Answers to Questions on Meaning and Technique (298)
The definition is clarified through examples of how blacks had to use special drinking fountains, sit in appointed sections on trains and buses, and could not interact socially. Here is a lexical definition of “Jim Crow”: The systematic practice of segregating and suppressing Negro people [named after Jim Crow, a character in an act by Thomas Rice, who died in 1860. He based the character on an anonymous 19th-century song called Jim Crow.]
The authors suggest that the Jim Crow laws were enacted after the Civil War to keep the freed Negroes from acquiring too much wealth and from making political demands. The laws were also a matter of sex—that is, keeping the whites and blacks from interbreeding. Have students compare the atmosphere today with that in existence when the Delany sisters were growing up.
The irony was that many of the whites who looked down on the blacks had black blood in them. Today our attitudes have shifted and intermarriage between blacks and whites is more accepted than in the past although many families, both white and black, still want to keep the races unmixed.
Sadie and Bessie’s mother looked white because she was the product of a romance between a white man and a black woman, proving that even after slavery was over, blacks and whites could be attracted to each other in a romantic way. The Delany family preferred to remain with the blacks even though the mother could have passed for white and could have avoided the Jim Crow laws. Have students discuss how they might have handled having a white mother if they were black.
The Delany parents advocated peaceful compliance with the Jim Crow laws because they did not want their daughters to become pugilistic and bitter. The father used to tell his daughters that only through education could they ever obtain true equality. Certainly these parents showed great wisdom in making that declaration. Today as well, the easiest way to equality of the races is through education. Have students discuss the influence of education on equality of the races.
The essay is written as if the two women were speaking informally. They often use interjections like “Honey” and “Child,” typically practiced in southern talk. They also often use expressions reflecting the informality of conversation. Here are some examples: Paragraph 2: “This is how we remember it….” Paragraph 4: “You see, a lot of this Jim Crow mess was….” Paragraph 10: “Funny thing is….” “That fella even became the mayor of Raleigh.” Paragraph 13: “So you see, he wasn’t perfect, but Lord, he did try!” Have students discuss how well they could hear the sisters' voices.
In paragraph 18 we are told that Miss Grace Moseley, a teacher at St. Aug’s, would invite Bessie and Sadie to her living quarters, where she would read Shakespeare to them while they piled on Miss Moseley’s bed. The sisters retained fond memories of these sessions. In paragraph 11 the father states that “equality would come as Negroes became more educated and owned their own land.” Paragraph 29 foreshadows the fact that Sadie was to achieve a Master’s degree from Columbia University.
The sisters lived in North Carolina, an enlightened, liberal state. The whites with whom they dealt were kind and friendly, especially the Confederate soldiers and the white teachers at St. Aug’s. But despite this superficial kindness, the blacks were considered inferior; thus the Civil War was a necessary to effect their liberation from slavery. Without this war, the black race would not have progressed to where it is today.
Have students discuss their reactions. The incident is certainly one of the most humorous in the essay, and it would make an excellent scene in a motion picture. Sadie is seen as clever and in control of her environment. She strikes us as someone with a strong survival instinct.
It was puzzling because it involved such hypocrisy. For instance, the mayor of Raleigh had a black family on the side; yet, he had to uphold the Jim Crow laws. Moreover, since Sadie and Bessie’s grandfather was white, the segregation issue became complicated and involved. Their mother could have passed for white, but their father could not. This kind of contradiction was confusing for the sisters.
Black English Has Its Place Ron Emmons
Answers to Quiz
b, d, c, a, a
Answers to Questions on Meaning and Technique (301)
Identifying himself as African American gives the author added credibility in the debate, since it shows him as one who comes to the argument not as merely an academic, but also as a speaker of black English. He therefore, we assume, can be expected to have more than just abstract knowledge about the subject.
Allow for open discussion. One effect, certainly, might be to build a kind of perverse defiance of the larger world and encourage the flaunting of black English as a way of asserting the self. On the other hand, acknowledging black English as a separate, respectable language with its own rules, allows for the teaching of other variants of English, such as Standard English, as a means to an end.
It adds weight of authority to his words, by showing that even a successful author such as Amy Tan also felt ashamed of the way her parents spoke.
He uses two fragments: “Shame when a prominent black said words in the wrong way with the wrong syntax or agreement. Shame when the pretty girlfriend spoke the wrong English in front of your parents.” Point out to students (it cannot be repeated often enough) that this use of fragments is deliberate, not merely an error.
He means it was inappropriate. Of course, by the rules of Standard English, the syntax of black English is wrong, but by the rules of black English, so is the syntax of Standard English.
