EH 224 Final

"Defending Walt Whitman" by Sherman Alexie

"Defending Walt Whitman" provides Alexie with an opportunity to write about reservation basketball, one of his favorite topics, even as he responds to a nineteenth century icon of American poetry who was singularly responsible for breaking away from standard meter, rhyme, and subject matter. Alexie imagines that the bisexual Whitman would be quite charmed with the vision of sweaty, brown young men who are gallant in their own way yet who are initially defined as "twentieth-century warriors who will never kill." Alexie is aware of the primacy of basketball among Indian youth throughout the United States, and he is only one of a number of Indian writers who have noticed the phenomenon. Alexie seems unaware that Whitman died in the same year that basketball was invented by James Naismith (1892). Alexie is certainly aware of the powerful dynamic of combining the inclusive, poetic Whitman with the energies and angles of a game of basketball.

"Poem about my rights" by June Jordan

"Poem About My Rights" is a passionate, emotional, and personal poem. Jordan's view of the world serves as a mandate for change. A bleak and violent society's condition becomes a vehicle for change both by the individual and by society. "Rights and wrongs" and "right and wrong" are subjects of the poem despite the fact that the words "right" or "rights" are never mentioned except in the title. Jordan is never right and never has rights in the narrative, but, by the poem's end, at least she is no longer wrong. She is her own person, ready to act. To Jordan, consent is not equivalent to having rights, and she consents to no one: not to family, not to school, and not to the country's bureaucracy. "Poem About My Rights" serves as a testament to the belief that the individual can make a difference even though doing so requires an ongoing struggle. Near the end of the poem, Jordan avows, "my name is my own my own my own." The strength to meet challenges head-on is evident. The ending, however, portends violence: Individual action may cost participants their lives. While people do have the power to alter the course of oppression and correct the loss of rights, they must take action to make a difference. Indeed, this proactive position is the only hope for altering the current scenario.

"Babylon Revisited" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Again the memory of those days swept over him like a nightmare...The men who locked their wives out in the snow, because the snow of twenty-nine wasn't real snow. If you didn't want it to be snow, you just paid some money."

"The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, and its action is drawn from the memories of the narrator, Tom Wingfield. Tom is a character in the play, which is set in St. Louis in 1937. He is an aspiring poet who toils in a shoe warehouse to support his mother, Amanda, and sister, Laura. Mr. Wingfield, Tom and Laura's father, ran off years ago and, except for one postcard, has not been heard from since. Amanda, originally from a genteel Southern family, regales her children frequently with tales of her idyllic youth and the scores of suitors who once pursued her. She is disappointed that Laura, who wears a brace on her leg and is painfully shy, does not attract any gentlemen callers. She enrolls Laura in a business college, hoping that she will make her own and the family's fortune through a business career. Weeks later, however, Amanda discovers that Laura's crippling shyness has led her to drop out of the class secretly and spend her days wandering the city alone. Amanda then decides that Laura's last hope must lie in marriage and begins selling magazine subscriptions to earn the extra money she believes will help to attract suitors for Laura. Meanwhile, Tom, who loathes his warehouse job, finds escape in liquor, movies, and literature, much to his mother's chagrin. During one of the frequent arguments between mother and son, Tom accidentally breaks several of the glass animal figurines that are Laura's most prized possessions. Amanda and Tom discuss Laura's prospects, and Amanda asks Tom to keep an eye out for potential suitors at the warehouse. Tom selects Jim O'Connor, a casual friend, and invites him to dinner. Amanda quizzes Tom about Jim and is delighted to learn that he is a driven young man with his mind set on career advancement. She prepares an elaborate dinner and insists that Laura wear a new dress. At the last minute, Laura learns the name of her caller; as it turns out, she had a devastating crush on Jim in high school. When Jim arrives, Laura answers the door, on Amanda's orders, and then quickly disappears, leaving Tom and Jim alone. Tom confides to Jim that he has used the money for his family's electric bill to join the merchant marine and plans to leave his job and family in search of adventure. Laura refuses to eat dinner with the others, feigning illness. Amanda, wearing an ostentatious dress from her glamorous youth, talks vivaciously with Jim throughout the meal. As dinner is ending, the lights go out as a consequence of the unpaid electric bill. The characters light candles, and Amanda encourages Jim to entertain Laura in the living room while she and Tom clean up. Laura is at first paralyzed by Jim's presence, but his warm and open behavior soon draws her out of her shell. She confesses that she knew and liked him in high school but was too shy to approach him. They continue talking, and Laura reminds him of the nickname he had given her: "Blue Roses," an accidental corruption of pleurosis, an illness Laura had in high school. He reproaches her for her shyness and low self-esteem but praises her uniqueness. Laura then ventures to show him her favorite glass animal, a unicorn. Jim dances with her, but in the process, he accidentally knocks over the unicorn, breaking off its horn. Laura is forgiving, noting that now the unicorn is a normal horse. Jim then kisses her, but he quickly draws back and apologizes, explaining that he was carried away by the moment and that he actually has a serious girlfriend. Resigned, Laura offers him the broken unicorn as a souvenir. Amanda enters the living room, full of good cheer. Jim hastily explains that he must leave because of an appointment with his fiancée. Amanda sees him off warmly but, after he is gone, turns on Tom, who had not known that Jim was engaged. Amanda accuses Tom of being an inattentive, selfish dreamer and then throws herself into comforting Laura. From the fire escape outside of their apartment, Tom watches the two women and explains that, not long after Jim's visit, he gets fired from his job and leaves Amanda and Laura behind. Years later, though he travels far, he finds that he is unable to leave behind guilty memories of Laura.

