining or highlighting passages that seem especially interesting, and to jot down notes or queries in the margins. (Caution: Annotate and highlight, but don’t get so carried away that you highlight entire pages.)

The critical thinking skills developed by close reading are explored in Chapters 2, 4, and 6. Close reading encourages you to “notice what you notice,” using annotation to remark on aspects of the text that seem to convey meaningful ideas, raise interesting questions, or offer rich opportunities for interpretation. Close reading also encourages you to notice how literary content (the ideas conveyed by the text) is created by literary form (the structuring of the text through literary ele- ments, such as voice, imagery, setting, and word choice). By annotating the text, you’ll start the process of asking questions, gathering evidence, and formulating opinions about the text.

Let’s look at some sample annotations written by a student, Antonia Tenori, on “Ripe Figs.”

Student Work: Annotation

Kate Chopin

Ripe Figs

Maman-Nainaine said that when the figs were ripe Ba- bette might go to visit her cousins down on the Bayou- Lafourche where the sugar cane grows. Not that the ripen- ing of figs had the least thing to do with it, but that is the way Maman-Nainaine was.

It seemed to Babette a very long time to wait; for the leaves upon the trees were tender yet, and the figs were like little hard, green marbles.

But warm rains came along and plenty of strong sun- shine, and though Maman-Nainaine was as patient as the statue of la Madone, and Babette as restless as a humming- bird, the first thing they both knew it was hot summertime. Every day Babette danced out to where the fig-trees were in a long line against the fence. She walked slowly beneath them, carefully peering between the gnarled, spreading branches. But each time she came disconsolate away again. What she saw there finally was something that made her sing and dance the whole long day.

When Maman-Nainaine sat down in her stately way to breakfast, the following morning, her muslin cap standing like an aureole about her white, placid face, Babette ap- proached. She bore a dainty porcelain platter, which she set down before her godmother. It contained a dozen purple figs fringed around with their rich, green leaves.

“Ah,” said Maman-Nainaine arching her eyebrows, “how early the figs have ripened this year!”

“Oh,” said Babette. “I think they have ripened very late.” “Babette,”continued Maman-Nainaine, as she peeled the

very plumpest figs with her pointed silver fruit-knife, “you will carry my love to them all down on Bayou-Lafourche. And tell your Tante Frosine I shall look for her at Tous- saint—when the chrysanthemums are in bloom.”

strange

contrast between M-N and B

another contrast ceremonious

Check this?

nice echo contrast like a song

is M-N herself like a plump fig?

time passes fast for M-N slowly for B

B entrusted with a message of love

opens with figs; ends with chrys. (autumn)

fulfillment? Equivalent to figs ripening?

?

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Reading for Response: Recording First Reactions

Another useful way of getting at the meaning of a work of literature is to jot down your initial responses to it, recording your impressions as they come to you, in any order— almost as though you’re talking to yourself. Since no one else is going to read your notes, you can be entirely at ease. You can write in sentences or not; it’s up to you.

You can jot down your responses either before or after you annotate the text. Some readers find that annotating a text helps to produce ideas for further jottings; others prefer to jot down a few thoughts immediately after a first reading, and then, stimulated by these thoughts, they reread and annotate the text.

Write whatever comes into your mind, whatever the literary work triggers in your own imagination, and whatever you think are the important ideas or values, based on your own experience.

Here is Tenori’s first response to “Ripe Figs”:

Student Work: Response Writing

This is a very short story. I didn’t know stories were this short, but I like it because you can get it all quickly and it’s no trouble to reread it carefully. The shortness, though, leaves a lot of gaps for the reader to fill in. So much is not said. Your imagination is put to work.

Maman-Nainaine said that when the figs were ripe Ba- bette might go to visit her cousins down on the Bayou- Lafourche where the sugar cane grows. Not that the ripen- ing of figs had the least thing to do with it, but that is the way Maman-Nainaine was.

It seemed to Babette a very long time to wait; for the leaves upon the trees were tender yet, and the figs were like little hard, green marbles.

But warm rains came along and plenty of strong sun- shine, and though Maman-Nainaine was as patient as the statue of la Madone, and Babette as restless as a humming- bird, the first thing they both knew it was hot summertime. Every day Babette danced out to where the fig-trees were in a long line against the fence. She walked slowly beneath them, carefully peering between the gnarled, spreading branches. But each time she came disconsolate away again. What she saw there finally was something that made her sing and dance the whole long day.

When Maman-Nainaine sat down in her stately way to breakfast, the following morning, her muslin cap standing like an aureole about her white, placid face, Babette ap- proached. She bore a dainty porcelain platter, which she set down before her godmother. It contained a dozen purple figs fringed around with their rich, green leaves.

“Ah,” said Maman-Nainaine arching her eyebrows, “how early the figs have ripened this year!”

“Oh,” said Babette. “I think they have ripened very late.” “Babette,”continued Maman-Nainaine, as she peeled the

very plumpest figs with her pointed silver fruit-knife, “you will carry my love to them all down on Bayou-Lafourche. And tell your Tante Frosine I shall look for her at Tous- saint—when the chrysanthemums are in bloom.”

strange

contrast between M-N and B

another contrast ceremonious

Check this?

nice echo contrast like a song

is M-N herself like a plump fig?

time passes fast for M-N slowly for B

B entrusted with a message of love

opens with figs; ends with chrys. (autumn)

fulfillment? Equivalent to figs ripening?