Paragraph 6 gives a formal definition of black English backed by the authority of the American Speech, Language, and Hearing Association. Quoting this association shows that the author is not alone in his belief that black English is a separate language.
Examples. Paragraphs 7 and 8 are especially developed by examples.
Allow for open discussion. You might ask students to lay down the basic requirements of a “separate language.”
Allow for open discussion. Ask students if they instinctively know. Generally, we think black English appropriate for use in informal social situations where it is commonly spoken and easily understood. It is generally inappropriate in formal academic settings and social situations, especially where it is not likely to be understood. What you can do is construct various social situations and ask students if they would think black English appropriate for use here.
They prove his point about black English having its own lexicon. As an aside, ask your students to translate them into Standard English equivalents. Do this as a class project.
CHAPTER TWELVE Answers
Dream House Anthony C. Winkler
Answers to Quiz
b, d, a, b, c
Answers to Questions on Meaning and Technique(311)
One could contrast the two boys or the two fathers. But the most obvious contrast is the contrast between the two playhouses. One was real; the other was imaginary. Here are the bases of this contrast: 1) the designers of the two houses (Mr. Peterson, a skilled worker, and Jessie’s father, a dreamer); 2) the quality of the house (one is made of wood, the other of imaginary substances; 3) the value of the house (both have great value, but the imaginary house lasted longer and created more excitement than the real house).
To Josh and Jessie the playhouse symbolized their own personal territory, where they were in control. While lodging in the playhouse, they could feel like kings of a domain cluttered with enemies whom they could crush and subjugate. Children love to imagine living in castles or fortresses where they feel safe and in charge.
Mr. Peterson was gruff, practical, and sure of himself whereas Jessie’s father was artistic, sensitive, poetic, and filled with self-doubt about his practical abilities. Have students discuss which man they would choose to be their father and why.
The following passages contain figurative language and vivid imagery:
Paragraph 64: “The stars smothered under a muddy run-off of
light and smog from Los Angeles, and only a planet or two bobbing overhead like specks of fat in the primordial soup.” Anyone who has been to Los Angeles will recognize the thick smog of that area.
Paragraph 74: “The chalky night of Southern California ghosted by like an old clipper ship under full sail….” This is a way of emphasizing the speed with which time passes when one is engrossed in a thrilling conversation. But the author is also emphasizing the thick, ghostly air of the Los Angeles basin.
Paragraph 86: “The night was cool and dry, and from the nearby San Bernardino Freeway came the ceaseless droning of traffic—constant, shrill and unvarying like the flat line alarm of an electrocardiogram.” Here the traffic noise is described as never ending, loud, and without variation.
Paragraph 89: “He was still in traction from a back injury and had the puffy, whitish look of an old mushroom.” The reader quickly understands that Josh looks ill and beaten down from his injury.
Paragraph 101: “After several months on the market, the house sold and the dreaded day of Josh’s moving arrived slowly but irresistibly like death from cancer.” Nothing is more inevitable than death from a terminal disease like cancer. The reader can sense the unavoidable approach of Josh’s departure.
Paragraph 117: “Josh and I passed through the preadolescent years and entered our teens gingerly like explorers stepping into unmapped territory.” The change from elementary school to high school is truly like stepping into an unfamiliar, somewhat frightening foreign country.
Paragraph 118: “The playhouse aged slowly but steadily like a grounded freighter being devoured in microscopic nibbles by the sea.” The reader can imagine the freighter sitting in its dock, paint peeling away and metal parts rusting.
Figurative language and vivid imagery are always an author’s finest tools to make the writing come to life so that the reader can actually experience what is happening. While clarity in writing is a great achievement, it does not fire up the reader’s imagination the way figurative language does, as seen in the examples from Winkler’s story.
Like all good story tellers, Winkler writes in detail about important events; but unimportant events are dismissed with a sentence like the one in paragraph 54: "After his father left, Josh became depressed and avoided the playhouse completely." We are given no details about the father’s departure. Or paragraph 88 where a whole week is dismissed with the words "A week later…."
Or paragraph 101 where months are condensed into “After several months on the market, the house sold….” Or paragraph 117 where years are summed up in the sentence “Josh and I passed through the preadolescent years and entered our teens gingerly….” Or paragraph 118 where again years have passed without any details from the narrator’s life. The author merely writes, “I graduated college….” Obviously, it would have been incredibly tedious if the author had supplied every little detail of what happened during these years in the narrator’s life. A lively story entails proper pacing, which means that the writer highlights important scenes, but dismisses scenes that have no bearing on the story. All well-crafted stories leave some questions unanswered because life has a way of leaving questions unanswered, but these questions add to the fascination of the story. For instance, we do not know what eventually happened to Josh’s father, and we don’t know what Mrs. Peterson did after the divorce from her husband. But real life is filled with people who step in and out of the sphere of our lives, and we can only wonder what happened to the ones who disappear.