"Gentle Lena", by Gertrude Stein

"The Gentle Lena", the third of Stein's Three Lives, follows the life and death of the titular Lena, a German girl brought to Bridgepoint by a cousin. Lena begins her life in America as a servant girl, but is eventually married to Herman Kreder, the son of German immigrants. Both Herman and Lena are marked by extraordinary passivity, and the marriage is essentially made in deference to the desires of their elders. During her married life, Lena bears Herman three children, all the while growing increasingly passive and distant. Neither Lena nor the baby survives her fourth pregnancy, leaving Herman "very well content now...with his three good, gentle children".

"Cathedral" by Raymond Carver

A blind man named Robert is coming to have dinner and stay overnight. The narrator's wife worked for him for one summer about ten years earlier. The two became friends and have continued to correspond by using cassette tapes. The narrator, who lacks social graces, is apprehensive about having to entertain Robert. He does not know what he should do or say. Jealous of the former relationship between his wife and Robert, he is suspicious. He knows that his wife has told Robert about him and has probably complained about his faults. This makes him feel guilty, insecure, and somewhat hostile toward both his wife and Robert. The blind man proves to be such an outgoing, amiable person that one can understand why he made such a strong impression on the narrator's wife that she has corresponded with him for years. Despite the narrator's conversational blunders, the two men get along well; they drink together and smoke marijuana together after dinner. Under the influence of the drugs, the narrator lets down his guard with Robert. Robert's handicap has compensations: It has made him compassionate, tolerant, and open-minded. Being dependent on others has made him trusting, and this trust leads him to reveal intimacies that he might otherwise not share. As the evening progresses and the narrator's wife falls asleep on the sofa, he and his guest grow closer. Finally he finds himself describing a documentary about cathedrals being shown on the television screen. Robert admits that he has no idea what a cathedral looks like, although he knows they required hundreds of people and decades to build. He persuades his host to sketch a cathedral while he holds the hand moving the pen. Through this spiritual contact with the blind man, the narrator discovers unsuspected artistic gifts. The narrator sheds his inhibitions and sketches an elaborate cathedral with spires, buttresses, massive doorways, gargoyles, and a throng of worshippers. It is a unique and memorable experience that forms the story's climax. The narrator not only shares his vision with the blind Robert, but he simultaneously shares Robert's inner vision. At the same time, both share the spiritual vision of men who lived centuries earlier and collaborated to build the beautiful, mystery-laden Gothic cathedrals of Europe.

