Form 4 Term 1 Syllabus -- in Google Docs

Form 4 Term 1 Syllabus -- in Google Docs

Rewrite these sentences to state their meaning in fewer words

Rewrite these sentences to state their meaning in fewer words. Avoid passive voice, needless repetition, and wordy phrases and clauses.

1. Although Bradley Hall is regularly populated by students, close study of the building as a structure is seldom undertaken by them.

Bradley Hall is usually filled with students who do not study the building as a structure.

2. He dropped out of school on account of the fact that it was necessary for him to help support his family.

He dropped out of school to support his family.

3. It is expected that the new schedule will be announced by the bus company within the next few days.

The bus company will probably announce its schedule during the next few days.

4. There are many ways in which a student who is interested in meeting foreign students may come to know one.

Any student who wants to meet foreign students can do so in many ways.

5. It is very unusual to find someone who has never told a deliberate lie on purpose.

Rarely will you find someone who has never told a deliberate lie.

6. Trouble is caused when people disobey rules that have been established for the safety of all.

Disobeying safety regulations causes trouble.

7. A campus rally was attended by more than a thousand students. Five students were arrested by campus police for disorderly conduct, while several others are charged by campus administrators with organizing a public meeting without being issued a permit to do so.

Five out of more than a thousand students at a campus rally were arrested for disorderly conduct, and several others were charged by campus administrators with organizing a public meeting without a permit.

8. The subjects that are considered most important by students are those that have been shown to be useful to them after graduation.

Students think that the most important subjects are those that will be useful after graduation.

9. In the not too distant future, college freshmen must all become aware of the fact that there is a need for them to make contact with an academic adviser concerning the matter of a major.


Soon college freshmen must realize that they need to contact their advisors about their choices of majors.

10. In our company there are wide-open opportunities for professional growth with a company that enjoys an enviable record for stability in the dynamic atmosphere of aerospace technology.

Our company provides opportunities for professional growth and stability in the dynamic field of aerospace technology.

11. Some people believe in capital punishment, while other people are against it; there are many opinions on this subject.

There are people who are for and people who are against capital punishment.

Writing Marks Criteria

Writing Marks Criteria

Short Story Writing

Short Story Writing -- Contents

 

 1.Introduction       

            ⑴Organization

            ⑵Dialogue       

                      §Sample 1

            ⑶Purpose       

                      §Sample 2

            ⑷Action

                    §Sample 3

                    §Sample 4     

            ⑸Chronological connectors     

                    §Sample 5

            ⑹Point of view

        

 2.Model Essays

            ⑴ Qualities of Good Narrative Essay:

    §Sample 6: “What’s in a Name” – H. L. Gates, Jr.  
⊙Commentary

            ⑵ Mastering Writing Techniques        

   Model Essay II

       §Sample 7: Berkley Blues – Patrick Klein 123 
⊙Writing technique questions    

 

3.Writing a narrative essay            

     ⑴ Prewriting and Revising

     ⑵ Student’s composition

        §Sample 7: Students’ compositions: Should I Call My Daddy?

4. From Reading to Writing

⑴Paragraphs:

§Sample 8: Love at First Sight                 

§Sample 9: A Lucky Escape     

            §Sample 10:  Granny’s Fall   

      ⑵Essays:

            §Sample 11:  The Open Window – A. G. Gardiner

            Comprehension Thesis and Audience

            Style and Structure    

            §Sample 12:  I Embarked On the Highway of Journalism - Russell Baker

            §Sample 13:  Why Couldn’t My Father Read – Enrique Lopez      

      ⑶Students’ Compositions:

            §Sample 14:Should Illiteracy be Looked Down Upon  

            §Sample 15:My Son and his Illiterate Father

            §Sample 16:  Education Through Playing Cards – Kim Jeom Ok 

  

 

Short Story Writing

1.Introduction

 

     Narration, along with description and exposition (writing that explains), is one of the three general classes of writing. Narration means telling of an incident or a series of incidents. It can be purely imaginative, such as short stories or novels, or on the other hand, it can be a record of actual facts, such as, histories, biographies, or news stories. The scope of narration can range from a relatively insignificant incident such as

"I saw a horror movie on TV last night” to a great and philosophically illuminating novel such as Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.

 

     Man is born with a narrative urge; cavemen gathered round small fires and exchanged tales of magic and hunting. Modern men are no different; we all know how soap operas and best sellers form an important part of our lives. Entertainment apart, narration is important both in the classroom and in the workplace. You may be required to narrate the causes of food shortage in history class, or you may be asked to tell why China has emerged as one of the leading powers in just fifteen years, and in chemistry class you record steps of an experiment. At work, a police officer may record events leading to an arrest, a nurse may report on a patient’s changing attitudes toward surgery, and a department manager may prepare a report of his subordinates; all this involves narrative writing.

 

     Let us first look at the main features of narrative writing, and then we shall go on to the examination of a model essay illustrating the main characteristics of narrative writing.

 

⑴ Organization

     A narrative essay is like a story; it has a beginning, a middle and an end.  It should be complete. Most narrative essays emphasize the middle of the story. Although the beginning (the background/the setting) and the ending (the winding up) are no less important, the middle is the center of interest which focuses on some conflict. A conflict is some type of struggle between two forces. The conflict might be internal or external. An internal conflict implies two opposite impulses clashing in one’s mind. For example, should I date this girl tonight or work on my essay. An external conflict may involve an individual pitted against hostile forces of nature; Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea is a classic example of this kind of conflict. Or, the conflict may be between two individuals, or an individual against a group, such as a union, a company, or a religious body. The conflict and its resolution – the moment the conflict is solved or faced or eliminated – are the central point of the narrative paper. Once the conflict is resolved, the story comes to an end.

Events in a narrative essay are usually organized in a chronological order. Occasionally this straightforward chronological order is violated in order to heighten the effect of an episode or story. Flashback (a jump back in time) and flash-forward (a jump forward in time) are two well-known techniques used by writers.

Compressing (speeding up of time gone by) and expanding (slowing down of time) are two more tactics that writers use to create the desired effect for certain portions of their story. In the passage cited from Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant earlier, the writer employs the technique of expanding to dwell vividly on the separate phases of painful death of the animal, as if the time almost stood still.

 

⑵ Dialogue

     Dialogue or conversation lends realism to narrative passages. Written conversation, however, should not duplicate real talk, which has repetitions, fragments, loose trains of thought, expressions like “ah” and “oh” and slang. Indeed, occasional use of these is understandable, for they heighten the sense of reality; good dialogue resembles real speech without copying it.

     Dialogue is a powerful tool for the development of characters in the hands of skilled writers. Especially, if a story involves conflict between people, dialogue becomes a powerful means of directly letting the reader experience that conflict. As an example, read the following dialogue, taken from African American writer Richard Wright’s classic autobiography, Black Boy. The dialogue, here, eliminates the writer’s intervention of analysis or abstraction and draws the reader directly into the tension of the story. This is a scene in which the young Wright confronts a librarian in an attempt to get a book by Baltimore author and journalist H. L. Mencken from a whites-only public library. He has faked a note and borrowed a library card from a sympathetic white colleague and is pretending to borrow the book in his colleague’s name.

 

§Sample 1

 

“What do you want, boy?”