The mothers play minor roles in the story, which is really about the relationship of the boys with their fathers. We know that the mothers exist, but only as minor characters in the drama that plays out. Nevertheless, the story would suffer if they were eliminated because they are foils that emphasize the fathers’ personalities.
The real house has the advantage of being a physical structure that you can see, smell, and touch. You can actually sleep and play in it. You can invite your friends to step inside and enjoy this private retreat. It has the disadvantage of its physical limitations. It is not a palace, and it can neither soar nor fly. The imaginary house has the advantage of existing without limitations. It is like a house from a fairy tale. It can be anything you desire. It can even save you from predatory wild bears.
First, the dialogue adds humor to the story because it reveals the naïve thinking of these two eleven-year-old boys. We smile as we realize that Jessie felt he was betraying Josh because Jessie’s parents did not fight. He even goes so far as to apologize for his parents’ peaceful relationship. Second, the dialogue divulges certain Jamaican attitudes, such as anger at having the Jamaican accent ridiculed and fearing hell so much that even the word must not be spoken. Third, conversations make the characters sound human and alive.
The narrator feels that awesome is overused and thus has lost its punch. Other words in that same category today are words like cool, nifty, amped, or gross.
Jessie’s son is crucial to the story because he proves the importance of having an imagination. In a sense, he wraps up the whole story because we are sure that, like his father and grandfather, he too has an imagination that will serve him well when he is confronted with dull, hopelessly literal people or when he needs courage to confront a menacing situation. The son also symbolizes the generational cycle of grandfather, father, son, and grandson and the beauty of close ties between the older and younger generation.
The Twins Charles Bukowski
Answers to Quiz
b, c, d
Answers to Questions on Meaning and Technique (314)
Obviously, they had a stormy relationship and hated each other. The speaker also seems to have felt dominated by his father, as revealed in the line, “for a father is always your master even when he’s / gone.” We gather that there was some estrangement between them—“I am a stranger here, and have been (I suppose) somewhat / the rogue...”
The father was settled and rooted—we’re told that he owed $8,000 on his house and that he was 20 years on the same job. He also seems to have been financially better off than his son, who admits that his father’s blue suit is much better than anything he’d ever worn. We can infer that the son’s lifestyle was arty and drifting—he advises his father to learn to paint and to listen to Brahms while the father’s was somewhat conventional and ordinary. Further, the son accuses his father of being dominated by women and dollars. Notice that the son is decidedly the opposite in this respect—he says that he doesn’t give a damn that his father left it all “to some woman in Duarte.” The telling contrast between them comes in the final stanza: while his father was readying his bulbs for planting, the son says he was “laying with a whore from 3rd street.”
Allow for open discussion. He is simultaneously realistic and poignant about his dead father, honestly grasping the differences between them while wistfully trying on his suit.
They are twins in that they looked alike and share a common fate. The father is dead; the son is waiting his turn to die.
A Bukowski trademark is the working class speaker, the kind of voice rarely, if ever, found in traditional poetry. The language is down to earth and not at all high flown in the traditional poetic sense. Notice, for example, lines such as, “he was / my old / man / and he died.” One doesn’t usually find the speaker of a poem lying with a whore from 3rd street.
It has no rhyme and is written entirely in free verse with a rather colloquial diction. Bukowski has been a pioneer in importing the language of the street into poetry.
The line is a psychological truism. A son incorporates the image of the father into his internal psychological makeup and self, and in this way a father may be said to be a son’s master. Sons also tend to deify fathers, enlarging them in memory and retrospect beyond human size, and in this sense a father can be said to always be the master of a son. Allow for open discussion of the second question.
Diogenes and Alexander Gilbert Highet
Answers to Quiz
c, a, d, d, a
Answers to Questions on Meaning and Technique (323)
Highet’s comparison is based on economics, social position, looks, and intelligence.
He uses the vertical method, dealing fully first with Diogenes and then with Alexander.
In paragraph 11 the attention is shifted from Diogenes to Alexander. Highet accomplishes the shift smoothly by focusing on Diogenes viewing the attendants of Alexander.
Diogenes is compared to a dog “because he cared nothing for privacy and other human conventions, and because he showed his teeth and barked at those whom he disliked.”
They are both well educated and wise.
Contrasts drawn between Diogenes and Alexander include old age versus youth, poverty versus wealth, no political power versus great political power, lack of popularity versus great popularity, and coarse manners versus polished manners.