"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway

An old, deaf man sits in a cafe, drinking late into the night. All of the other customers have left, and he is the sole patron remaining. Two waiters, one young and one older, sit at a table and watch him, sharing what they know of him through hearsay. One waiter says the old man tried to kill himself the week before. When asked why, the waiter says the old man was despairing over nothing, since he "has plenty of money." (The subject and a level of confusion in the phrasing of dialogue has been a contentious issue, as regards to which waiter is aware of the old man's attempted suicide, with two revisions existing.)

"Howl" by Allen Ginsburg

Howl appears to be a sprawling, disorganized poem. But it's not. It consists of three sections. Each of these sections is a prolonged "riff" on a single subject. You could even think of the poem as three enormous run-on sentences. The first section is by far the longest. In the first line of the first section, the speaker tells us that he has been a witness to the destruction of "the best minds" of his generation. The rest of the section is a detailed description of these people - specifically, who they were and what they did. He doesn't tell us what destroyed them quite yet, though we get plenty of hints. Most lines begin with the word "who" followed by a verb. These are people "who did this, who did that," etc. We quickly learn that these "best minds" were not doctors, lawyers, and scientists. They were not people whom most middle-class folks in the 1950s would have identified with the best America had to offer. And that's exactly Ginsberg's point. According to the speaker, they are drug users, drop outs, world travelers, bums, musicians, political dissidents, and, yes, poets. If the key word of the first section was "who," the second section asks "What?" As in, what destroyed the best minds of his generation? Ginsberg provides the answer immediately: Moloch. In the Hebrew Bible, Moloch was an idolatrous god to whom children were sacrificed by placing them in fire. In other words, not a friendly god. The religious context and history of Moloch is extremely complicated, so it's better to stick to the poem's own definition. For Ginsberg, Moloch is associated with war, government, capitalism, and mainstream culture, all of which might be summed up by one of the poem's most important concepts: the "machine" or "machinery." Moloch is an inhuman monster that kills youth and love. The third section is addressed to Carl Solomon, Ginsberg's close friend from the Columbia Presbyterian Psychiatric Institute. The speaker refers to this psychiatric hospital by the shorter and more evocative fictional name of "Rockland." He reaffirms his solidarity with Solomon over and over again by repeating the phrase "I'm with you in Rockland." The central question of this section is "Where?" The speaker uses this question to explore Solomon's existence within the walls of the institute. The poem ends with the image from the speaker's dreams, in which Solomon is walking from New York to the speaker's "cottage" (in Berkeley, California), where they will reunite.

"America" by Allen Ginsburg

Our poem begins with the speaker addressing America. Yep, America. In short, things ain't good. He feels let down. He's broke (mentally and financially), and he's tired of all the warring that the country does. Basically, the whole country (in his view) is going to the birds. He wants to know when America will straighten up and fly right. The speaker tells us that he knows what he's doing, that he misses the good old labor activists and the communists. Now, he just sits around all day and tries to go against the grain, which frankly sounds exhausting. Here's what going against the grain looks like for him: staring at flowers in the closet, smoking weed, and getting drunk while failing to hook up. To which we say, do not try this at home. Still, the speaker admits that he's just as much to blame as everyone else. After all, he reads Time for criminey's sakes. Talking to America, in some ways, is just like talking to himself. That's not enough to let America off the hook, though. The speaker makes a sarcastic plea for poetic originality, and then an impassioned plea to free jailed union activists and other downtrodden folk. He remembers all those wonderful communist meetings he attended as a boy, but then it's all gone wrong since then (much like how Family Matters went wrong after Urkel hit puberty). The speaker makes fun of the paranoid, ignorant folk who think that Russia is out to get them at every turn. Finally, he says enough is enough. If you want something done... call a professional. No wait! Do it yourself. In the end, our speaker resolves to go out there to help fix all these problems, personally.

"The Far and the Near" by Thomas Wolfe

Over this time, the woman's little girl grows up, & joins her mother in waving to the engineer. The engineer grows old during this time & sees a lot of tragedy during his service for the railroad, including 4 fatal accidents on the tracks in front of him. Throughout all of this tragedy, however, he remains focused on the vision of the cottage & the 2 women, an image that he thinks is beautiful & unchangeable. He has a father's love towards the 2 women & after so many thousands of trips past their cottage, feels that he knows the women's lives completely. As a result, he resolves to visit the women on the day he retires, to tell them what a profound effect they have had on his life.