As though I did not possess the power of speech, I stepped forward and simply handed her the forged note, not parting my lips.

“What books by Mencken does he want?” she asked.

“I don’t know ma’am,” I said avoiding her eyes.

“Who gave you this card?”

“Mr. Falk,” I said.

“Where is he?”

“He’s at work, at the M – Optical Company,” I said. “I’ve been in here for him before.”

“I remember,” the woman said. “But he never wrote notes like this.”

Oh, God, she’s suspicious. Perhaps she would not let me have the books? If she had turned her back at that moment, I would have ducked out the door and never gone back. Then I thought of a bold idea.

“You can call him up, ma’am,” I said, my heart pounding.

“You’re not using these books are you?” she asked pointedly.

“Oh no ma’am. I can’t read.”

“I don’t know what he wants by Mencken,” she said under her breath.

I knew I had won; she was thinking of other things and the race question had gone out of her mind.

 

From Richard Wright’s Black Boy   

 

     In just one hundred or so words of conversation, the reader here gets directly involved in the feeling of pain and insult suffered by a black person in a society that practiced segregation and discrimination.  It is one thing to hear about racial prejudice and discrimination, but it is a completely different feeling to hear it directly through dialogue such as this.

 

     Our selections in this chapter, What’s in a Name?, I Embarked On the Highway of Journalism and Why My Father Couldn’t Read, are good examples of dialogue in the service of narration. The brief dialogue in What’s in a Name? shows poignantly the helplessness and innocence of a black boy who is a victim of racial prejudice and social discrimination. No commentary by the author of Why My Father Couldn’t Read could demonstrate the false values held by the young Lopez when he explodes at his father for being illiterate.

 

⑶ Purpose

     A narrative, like any other kind of writing, has a clear purpose; this purpose, may be explicitly stated or left for the reader to infer from the writing. For example, in his autobiographical story, A Hanging, George Orwell clearly states the point of his writing when he says:

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. …

     However, writers of narratives are not obliged to be explicit about the connection between the events in a story and the point it makes. Readers may be left to find their own “theses”. As an example, read the following anecdote.

 

§Sample 2

What’s in a Name?

     Once, a very fat woman was walking down a street. From the opposite direction came a young man who did not like the look of the woman, stared at her and shouted, “hippopotamus!” The woman was not going to take this insult. She wanted to teach a lesson to this irresponsible young man. She jumped on the young man, caught him by the collar and took him right to a police officer who was standing not very far away.

  “Officer, this man called me ‘hippopotamus’.”

    The officer first looked at the fat woman and then the young-man and dutifully enquired, “Did you call the lady ‘hippopotamus’?”

    The young man said he was guilty and then, “Yes, Officer.” He then added, “Excuse me, Officer, but is it an offence to call a lady a hippopotamus?”

     The officer thought for a while and replied, “Yes”.

     Quickly came a second question from the young man. “Is it an offence to call a hippopotamus a lady?”

     This time the officer thought for long time and gave the considered answer, “No.”

     The young-man turned to the lady and said, “Sorry, lady.”

 

 

     Though the narrator of the anecdote does not state the thesis explicitly, the central idea here is quite clear: you can insult a man/woman with a perfectly respectable word. The selections in this chapter very strongly suggest their theses, yet still leave room for readers to reflect on. Interpretation of purpose can be a rewarding and interesting intellectual exercise. For example, Hamlet’s famous soliloquy “To be, or not to be …” can be an interesting point of debate. According to some readers, Hamlet in this speech is contemplating suicide, while others feel that he is planning the murder of his uncle.   The meaning is left ambiguous by the writer.  This ambiguity itself can be part of the writer’s planned purpose, permitting the reader the opportunity to construct the meaning.

 

⑷ Action

     Action plays a key role in any narrative. Unlike descriptive writing where time freezes, in narrative writing, events move in time. The following passage from John Hersey’s Hiroshima only suggests action but does not portray it.  Hence, it cannot be considered to be a good, clear example of narrative writing for our purposes here.

 

            §Sample 3

A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition – a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next – that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At that time, none of them knew anything.

 

     Indeed, this passage is highly suggestive of action; the reader is invited to imagine the big explosion, the collapse of buildings, wailings and crying, but the writing does not directly re-create the action.  It is as if while watching a drama, the audience hears the sound of action off-stage, but does not directly see it. On the other hand, the following passage from Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant is packed with action; it leaves nothing significant for the reader to infer.  The small details of the slow and painful death of the elephant move excruciatingly through time.

 

§Sample 4

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick – one never does when a shot goes home – but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. … I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs.

 

     Action does not necessarily imply violent and sensational events. A wide variety of more normal events also qualify as action: in Open Window, where the total duration of action is only about ten minutes, the action revolves around the vanity and obstinacy of fellow train passengers who are too indifferent to appreciate each others’ small comforts. The narrative also points to the henpecked-husband who is too weak to stand up against his wife, who is apparently quite unfair. Again, the action in What’s in a Name? does not last more than two or three minutes.  But within this very short time the writer manages to recreate action, full of mental tension, which serves to develop further the thesis of his essay.

 

⑸ Chronological Connectors

Read the following pair of sentences and decide which one reads better.

 

           §Sample 5

1. When she was hardly 18, Sister Teresa left her family and friends in Skopje to begin her life of service in India. Sister Teresa landed in Calcutta, India for a life dedicated to purity and obedience.

 

1a. On September 25, 1928, when she was hardly 18, Agnes left her family and friends in Skopje to begin her life of service in India. In January 1929, Sister Teresa landed in Calcutta, India for a life dedicated to poverty, purity and obedience.

     Most probably you have decided that 1a. reads better. The reason why it reads better is that it includes highlighted phrases known as chronological connectors. In biographical writing and other time-sequenced stories they signal the sequence of events. These words and phrases help the reader recognize when you are moving from one event to another, or from one period of time to another. These connectors also help link thoughts, themes, topics, and controlling ideas in your writing.

 

     Chronological connectors, which usually appear at the beginning or the end of a sentence, include expressions of time movements from one time to another and sequences of events.  The following table highlights some useful chronological connectors.

 

Chronological Connectors as Cohesive Devices

Uses	Cohesive Devices	Examples
To show expressions of time	yesterday, last night, last year, last week, in 1964, on March 6, the next year, tomorrow, at that time, at night	In 1964, my father died. The next year, I left for Washington.
To show movements from one time period to another   To show sequences of events	before, then, after, later, until, since, while, during, during that time, eventually   first, second, third, … next, last, finally	Before I went to France, I finished law school. While I was at law school, I studied hard. First, I did my homework. Next, I did the dishes.

 

⑹ Point of View

     Generally narrative essays are written from the first person point of view; all the selections, except Education through Playing Cards, included in this section are written from the perspective of the first person. In third person narration, he, the storyteller, does not participate as a character in the tale. Biographies and histories have to use the third person; fiction embraces both points of view.

 

 

⒉ Model Essay I

⑴ Qualities of Good Narrative Essay:

     Now that we have looked at the main features of good narrative writing, let us examine how these features work in a narrative essay. The following essay, written by a black (African) American writer is a poignant portrait of color discrimination in his society, and is a good example of narrative essay. 

 

§Sample 6:

What’s in a Name?