? Reading and Responding 29

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30 Chapter 3 The Writer as Reader

But I can see Maman-N sitting at her table—pleasantly powerful—no one you would want to argue with. She’s formal and distant—and definitely has quirks. She wants to postpone Babette’s trip, but we don’t know why. And you can sense B’s frustration. But maybe she’s teaching her that something really good is worth waiting for and that anticipation is as much fun as the trip. Maybe I can develop this idea. Another thing. I can tell they are not poor—from two things. The pointed silver fruit knife and the porcelain platter, and the fact that Maman sits down to breakfast in a “stately” way. They are the leisure class. But I don’t know enough about life on the bayous to go into this. Their life is different from mine; no one I know has that kind of peaceful rural life.

Reading for Inquiry: Ask Questions and Brainstorm Ideas

After getting your initial responses down on paper, you are ready to start moving toward turning those reactions into an analytical paper by engaging in inquiry, or the process of active question asking. Inquiry-based questions aim to generate in- sights into a text and uncover new ideas. They are typically open-ended concep- tual questions rather than information-based questions, asking “how” and “why” and trying to determine a text’s meaning and how that meaning is created.

After reading the story, annotating it, and jotting down her first responses, Antonia reread her notes and highlighted any ideas that she thought were espe- cially noteworthy. She then jotted down more analytical ideas on her laptop.

She generated a series of questions, placing each question on a new page so that she could further develop her thinking. Is “Ripe Figs” a story, or is it just a character sketch? (She put her responses on a page for that topic.) What contrasts are notable? (She recorded the material on another notebook page.) How should we define the relationship between Maman and Babette? (She recorded her ideas on another notebook page.) What words, phrases, or images are unusual? (She recorded this material on another notebook page.) A day later, when she returned to work on her paper, stimulated by another reading of “Ripe Figs” and a review of her notes, Antonia made additional notes that took this shape:

Student Work: Inquiry Notes

Is Ripe Figs a story, or is it just a character sketch?

Story = has a plot, events —there is some conflict and resolution—there is the sense of moving forward —there is a thematic emphasis on time

Character sketch = focuses on characters’ key qualities —this focuses mostly on describing the two characters and their interactions—

these interactions and their emphasis on time seem to make this more of a story

What contrasts are notable?

The contrast between age and youth: time Between patience and impatience Between Babette “restless as a humming-bird” and Maman with a “white, placid

face”

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Between seasons: spring and summer, unripe and ripe, warm and hot Story emphasizes the cycle of seasons? Between observing (the figs) and longing (for visit)

How should we define the relationship between Maman and Babette?

Godmother and goddaughter: wealthy, leisured Mother figure and daughter figure Old age and youth: the cycle of aging? Solid and “stately” vs. energetic and “restless” Sitting vs. dancing Perceived passage of time as “early” vs. perceived changes as “late”: time issue — This raises another question: Why does Babette want to visit her cousins so

much? What is the relationship of Mamam and Babette to her cousins? Are they more fun,

youthful, energetic like Babette?

What words or phrases or images are unusual?

“ripening” leaves: “tender”; figs: “hard” “patient as a statue” vs. “restless as a humming-bird” “Babette danced out,” “sing and dance the whole long day” “sat down in her stately way,” “like an aureole about her white, placid face” “bore a dainty porcelain platter” “how early the figs have ripened this year” vs. “I think they have ripened

very late” “peeled the plumpest fig with her pointed silver fruit-knife” “when the chrysanthemums are in bloom”

Reading in Context: Identifying Your Audience and Purpose

Now, suppose that you are beginning the process of writing about “Ripe Figs” for someone else. The first question to ask yourself is, “For whom am I writing?” That is, who is your audience? (You are probably writing because an instructor has asked you to do so, but you must still imagine an audience. Your instructor may tell you, for instance, to write for your classmates or to write for the best teacher you had in high school.)

• If you are writing for people who are familiar with some of Chopin’s work, you won’t have to say much about the author.

• If you are writing for an audience that perhaps has never heard of Chopin, you may want to include a brief biographical note of the sort that we gave earlier.

• If you are writing for an audience that you believe has read several works by Chopin, you may want to make comparisons, explaining—arguing, really—how “Ripe Figs” resembles or differs from Chopin’s other work.

In a sense, your audience is your collaborator and helps you to decide what you will say. You are also helped by your sense of purpose. If your aim is to introduce readers to Chopin, you will make points that reflect this purpose. If your aim is to tell people what you think “Ripe Figs” means to say about human relationships or about time, you will address that subject. If your aim is to have a little fun and to

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32 Chapter 3 The Writer as Reader

entertain an audience that is already familiar with “Ripe Figs,” you may decide to write a parody (a humorous imitation) of the story.

From Reading to Writing: Developing an Analytical Essay with an

Argumentative Thesis Let’s assume that you want to describe “Ripe Figs” to someone who has not read it. You will briefly summarize the action, such as it is, and will mention where it takes place; tell who the characters are, including what their relationship is; and note what, if anything, happens to them. Beyond that, you’ll try to explain as hon- estly as you can what makes “Ripe Figs” appealing or interesting—or trifling, or boring, or whatever. You will want to explain what the story means and how it has created that meaning. You will most likely focus on the conceptual ideas raised by the story that you find most important. That is, you will argue a thesis, even though you won’t want to make so formal a statement as “In this essay, I will argue that . . .” or “This essay will attempt to prove that. . . .” Your essay will essentially be an argu- ment because (perhaps after a brief summary of the work) you will point to the evidence that has caused you to respond as you did.

Student Analytical Essay: “Images of Ripening in Kate Chopin’s ‘Ripe Figs’ ”

Here is an essay that Antonia Tenori wrote for an assignment that asked for an analysis of “Ripe Figs” in a paper of “about 500 words (two double-spaced typed pages).”