"That Evening Sun" by William Faulkner

Quentin narrates the story in the turn of the century, presumably at age twenty-four (although in The Sound and the Fury he commits suicide at age nineteen), telling of events that took place fifteen years before. Nancy is an African-American washerwoman working for Quentin's family since their regular cook, Dilsey, is taken sick. Jesus, Nancy's common-law husband, suspects that she is pregnant with a white man's child and leaves her. At first Nancy is only worried about going home at night and running into Jesus, but later she is paralyzed with the fear that he will kill her, having delusions of him being hidden in a ditch outside her house. Quentin and his siblings witness all of this, given that they are present for every major conversation between their father and Nancy. Mr. Compson tries to help her up to a certain extent, first by taking her home at night despite the fact that Mrs. Compson feels jealous and insecure that her husband is more worried about protecting some "Negro woman" than herself. He puts her up one night at Quentin and Caddy's room when she is too afraid to stay alone in the kitchen. The kids, however, have no idea of what's going on, and cannot understand Nancy's fear. As the narrative progresses, Nancy becomes crippled by her fear. One night she feels so impotent that she talks the kids into going home with her. There, she is not able to attend to them, tell them proper stories or even make them some popcorn. Jason, the youngest, starts to cry. Their father arrives and tries to talk some sense into Nancy, who fears Jesus will come out of the darkness of the ditch outside as soon as they go away. The story ends as the father walks the children back—not the least bit affected by Nancy's situation, the kids still teasing each other and the father scolding them. It is left ambiguous as to whether Nancy survives the night. However, in Sound and the Fury, Benjy refers to Nancy's bones lying in the ditch, although she was "shot by Roskus" and it is implied that Nancy is the name of the family dog.

"On the Rainy River" by Tim O'Brien

The day the draft notice is delivered, O'Brien thinks that he is too good to fight the war. Although his community pressures him to go, he resists making a decision about whether to go to war or flee. He spends the summer in a meatpacking plant in his hometown of Worthington, Minnesota, removing blood clots from pigs with a water gun. He comes home every night stinking of pig and drives around town aimlessly, paralyzed, wondering how to find a way out of his situation. It seems to him that there is no easy way out. The government won't allow him to defer in order to go to graduate school; he can't oppose the war as a matter of general principle because he does agree with war in some circumstances; and he can't claim ill health as an excuse. He resents his hometown for making him feel compelled to fight a war that it doesn't even know anything about. In the middle of the summer, O'Brien begins thinking seriously about fleeing to Canada, eight hours north of Worthington. His conscience and instincts tell him to run. He worries, however, that such an action will lose him the respect of his family and community. He imagines the people he knows gossiping about him in the local café. During his sleepless nights, he struggles with his anger at the lack of perspective on the part of those who influenced him. One day, O'Brien cracks. Feeling what he describes as a physical rupture in his chest, he leaves work suddenly, drives home, and writes a vague note to his family. He heads north and then west along the Rainy River, which separates Minnesota from Canada. The next afternoon, after spending the night behind a closed-down gas station, he pulls into a dilapidated fishing resort, the Tip Top Lodge, and meets the elderly proprietor, Elroy Berdahl. The two spend six days together, eating meals, hiking, and playing Scrabble. Although O'Brien never mentions his reason for going to the Canadian border, he has the sense that Elroy knows, since the quiet old man is sharp and intelligent. One night O'Brien inquires about his bill, and after the two men discuss O'Brien's work—washing dishes and doing odd jobs—in relation to the cost of the room, Elroy concludes that he owes O'Brien more than a hundred dollars and offers O'Brien two hundred. O'Brien refuses the money, but the next morning he finds four fifty-dollar bills in an envelope tacked to his door. Looking back on this time in his life, O'Brien marvels at his innocence. He invites us to reflect with him, to pretend that we're watching an old home movie of O'Brien, tan and fit, wearing faded blue jeans and a white polo shirt, sitting on Elroy's dock, and thinking about writing an apologetic letter to his parents. On O'Brien's last full day at the Tip Top Lodge, Elroy takes him fishing on the Rainy River. During the voyage it occurs to O'Brien that they must have stopped in Canadian territory—soon after, Elroy stops the boat. O'Brien stares at the shoreline of Canada, twenty yards ahead of him, and wonders what to do. Elroy pretends not to notice as O'Brien bursts into tears. O'Brien tells himself he will run to Canada, but he silently concludes that he will go to war because he is embarrassed not to. Elroy pulls in his line and turns the boat back toward Minnesota. The next morning, O'Brien washes the breakfast dishes, leaves the two hundred dollars on the kitchen counter, and drives south to his home. He then goes off to war.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