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

 

“… blood, darky, Tar Baby, Kaffir, shine … moor, black-amoor, Jim Crow, spook … qudroon, meriney, red bone, high yellow … Mammy, porch monkey, home, homeboy, George … Ethiopian, brother, sistah. …”  Trey Ellis, 1989

1.  I had forgotten the incident completely, until I read Trey Ellis’s essay, “Remember My Name,” in a recent issue of the Village Voice (June 13, 1989). But there, in the middle of an extended italicized list of the bynames of “the race” (“the race” or “our people” being the terms my parents used in polite or reverential discourse, “jigaboo” or “nigger” more commonly used in anger, jest, or pure disgust) it was: “George.” Now the events of that very brief exchange return to mind so vividly that I wonder why I had forgotten it.
2.  My father and I were walking home at dusk from his second job. He “moonlighted” as a janitor in the evenings for the telephone company. Every day but Saturday, he would come home at 3:30 from his regular job at the paper mill, wash up, eat supper, then at 4:30 head downtown to his second job. He used to make jokes frequently about a union official who moonlighted. I never got the joke, but he and his friends thought it was hilarious. All I knew was that my family always ate well, that my brother I had new clothes to wear, and that all of the white people in Piedmont, West Virginia, treated my parents with an odd mixture of resentment and respect that even we understood at the time had something directly to do with a small but certain measure of financial security.
3.   He had left a little early that evening because I was with him and I had to be in bed early. I could not have been more than five or six, and we had stopped off at the Cut-Rate Drug Store (where no black person in town but my father could sit down to eat, and eat off real plates with real silverware) so that I could buy some caramel ice cream, two scoops in wafer cone, please, which I was busy licking when Mr. Wilson walked by.
4.  Mr. Wilson was a very quiet man, whose stony, brooding, silent manner seemed designed to scare off any overtures of friendship, even from white people. He was Irish, as was one-third of our village (another third being Italian), the more affluent among them sent their children to “Catholic School” across the bridge in Maryland. He had white straight hair, like my Uncle Joe, whom he uncannily resembled, and he carried a black worn metal lunch pail, the kind that Riley¹ carried on the television show. My father always spoke to him, and for reasons that we never did understand, he always spoke to my father.
5.  “Hello, Mr. Wilson,” I heard my father say.
6.  “Hello, George.”
7.  I stopped licking my ice cream cone, and asked my Dad in a loud voice why Mr. Wilson had called him “George.”
8.  “Doesn’t he know your name, Daddy? Why don’t you tell him your name? Your name isn’t George.”
9.  For a moment I tried to think of who Mr. Wilson was mixing Pop up with. But we didn’t have any Georges among the colored people in Piedmont; nor were there colored Georges living in the neighboring towns and working at the mill.
10.  “Tell him your name, Daddy.”
11.  “He knows my name, boy,” my father said after a long pause. “He calls all colored people George.”
12.  A long silence ensued. It was “one of those things” as my Mom would put it. Even then, that early, I knew when I was in the presence of “one of those things,” one of those things that provided a glimpse, through a rent curtain, at another world that we could not affect but that affected us. There would be a painful moment of silence, and you would wait for it to give way to a discussion of a black superstar such as Sugar Ray or Jackie Robinson.
13.  “Nobody his better in a clutch than Jackie Robinson.”
14.  “That’s right. Nobody.”    
15.  I never again looked Mr. Wilson in the eye.

 

⊙ Commentary

The following qualities recommend this essay as an example of good narrative essay:

• Organization: This writing is a good example of good essay organization; it is neatly divided into three parts, beginning, middle (including the conflict/tension) and end. The first four paragraphs form the beginning. In the first paragraph the writer tells us what prompted him to tell the story. Paragraphs two, three and four supply the important socio-economic background of the characters necessary to understand the story. Paragraphs five to eleven are the middle part of the story. The tension starts to build up right from paragraph five when Mr. Gates addresses Mr. Wilson. It reaches its climax when the boy is confused and asks his father to tell Mr. Wilson his right name. The tension is resolved in paragraph 11 when the father tells his son, “He knows my name, boy,” … “He calls all colored people George.” The last four paragraphs, paragraphs twelve to fifteen, conclude the story with an informal thesis statement: “a glimpse … at another world that we could not affect but that affected us.”(12) The informal thesis statement is couched in a beautiful metaphor of a “rent curtain”. The innocence of the child is compared to a curtain, and the incidents like “one of those things” (12) to a rent in the curtain. The presence of the metaphor not only underscores the point of the informal thesis but also adds to the beauty of the language. The story ends on a sad note: “I never looked Mr. Wilson in the eye.”
• Purpose: The purpose of the story – discrimination on the basis of color is wrong – is suggested in the quote of Trey Ellis with which the essay begins. This theme of color discrimination is developed in the essay and is poignantly stated in the informal thesis statement in paragraph 12. The essay is a denunciation of a society in which hard work and honesty are not respected. The relative prosperity of Mr. Gates, earned by hard and honest work, is ultimately discounted and disregarded by an inferior white man. Mr. Wilson has nothing to recommend in his favor except the fact that he is white. 
• Dialog: The dialog in the middle of the essay conveys touchingly the innocence of the boy of five or six and the resigned acceptance of injustice of his father. In other words, the dialog creates two characters, one innocent and the other resigned to injustice, and both of them stand in contrast to the adult narrator who is questioning the values of life of a society based on color discrimination.
• Point of view: The choice of first person point of view is quite appropriate because the incident that is described is autobiographical.

 

Mastering Writing Technique

 

Model Essay II

 

     Here is another essay on the same problem of color discrimination, seen from the opposite angle. This is an essay written by a white student reflecting on the prejudices born out of color discrimination. Please read this essay and answer the writing technique questions given at the end of the essay in order to further understand and appreciate the qualities of good narrative essay.

 