The grandmother tries to convince her son, Bailey, and his wife to take the family to east Tennessee for vacation instead of Florida. She points out an article about the Misfit, an escaped convict heading toward Florida, and adds that the children have already been there. John Wesley, eight years old, suggests that the grandmother stay home, and his sister, June Star, says nastily that his grandmother would never do that. On the day of the trip, the grandmother hides her cat, Pitty Sing, in a basket in the car. She wears a dress and hat with flowers on it so that people will know she is "a lady" if there's an accident. In the car, John Wesley says he doesn't like Georgia, and the grandmother chastises him for not respecting his home state. When they pass a cotton field, she says there are graves in the middle of it that belonged to the plantation and jokes that the plantation has "Gone with the Wind." Later, she tells a story about an old suitor, Edgar Atkins Teagarden. Edgar brought her a watermelon every week, into which he carved his initials, E. A. T. Once he left it on the porch and a black child ate it because he thought it said eat. The family stops at a restaurant called the Tower, owned by Red Sammy Butts. Red Sammy complains that people are untrustworthy, explaining that he recently let two men buy gasoline on credit. The grandmother tells him he's a good man for doing it. Red Sam's wife says she doesn't trust anyone, including Red Sam. The grandmother asks her if she's heard about the Misfit, and the woman worries that he'll rob them. Red Sam says, "A good man is hard to find." He and the grandmother lament the state of the world. Back in the car, the grandmother wakes from a nap and realizes that a plantation she once visited is nearby. She says that the house had six white columns and was at the end of an oak tree-lined driveway. She lies that the house had a secret panel to make the house seem more interesting. Excited, the children beg to go to the house until Bailey angrily gives in. The grandmother points him to a dirt road. The family drives deep into the woods. The grandmother suddenly remembers that the house was in Tennessee, not in Georgia. Horrified at her mistake, she jerks her feet. Pitty Sing escapes from the basket and startles Bailey, who wrecks the car. The children's mother breaks her shoulder, but no one else is hurt. The grandmother decides not to tell Bailey about her mistake. A passing car stops, and three men get out, carrying guns. The grandmother thinks she recognizes one of them. One of the men, wearing glasses and no shirt, descends into the ditch. He tells the children's mother to make the children sit down because they make him nervous. The grandmother suddenly screams because she realizes that he's the Misfit. The man says it's not good that she recognized him. Bailey curses violently, upsetting the grandmother. The grandmother asks the Misfit whether he'd shoot a lady, and the Misfit says he wouldn't like to. The grandmother claims that she can tell he's a good man and that he comes from "nice people." The Misfit agrees and praises his parents. The grandmother continues telling him he's a good man. The Misfit tells the other two men, Hiram and Bobby Lee, to take Bailey and John Wesley into the woods. The grandmother adjusts her hat, but the brim breaks off. The Misfit says he knows he isn't good but that he isn't the worst man either. He apologizes to the grandmother and the children's mother for not wearing a shirt and says that he and the other men had to bury their clothes after they escaped. He says they borrowed the clothes they're wearing from some people they met. The grandmother asks the Misfit whether he ever prays. Just as he says no, she hears two gunshots. The Misfit says he used to be a gospel singer, and the grandmother chants, "pray, pray." He says he wasn't a bad child but that at one point he went to prison for a crime he can't remember committing. He says a psychiatrist told him he'd killed his father. The grandmother tells the Misfit to pray so that Jesus will help him. The Misfit says he's fine on his own. Bobby Lee and Hiram come back from the woods, and Bobby Lee gives the Misfit the shirt Bailey had been wearing, but the grandmother doesn't realize it's Bailey's. The Misfit tells the children's mother to take the baby and June Star and go with Bobby Lee and Hiram into the woods. Bobby Lee tries to hold June Star's hand, but she says he looks like a pig. The grandmother starts chanting, "Jesus, Jesus." The Misfit says he's like Jesus, except Jesus hadn't committed a crime. He says he gave himself this name because his punishment doesn't seem to fit the crime people said he committed. A gunshot comes from the woods. The grandmother begs the Misfit not to shoot a lady. Two more gunshots come from the woods, and the grandmother cries out for Bailey. The Misfit says that Jesus confused everything by raising the dead. He says that if what Jesus did is true, then everyone must follow him. But if he didn't actually raise the dead, then all anyone can do is enjoy their time on earth by indulging in "meanness." The grandmother agrees that perhaps Jesus didn't raise the dead. The Misfit says he wishes he had been there so he could know for sure. The grandmother calls the Misfit "one of my own children," and the Misfit shoots her in the chest three times. Bobby Lee and Hiram return, and they all look at the grandmother. The Misfit observes that the grandmother could have been a good woman if someone had been around "to shoot her every minute of her life." The Misfit says life has no true pleasure.