§Sample 7

Berkeley Blues

Patrick Klein

1.  It was a cold night. That is nothing new in San Francisco, but something made this night particularly frigid. It was early February and the whole city, including the Berkeley section where we were staying, was still held tight in the firm grip of winter. It had also rained that afternoon and the air, having been cleared by the storm, was cold and sharp. It hurt the back of your throat when you inhaled and turned into mist when you exhaled. As the six of us hurriedly walked in a huddled mass, the water that lay in puddles on the dimly lit sidewalk jumped out of our way as we slammed our shoes down into its dregs. We silently decided on our destination and slipped into the grungy², closet-like pizza joint. We took the only seats the place had and as we pulled them into a circle, we all breathed a sigh of relief.
2.  This was our first night at Berkeley. We were there for a debate tournament to be held the next day at the university. On this night, however, we were six high school sophomores in search of food. So, dressed in our suits and ties (we were required to wear them) and heavy coats, we ventured out of the university and entered the city of Berkeley.
3.  Berkeley is an interesting place. Many might have romantic notions of a bunch of shaggy intellectuals discussing French existentialism while sipping cappuccino, but while this might have been the case a few decades ago, the reality is that Berkeley is a ghetto. The place is filled with grungy closet shops while newspapers cover the sidewalks and the people lying on them. The university is divided from this ghetto by a two-lane street.
4.  As the six of us crossed the two-lane street that fateful night, my thoughts drifted to my own neighborhood, which up until that moment had been the extent of my world.
5.  McCormick Ranch, Arizona, is a sheltered place. To a certain extent it’s mostly white, with little crime and few domestic problems. Everybody has a pool, at least two cars, and a beautiful desert sunset every night. I had everything I ever wanted. It seemed very gentle and dreamlike compared to the harsh slum we found ourselves in.
6.    When we made it into the pizza place and moved the chairs into a protective circle around a square table, anxiety about our “hostile” environment was quickly swept away with hot, greasy pizza. We ate until we were content and were trying to decide how to divide the few remaining pieces among ourselves when it happened.
7.  The pizza place was separated from the rest of humanity by a large window. Our table was directly in front of that window and two feet from the door. People had been passing the window and probably remarking on the six well-dressed kids inside, but we paid them no mind and they all walked by without incident. Still, our hearts were seized with terror every time a human being would pass that window, and we hoped with all that we could muster that every one of them would continue on. We were almost right.
8.  On this night, when six young yuppie kids from an upper middle-class world decided to risk it and go eat pizza in a ghetto, he walked by. He didn’t look any different from others we’d seen that night. Black. Dirty. Tired. Cold. His clothes consisted of a grimy, newspaper-stained jacket, a T-shirt with who-knows-how-old dirt on it, flimsy pants with holes at the knees, and tattered excuses for shoes. He was not quite up to part with our Gucci loafers and Armani jackets.
9.  He shuffled past the window and glanced in. We didn’t notice. He stopped. We noticed. Twelve eyes glanced up as casually as they could and six hearts stopped beating for a second. Yep, still there. All eyes went back to the floor, except for two. Those eyes belonged to Chad, and in some act of defiance, his eyes met the poor man’s eyes and glared.
10.  The man opened the door. “We’re all going to die,” I thought. “All my hopes and dreams are going to end here, in a stupid pizza place, at the hands of a crazy black bum.”
11.  He took something out of his pocket.
12.  It was shiny.
13.  I couldn’t look.
14.  A knife.
15.  No. It was a flask. He took a swig from it, and , still popping the door open with his sagging frame, spoke the most jolting, burning words I’ve ever heard.
16.  “I love you,” he said. “All of you.” He glanced at Chad. “Even you.” He stepped back and said, “I know what you think of me, but I still love you.” I will probably never forget those words or how he said them with a steady, steely voice.
17.  Then he left. That was it. Gone. It took about five minutes for anyone to talk. When the talking started, we exchanged jokes and responded with empty, devastating laughter.
18.  We soon left the shop. It had grown colder outside and we quickly returned to our climate-controlled hotel room. We had just eaten a filling meal and paid for it with our own money. We were all about fifteen. The man we had encountered was probably in his fifties. He had no roof, no money, or food. It seemed strange that I owned more than an adult, but in truth, he had more than I. He was able to love us when we ostracized him and thought stereotypically about him.
19.  I remember later trying to rationalize my sickening behavior by thinking that there is nothing with being and acting afraid in a strange environment. I tried to use my age as an excuse. Nothing worked. I was guilty of fearing a fellow human being because of his color and my preset notions of bums.
20.  To this day I still think about what difference, if any, it would have made if we had given him our leftover pizza. It might have eased my conscience. It was a very cold night and we had made it colder.

 

Writing technique questions

 

1. This essay does not have a formal thesis in the introduction like other narrative writing. However, it has a focus and a point. What is the point of the essay? (Hint: examine the concluding paragraphs of the essay.)
2. The writer intersperses events of the narrative with description and comments. Make a list of all the major events in the essay. 
3. What is the climax (high point) of the story?
4. Circle the chronological connectors used in the essay.
5. The essay has a very brief dialog. What is the effect of this dialog?
6. What are the three most effective sensory details in the essay? What kind of mood/atmosphere do they create? How do they contribute to the narrative effect?
7. What is the secondary method of paragraph development used in paragraphs 3-6?
8. What point of view (first person or third person) and tense (present or past) is used in the selection? Why?

 

⒊ Writing a Narrative Essay

Prewriting and Revising

1. Think of an event in your life which was emotionally moving. Spend some time thinking about it and then make detailed notes about that moving experience. At this stage you need not concern yourself with spelling, grammar or fragments; just collect the details that made it so moving.
2. Next, revise your notes and decide if the subject is promising enough for a full length essay. If it is not, move to some other event in your life. If it is, follow the following three steps:
1. First, prepare a thesis statement for your essay underscoring the emotion that will be the center of your essay.
2. Second, think of the conflict/tension in your story. Think of the details that contribute to the tension and can sustain the interest of the reader.
3. Finally, prepare a detailed list of the events in your story and arrange them in chronological order.
3. Write the rough draft of your essay.
4. Revise and polish it.

The subject of your story need not be some great event; it can be as simple as your first day in your school. What is important is how vividly you narrate it.

 

Student’s composition

§Sample 8:

Should I Call My Daddy?

   Ling, a ten year old girl, was a brilliant student of No.1 Primary School in Shenzhen. However, she had to pay higher tuition fee because her father was a migrant laborer, and they were not registered residents of Shenzhen.

   Ling never told her classmates who her father was. Today her class was visiting the local museum, and the way to the museum lay by her father’s cycle repair-shop, a small shed under a tree. As she was walking, and getting closer to her father’s shop, she was becoming more and more nervous. She didn’t know whether she should call her father or not. What would her classmates, girls from rich families, feel if they knew that her father was a migrant laborer?

   As she saw her father, squatting under a tree repairing a bicycle, streaming with sweat, she was choked with sobs. She ran to him and called loudly: “Daddy!” Her father turned around surprised and then smiled. But when he noticed the classmates and the tears in his daughter’s eyes, his hand trembled and the tool slipped down from his hand. Then he bent over to pick it up and said: “Go quickly. Don’t be late!”

   Ling joined her classmates, as she heard, over her shoulders, her father telling his customer proudly “She is my daughter, studying in No.1 Primary School in Shenzhen!”

Name: Lin xiang / Helen Lin, Class: Ph.D. 5

 

 

 

⒋ From Reading to Writing

⑴  Paragraphs

§Sample 9:

Love at First Sight

 

   One morning, seven months after arriving in Sicily, Michael decided to walk into the mountains past the hilltop town of Corleone. He walked with his two bodyguards along dusty country roads, past fruit-trees and fields of flowers. The hot, still air was rich with the smell of oranges. Along the way, they met a group of girls and children picking flowers. They stopped to watch them pass. One girl in a simple dress with a basket over her arm stopped in front of Michael to pick a small pink flower. Michael watched her, studying the way that her long, brown hair shone in the sunlight and hung around her face. Suddenly, the girl lifted her head and looked at him. She had large brown eyes, and her heart-shaped mouth was red with the juice of grapes. Michael felt weak, as if hit by lightning. He had never seen anyone so lovely. The girl lowered her eyes with a shy smile, ran back to join her friends and disappeared down the road.

From: The Godfather by Mario Puzo

 

Exercise

1. What is the central idea of the paragraph?
2. Which technique, compressing or expanding, is employed in this paragraph? What is the purpose of the intended technique employed?
3. What descriptive details make this paragraph so vivid?
4. Identify and comment on the metaphor used in the paragraph.
5. Do you think Love at First Sight is the right title for this paragraph? If not, assign a suitable title to the paragraph.
6. Underline the chronological connectors in the paragraph.

 

§Sample 10:

A Lucky Escape

 

   The train started slowly, but gathered speed sooner than I had expected. The flaring lights drew swiftly near. The rattle grew into a roar. The dark mass hung for a second above me. The engine driver silhouetted³ against his furnace glow, the black profile of the engine, the clouds of steam rushed past. Then I hurled myself on the trucks, clutched at something, missed, clutched again, missed again, grasped some sort of hand-hold, was swung off my feet – my toes bumping on the line, and with a struggle seated myself on the couplings of the fifth truck from the front of the train. It was a goods train, and the trucks were full of sacks, soft sacks covered with coal dust. I crawled on top and burrowed in among them. In five minutes I was completely buried. The sacks were warm and comfortable. Perhaps the engine driver had seen me rush up to the train and would give the alarm at the next station: on the other hand, perhaps not. Where was the train going to? Where would it be unloaded? Would it be searched? Was it on the Delagoa Bay line? What should I do in the morning? Ah, never mind that. Sufficient for the day was the luck thereof. Fresh plans for fresh contingencies⁴. I resolved to sleep, nor can I imagine a more pleasing lullaby than the clatter of the train that carries you at twenty miles an hour away from the enemy’s capital.

Winston S. Churchill, A Roving Commission

 

Exercise

1. What is the central idea of the paragraph?
2. Why did the writer “burrow” himself into the sacks?
3. How dangerous was the writer’s situation?
4. What is the purpose/effect of the repeated questions towards the end of the paragraph?
5. What is the meaning of “Sufficient for the day was the luck thereof”? What kind of man could have felt this way in the circumstances described in the paragraph?

 

     §Sample 11: 

Granny’s Fall

 

   On one lazy, hot summer night Granny, my mother, and Aunt Addie were sitting on the front porch, arguing some obscure point or religious doctrine. I sat huddled on the steps, my cheeks resting sullenly in my palms, half listening to what the grownups were saying and half lost in a daydream. Suddenly the dispute evoked an idea in me and, forgetting that I had no right to speak without permission, I piped up⁵ and had my say. I must have sounded reekingly⁶ blasphemous⁷, for Granny said, “Shut up, you!” and leaned forward promptly to chastise me with one of her casual, backhanded slaps on my mouth. But I had by now become adept at dodging blows and I nimbly ducked my head. She missed me; the force of her blow was so strong that she fell down the steps, headlong, her aged body wedged in a narrow space between the fence and the bottom step. I leaped up. Aunt Addie and my mother screamed and rushed down the steps and tried to pull Granny’s body out. But they could not move her. Grandpa was called and he had to tear the fence down to rescue Granny. She was barely conscious. They put her to bed and summoned a doctor.

From Richard Wright’s Black Boy

 

Exercise

1. This is a narrative written in first person, and so is the previous paragraph, A Lucky Escape. How are these two paragraphs different?
2. “I leaped up.” What is the effect of this very short sentence towards the end of the paragraph?
3. “I must have sounded reekingly blasphemous,” is an example of a very effective metaphor. Comment how this is effective.

 

⑵ Essays

 

§Sample 12:

The Open Window

by A. G. Gardiner 

A. G. Gardiner (1865-1946), journalist, essayist, and biographer was born in Essex, England.   He was on the staff of the Essex County Chronicle and The Northern Daily Telegraph for fifteen years, and later edited the London Daily News and contributed essays to the Star under the pseudonym of' ‘Alpha of the Plough’.  His works include: Prophets, Priests, and Kings, Pillars of Society, The War Lords Pebbles on the Shore, Leaves in the Wind, and Windfalls. The present selection is taken from Many Furrows.

 

1.    I entered a railway-carriage at a country station the other morning and found myself in a compartment containing five people.  I took a vacant seat between a man in the corridor corner and a lady dressed in handsome furs in the window corner.  A girl whom I took for the lady's daughter sat opposite to her, and a gentleman whom I took to be the lady's husband sat next to the girl, while another man occupied the remaining corner by the corridor.
2.    These people had all evidently been in the train for some time, and on entering I was vaguely sensible of having broken in upon a drama which was unfinished. The atmosphere seemed charged with feelings whose expression had only been suspended, and I was not surprised when, the train being in motion, hostilities were resumed.
3.    The window by which the lady sat was half-open and as the train gathered speed, the wind, which was blowing from the east, came in like a whiplash.  It missed the lady in her wraps, but hit me in the face and curled round the neck of the man in the corridor corner.  He leaned forward and asked, with the air of having made the request before, that the window should be closed.   ‘Certainly not!’ said the lady.  I glanced at her and, so far as her face was visible above the billowing furs⁸ that enveloped her, saw she was a person who was not to be trifled with. Her lips were tight-pressed and her nostrils swelled with battle.
4.    The man in the corner addressed himself to the husband, who had buried himself in his newspaper in the obvious hope of being overlooked.  The man explained with what deadly aim the wind came into his corner, and if the window were shut and the corridor door was opened they could have plenty of air without discomfort. Dragged thus into the fighting-line, the husband lowered his paper and looked over his glasses timidly in the direction of his wife.  She had a copy of a picture-paper in her hands, and without looking at her husband she emitted a little snort and turned the pages as if she were wringing their necks.  The husband, who had a kindly face and looked as though he had long since laid down his arms in an unequal battle, knew the symptoms.  He uttered no word to the terrific woman by the window, but turning to the man and still looking benignly over his glasses, offered to take the post of peril in the corner.  The man said, No; he was quite comfortable in his corner if the window were closed.  He put on his hat, turned up his coat collar, held up his paper against the gale and fell silent.
5.    The husband, with one more furtive glance at his wife, resumed reading.  As I watched him I thought of the story of the old parson, who, driving with his wife in a country lane, met a farmer in his cart.  There was no room to pass, and the law of the road made the parson the offender.  It was his business to ' back ' to a wide place in the lane to allow the farmer's cart to pass.  But the parson's wife would not let him do so.  The farmer must get out of the way.  The poor parson was in tears between his duty and terror of his wife.  ' Don't worry, parson; don't worry,' said the farmer.  ' I'll go back, I've just such an old varmint⁹ as her myself at home.'
6.    And that was how the battle over the window ended.  The man in the corner made one brief rally. He flung the corridor door open in the hope of diverting the draught¹⁰ or, perhaps, making things unpleasant for his foe.  But she was invulnerable to attack.  She only stabbed the pages of her picture-paper a little more viciously.  The man then fled from the field. He went out and found seats for himself and his companion in another compartment, and, returning, removed his luggage. The lady's victory was complete. She was left unchallenged mistress of the compartment. She gave her paper a final comprehensive stab, commanded her husband to close the corridor door which her defeated antagonist had shamelessly left open, and sat up to enjoy her triumph.
7.    As I looked from her to the nice, kindly, henpecked husband now again absorbed in his newspaper, I felt pity for so afflicted a fellow-creature.  Poor fellow!  What a life!