"The Man to send Rain Clouds" by Leslie Marmon Silko

The old man Teofilo has died peacefully while tending sheep out at the sheep camp, away from the village. Leon and Ken find him under a cottonwood tree, but because his sheep have wandered away, the two brothers-in-law first collect them and put them in the corral. Then they prepare Teofilo for burial by painting his face, tying a gray feather in his hair, and wrapping him in a red blanket. On their way back in the truck, they meet Father Paul, who asks about Teofilo. Leon turns the question aside, avoiding the imposition of a Roman Catholic funeral. After the medicine men have performed the traditional funeral, Louise—Teofilo's granddaughter and Ken's wife—tells Leon that she thinks the priest should sprinkle holy water so that Teofilo will not be thirsty. Leon invites Father Paul to bring his holy water to the grave. In spite of the irregularity—Father Paul tells Leon that last rites and a mass should be said before a proper Catholic burial—he accepts the invitation to be part of the ceremony and sprinkles the water. He cannot understand how and why the water disappears almost before it hits the sand, prompting a moment of crisis and climax in the story, as the puzzled priest returns to the mission unaware of his own effectiveness in the ceremony.

"A Supermarket in California" by Allen Ginsburg

The speaker of the poem thinks of the 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman as he walks down dark streets. Speaking directly to an imagined Whitman, the speaker enters a supermarket, and notices all of the families shopping. He imagines he sees Federico Garcia Lorca, a Spanish poet and playwright, shopping for watermelons. Or something. The speaker addresses Whitman again, and imagines that he sees him shopping for meat and asking questions of the grocery clerks. He wanders around the stacks of cans, and imagines that he's being followed by a detective. He then imagines that he and Whitman sample the food in the supermarket without paying for it. The speaker feels lost, and asks Whitman where they are headed. He thinks of Whitman's book and feels silly. He then asks Whitman a number of big life questions. Will they walk all night? What has happened to "the lost America of love"? The poem ends when the speaker asks Whitman about his (19th-century) America, and imagines him as a mythological figure, standing on the shore of the river Lethe, the river of forgetting.

"Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway

The tension between the two is almost as sizzling as the heat of the Spanish sun. The man, while urging the girl to have the operation, says again and again that he really doesn't want her to do it if she really doesn't want to. However, he clearly is insisting that she do so. The girl is trying to be brave and nonchalant but is clearly frightened of committing herself to having the operation. She tosses out a conversational, fanciful figure of speech — noting that the hills beyond the train station "look like white elephants" — hoping that the figure of speech will please the man, but he resents her ploy. He insists on talking even more about the operation and the fact that, according to what he's heard, it's "natural" and "not really an operation at all."