 

① Comprehension

1. Why was the author not surprised when “hostilities were resumed” (2) when the train started again?
2. How many times did the passenger try to persuade the lady-passenger to close the window?
3. How did the passenger try to avenge himself on the lady-passenger when his request for closing the window was declined?  What was the effect on the lady?
4. Expand the idea contained in the following sentences:

• On entering I was vaguely sensible of having broken in upon a drama which was unfinished.
• The atmosphere seemed charged with feelings whose expression had only been suspended.
• She was a person who was not to be trifled with.
• Her nostrils swelled with battle.
• He … offered to take the post of peril in the corner.
• She stabbed the pages of her picture-paper.

 

②Thesis and Audience

 

1. Underline the thesis if it is stated in the passage. Write the thesis in your words.
2. This story is likely to be read with interest in any place, not just in England. Why?

 

③ Style and Structure

1. The writer deals with a fairly serious subject in a very humorous manner, almost verging on satire. How does he achieve humor in his writing?
2. Do you think paragraphs 5 and 7 are really needed in the story?

 

 

⊙Writing Assignment

     Narrate a personal incident, humorous or sad. Organize your story in three clear parts: background, conflict, and resolution. Use appropriate chronological connectors, where necessary. 

§Sample 13

I Embarked on the Highway of Journalism

 

The following selection is taken from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and wry social commentator Russell Baker’s autobiography Growing Up (1982).

1.   I began working in journalism when I was eight years old. It was my mother’s idea. She wanted me to “make something” of myself and, after a levelheaded appraisal of my strengths, decided I had better start young if I was to have any chance of keeping up with the competition.

2.   The flaw in my character which she had already spotted was lack of “gumption.” My idea of a perfect afternoon was lying in front of the radio reading my favorite Big Little Book, Dick Tracy Meets Stooge Viller. My mother despised inactivity. Seeing me having a good time in repose, she was powerless to hide her disgust. “You’ve got no more gumption than a bump on a log,” she said. 

    […]

3.     She was realistic about the difficulty. Having sized up the material the Lord had given her to mold, she didn’t overestimate what she could do with it. She didn’t insist that I grow up to be President of the United States.
4.    Fifty years ago parents still asked boys if they wanted to grow up to be President, and asked it not jokingly but seriously. Many parents who were hardly more than paupers still believed their sons could do it. Abraham Lincoln had done it. We were only sixty years from Lincoln. Many a grandfather who walked among us could remember Lincoln’s time. Men of grandfatherly age were the worst for asking if you wanted to grow up to be President. A surprising number of little boys said yes and meant it.
5.    I was asked many times myself. No, I would say, I didn’t want to grow up to be President. My mother was present during one of these interrogations. An elderly uncle, having posed the usual question and exposed my lack of interest in the Presidency, asked, “Well, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
6.    I loved to pick through trash piles and collect empty bottles, tin cans with pretty labels, and discarded magazines. The most desirable job on earth sprang instantly to mind. “I want to be a garbage man,” I said.
7.  My uncle smiled, but my mother had seen the first distressing evidence of a bump budding on a log. “Have a little gumption, Russell,” she said. Her calling me Russell was a signal of unhappiness. When she approved of me, I was always “Buddy.”
8.    When I turned eight years old she decided that the job of starting me on the road toward making something of myself could no longer be safely delayed. “Buddy,” she said one day, “I want you to come home right after school this afternoon. Somebody’s coming and I want you to meet him.”
9.    When I burst in that afternoon she was in conference in the parlor with an executive of the Curtis Publishing Company. She introduced me. He bent low from the waist and shook my hand. Was it true as my mother had told him, he asked, that I longed for the opportunity to conquer the world of business?
10.    My mother replied that I was blessed with a rare determination to make something of myself.
11.    “That’s right,” I whispered.
12.    “But have you got the grit, the character, the never-say-quit spirit it takes to succeed in business?”
13.    My mother said I certainly did.
14.    “That’s right,” I said.
15.   He eyed me silently for a long pause, as though weighing whether I could be trusted to keep his confidence, and then spoke man-to-man. Before taking a crucial step, he said, he wanted to advise me that working for the Curtis Publishing Company placed enormous responsibility on a young man. It was one of the great companies of America. Perhaps the greatest publishing house in the world. I had heard, no doubt, of the Saturday Evening Post?
16.    Heard of it? My mother said that everyone in our house had heard of the Saturday Evening Post and that I, in fact, read it with religious devotion.
17.    Then doubtless, he said, we were also familiar with those two monthly pillars of the magazine world, the Ladies Home Journal and the Country Gentleman.
18.    Indeed we were familiar with them, said my mother.
19.   Representing the Saturday Evening Post was one of the weightiest honors that could be bestowed in the world of business, he said. He was personally proud of being a part of that great corporation.
20.    My mother said he had every right to be.
21.    Again he studied me as though debating I was worthy of a knighthood. Finally: “Are you trustworthy?”
22.    My mother said I was the soul of honesty.
23.    “That’s right,” I said.
24.    The caller smiled for the first time. He told me I was a lucky young man. He admired my spunk. Too many young men thought life was all play. Those young men would not go far in this world. Only a young man willing to work and save and keep his face washed and his hair neatly combed could hope to come out on top in a world such as ours. Did I truly and sincerely believe that I was such a young man?
25.    “He certainly does,” said my mother.
26.    “That’s right,” I said.
27.    He said he had been so impressed by what he had seen of me that he was going to make me a representative of the Curtis Publishing Company. On the following Tuesday, he said, thirty freshly printed copies of the Saturday Evening Post would be delivered at our door. I would place these magazines, still damp with the ink of the presses, in a handsome canvas bag, sling it over my shoulder, and set forth through the streets to bring the best in journalism, fiction, and cartoons to the American public.
28.    He had brought the canvas bag with him. He presented it with reverence fit for a chasuble¹¹. He showed me how to drape the sling over my left shoulder and across the chest so that the pouch lay easily accessible to my right hand, allowing the best in journalism, fiction, and cartoons to be swiftly extracted and sold to a citizenry whose happiness and security depended upon us soldiers of the free press.
29.    The following Tuesday I raced home from school, put the canvas bag over my shoulder, dumped the magazines in, and, tilting to the left to balance their weight on my right hip, embarked on the highway of journalism.

 

Comprehension

1. Why was Mrs. Baker not very hopeful of her son?
2. Why did parents, in those days, ask their kids in earnest if they wanted to be President of America?
3. What did Russell think was the most desirable job for him?
4. What did the caller think of his publishing house? How many magazines did it publish?
5. What impressed the caller about Russell so much that he decided to make him the ‘representative’ of his company?

 

Thesis and Audience

a) What, in your opinion, is the thesis of this passage?

b) Did you like reading this passage? Why? or Why not?

 

Style and Structure

a) Humor mixed with gentle mockery is the essence of this passage. Baker uses exaggeration as the primary source of his humor. Cite two examples of humor that you like most in the passage and say why you like them.

b)  In answer to all the questions, throughout the long interview with the publishing house ‘executive’, the boy Russell says, “That’s right.” What is the effect of this two-syllabic repeated-answer in the passage? Explain.

 

Writing

     Baker started working when he was only eight. Do you approve or disapprove of children working so early in life? In developing economies children working early in life is a very common feature. Narrate some experience where you have seen children working very early in life. You may write your composition in a serious tone or a humorous tone.

 

§Sample 14:

Why Couldn’t My Father Read?

Enrique Lopez

Enrique Lopez, a freelance writer and international lawyer, was born in Denver of parents who had emigrated from Mexico. A graduate of the University of Denver and Harvard Law School, he had a lifelong interest in bilingual education and the educational problems of Spanish-speaking children in the USA. His books include The Hidden Magic of Uxmal, The Harvard Mystique, Afro-6 and Conversations With Katherine Anne Porter. At the age of 64, in 1985, he died of heart attack at his home in Los Angeles.

1.    Recent articles on immigration and education remind me of my father, who was an ¹²articulate, fascinating storyteller, but totally ¹³illiterate. By the time I entered fourth grade in Denver, I was a proud, ¹⁴proficient reader -- and painfully aware of my father’s inability to read a single word in either Spanish or English. Although I’d been told there were no schools in his native village of Bachimba Chihuahua, I found it hard to accept the fact that he didn’t even know the alphabet.
2.    Consequently, every night as I watched my mother read to him, I would feel a surge of ¹⁵resentment and shame. Together they bent over La Prensa from San Antonio – the only available Spanish language newspaper. “How can he be so dumb?” I would ask myself. “Even a little kid can read a damned newspaper.” Of course many adults in our ¹⁶barrio couldn’t read or write, but that was no comfort to me. Nor did it ¹⁷console me that my hero Pancho Villa was also illiterate. After all, this was my own father, the man I considered to be smarter than anyone else, who could answer questions not even my mother could answer, who would take me around the ice factory where he worked and show me how all the machinery ran, who could make huge cakes of ice without any air bubbles, who could fix any machine or electrical appliance, who could tell me those wonderful stories about Pancho Villa.
3.    But he couldn’t read. Not one damned word!
4.    Whenever I saw mother reading to him – his head thrust forward like a dog waiting for a bone – I would walk out of the kitchen and sit on the back porch, my stomach churning with a swelling anger that could easily have turned to hatred. So bitter was my disappointment, so deep my embarrassment, that I never invited my friends into the house during that after-dinner hour when my mother habitually read to him. And if one of my friends had ¹⁸supped with us, I would hastily herd them out of the kitchen when my mother reached for La Prensa.
5.    Once, during a period of deepening frustration, I told my mother that we ought to teach him how to read and write. And when she said it was probably too late to teach him – that it might hurt his pride – I ¹⁹stomped out of the house and ran furiously down the back alley, finally staggering behind a trash can to vomit everything I’d eaten for supper.
6.    Standing there, in the dark, my hand still clutching the rim of the can, I simply couldn’t believe that anyone as smart as my dad couldn’t learn to read, couldn’t learn to write “cat” or “dog” or even “it”. Even I, who could barely understand the big words he used when he talked about Pancho Villa (revolution, liberated), even I, at the mere age of ten, could write big words in both English and Spanish. So why couldn’t he?
7.    Eventually, he did learn to write two words – his name and surname. Believing that he would feel less ²⁰humble if he could sign his full name rather than a mere “X” on his weekly paycheck, my mother wrote “Jose Lopez” on his Social Security card and taught him to copy it letter by letter. It was a slow, painstaking process that usually required two or three minutes as he drew each separate letter with solemn tight-lipped determination, pausing now and then as if to make sure they were in the proper sequence. Then he would carefully connect the letters with short hyphen-like lines, sometimes failing to close the gaps or overlapping letters.
8.    I was with him one Friday evening when he tried to cash his paycheck at a furniture store owned by Frank Fenner, a red-faced German with a bulbous nose and ²¹squinty eyes. My father usually cashed his check at Alfredo Pacheco’s corner grocery store, but that night, Pacheco had closed the store to attend a cousin’s funeral, so we had crossed the street to Fenner’s place.
9.    “You ²²cambiar this?” asked my father, showing him the check.
10.    “He wants you to cash it”, I added annoyed by my father’s use of the word cambiar.
11.    “Sure, Joe,” said Fenner. “Just write your signature on the back of it.”
12.  “Firme su nombre atras,” I told my father, indicating that Fenner wanted him to sign it.
13.    “Okay, I put my name,” said my father, placing his Social Security card on the counter so he could copy the “Jose Lopez” my mother had written for him.
14.    With Fenner looking on, a ²³smirk building on his face, my father began the ever-so-slow copying of each letter as I literally ²⁴squirmed with shame and hot resentment. Halfway through “Lopez,” my father paused, nervously licked his lips, glanced ²⁵sheepishly at Fenner’s ²⁶leering face. “No write too good,” he said. “My wife teach me.”
15.    Then, concentrating harder than before, he wrote the final “e” and “z” and slowly connected the nine letters with his jabby little scribbles. But Fenner was not satisfied. Glancing from the Social Security card to the check, he said, “I’m sorry, Joe, that ain’t the same signature. I can’t cash it.”
16.  “You bastard!” I yelled. “You know who he is! And you just saw him signing it.”
17.    Then suddenly grabbing a can of furniture polish, I threw it at Fenner’s head but missed it by at least six inches. As my father tried to restrain me, I twisted away and screamed at him, “Why don’t you learn to write, goddamn it! Learn to write!”
18.    He was trying to say something, his face ²⁷blurred by my angry tears, but I couldn’t hear him, for I was now backing and stumbling out of the store, my temples throbbing with the most awful ²⁸humiliation I had ever felt. My throat dry and sour, I kept running and running down Larimer Street and the north on 30^th Street toward Curtis Park, where I finally flung myself on the recently watered lawn and wept myself into a state of complete exhaustion.
19.    Hours later, now ²⁹guilt-ridden by what I had yelled at my dad, I came home and found him and my mother sitting at the kitchen table, writing tablet between them, with the alphabet neatly penciled at the top of the page.
20.    “Your mother’s teaching me how to write,” he said in Spanish, his voice so ³⁰wistful that I could hardly bear to listen to him. “Then maybe you won’t be ashamed of me.”
21.    But for reasons too complex for me to understand at that time, he never learned to read or write. Somehow, the multi-syllabic words he had always known and accurately used seemed confusing and totally beyond his grasp when they appeared in print or in my mother’s handwriting. So after a while, he quit trying.

 

Comprehension

1. How did Enrique keep his friends from learning that his father was illiterate?
2. Why was Enrique’s mother, initially, not in favor of teaching her husband?
3. Did Enrique hate his father for his illiteracy? How do you know?
4. Would you rate Enrique’s father as uneducated? What does the narrator tell you?
5. How do you explain the violence of the boy’s reaction? Explain the sources and targets of his anger.

 

Thesis and Audience

1. Biographical writings generally do not state the thesis explicitly. The reader has to infer the thesis. What is the thesis of the selection? Write it in one complete sentence.
2. The writer of the selection begins by saying what prompted him to write this story. Obviously he had a North American readership in his mind. Do you think his story has any relevance outside the USA, for example in China?

 

Style and Structure

1. How does the author organize the retelling of his experience? How does he keep it together?
2. By what various means does the author reveal the personality of his father? Do you think that he feels guilty at the way he treated his father? How do you know?

 

Writing Assignment

The narrator of this story is clearly Enrique; he is looking back to when he was a little boy. Retell this story from someone else’s point of view: the mother? the father? a neighbor? a school friend of Enrique’s? The events will remain the same, but the response to these events, and therefore, the viewpoint will change. Your writing should convey the changed point of view. Here are two examples for you to read which have been written by our students at Zhongshan University.

 

Students’ Compositions

 

§Sample 15

Should Illiteracy be Looked Down Upon?

 

  My classmate Enrique Lopes was one of my best friends because we were both immigrants. He was a Hispanic American and I was a Chinese American. He and I often went to school together and read books together. I often invited him to my home to taste Chinese dishes cooked by my father, but he never invited me to his home. I often wondered why he did that and then one day I learnt the reason why.

  One Friday evening I saw Enrique and his father go into a furniture store owned by one German immigrant, Frank Fenner, while I was nursing my cup of tea in the shop opposite. It was hardly ten minutes when I saw Enrique rush out of the store, his face red, crying bitterly. I felt something was terribly wrong with my friend and I ran after him. I wanted to know what was wrong, but he won’t open his lips. We walked side by side, silently; I could see my friend wanted to share his sorrow with me, but something prevented him. By this time we reached a quite place, and my friend suddenly stopped. I put my hands round his shoulder, and told him that I was his friend and if he shared his feelings with me it would help him. Hardly had I finished my sentence he fell down to the floor and cried like a little child. And then after a minute or so, he was quite again and told me what had passed in the furniture shop.

  He was very sore because Frank Fenner had made fun of his father because he could not sign his name on the paycheck smoothly; to add insult to the injury he refused to en-cash the check although he saw him sign the check right in his presence. He said it was not the first time that he had to face humiliation because of his father’s illiteracy. He was unable to understand why his father could not do such a simple thing as write his name that a little child could do. Now I realized why I was not welcome to his home. Now I realized that my bosom friend was a victim of wrong values of life; he was an image conscious child.

  In order to comfort my friend I told him that my father too was illiterate for he came from a small village in China where there were no schools. However, this limitation did not prevent him learning many things which even formally educated people did not know. My friend was comforted and started seeing things in a new light. He said what was true of my father was also true of his father. In spite of the fact that he did not have the advantage of going to school, he knew things which decently educated people did not know.

  I do not exactly remember this incident in my life. It was many years ago. But today my friend is a successful lawyer and he writes and lectures on education and literacy. His message is, one can be decently educated without being literate; if there are illiterate people in a society, it is the mistake of that society and not of illiterate people.

Wensheng Liang

 

§Sample 16:

My Son and His Illiterate Father

   My husband Jose Lopez, an excellent man, is a fascinating storyteller. He loves our son Enrique and the family deeply. Before Enrique started going to school, Jose used to tell him stories every night, often took him to ice factory where he worked explaining him how the big machines worked. At that time, the little boy considered his father as the most knowledgeable and competent man in the world, and his father tried his best to be an ideal father.

   Of course, Jose was a knowledgeable man, even though he could not read or write even a word. He was thirsty for knowledge, so I used to read him Spanish newspaper every night after dinner. He was the center of admiration for he could repair any machine, be it a heater or a geyser, or a washing machine; people respected him for his honesty, kindness and competence. Jose was a happy father, a loving husband, and a satisfied man.

   But all this changed when Enrique started going to elementary school; for he was so smart that he became more and more sensitive to almost everything around him. Jose was afraid that his son would find out some day that his father was illiterate and his sensitive nature might rub on the wrong side. Unfortunately, his fear turned into a reality too soon; Enrique was puzzled why his father could not read or write when he, only a slip of a boy, could. He would not like to be home during the time when I read to my husband. Not only that he made sure no friend of his was present at home after dinner hour when I read my husband the newspaper; he did not want his friends to know that his father was illiterate.

   One day, he even suggested that I should teach him how to read or write; but I refused for I knew it would hurt Jose’s pride. Enrique was almost crazy when he heard my answer. Later, Jose was equally sad when I told him about it. His heart was almost broken when he saw Enrique’s disappointed expression. He loved him so much that he began to learn to read and write. I was his teacher.

   It was a painful process. I first taught him how to write his own name. He studied very hard. However, maybe, it was too late for him to learn to read or write; it took him 5 minutes to copy nine letters of his name. As if the written words played a trick on him, he could not grasp them, no matter how hard he studied; the long words that came so naturally in his speech while telling absorbing stories were hostile to him in written form.

   The tension between father and son increased; the father failed to come up to his son’s expectations; the distance between them increased every day. I knew that I had to do something to help them know each other better. I told Enrique about the hard old days in Spain, told him why his father had not gone to school for there were no schools in his small village; here in our new home when he was young he slaved away day and night to ensure that his son went to a good school, and how his father loved him. I also helped Jose overcome his feeling of guilt for being not able to meet the unrealistic expectations of his son. As time went by, Enrique grew more and more mature, and he gradually “forgave” his father. Our family returned to the happy days of the past. I was extremely happy to see the love and warmth return to the two friends.

   Jose and I are both old now, and our son Enrique has become an excellent writer and a successful lawyer. He no longer cares about his father’s illiteracy; those sad days have gone forever like a bad dream. Our family is still as happy as before, and Enrique is as always our pride.

Haiyan Ren

 

 

 

¹ The lead character in a 1950s sitcom titled The Life of Riley.

² grungy: dirty (American slang)

³ silhouette: a dark shape seen against a light background

⁴ contingencies: possible future problems

⁵ piped up: suddenly started speaking

⁶ reeking: having strong unpleasant smell

⁷ blasphemous: considered offensive to God or religion

⁸ billowing furs: furs which rose and fell about her like waves of the sea

⁹ varmint: an unpleasant, annoying creature (a corrupted form of vermin)

¹⁰ draught: a cold current of air between open doors or windows in a room

¹¹ Chasuble: a  special garment worn by  priests during church ceremonies

¹² articulate: (adj.) expressing or able to express thoughts and feelings clearly, especially in words

¹³ illiterate: (adj.) unable to read or write

¹⁴ proficient: (adj.) thoroughly skilled; well practiced in an art, science, skill, or branch of study

¹⁵ resentment: (n.) a feeling of anger and bitterness about bad treatment

¹⁶ barrio is Spanish for subdivision of a city or neighborhood

¹⁷ to console: to give comfort or sympathy to some one in times of disappointment or sadness

¹⁸ to sup: (v.) (slang) to eat supper

¹⁹ to stomp: (v.) to walk or dance with heavy step

²⁰ humble: (adj.) low in rank or position; unimportant; not held in high regard by society

²¹ squinty: (adj.) looking with almost closed eyes, as at a bright light

²² cambiar is Spanish for change.

²³ to smirk: (v.) to smile in a false or too satisfied way

²⁴ to squirm: (v.) to twist the body nervously about, as from discomfort, fear or shame 

²⁵ sheepishly: (adv.) awkwardly, as from being slightly ashamed or fearful of others

²⁶ leering: (adj.) looking with an unpleasant smile expressing cruel enjoyment or rudeness

²⁷ blurred: (adj.) having a shape that is not clearly seen

²⁸ humiliation: (n.) the feeling of losing respect of others

²⁹ guilt-ridden: (adj.) doing something with the knowledge or belief that one has done something wrong

³⁰ wistful: (adj.) having thoughts of a wish that may not be satisfied

³¹ cerebral = relating to brain; osmosis = the way ideas/information spread; here the implication is that the student playing with these cards was unconsciously collecting information printed on the cards.

³² chivalrous man, (cavalier/ a knight)