Ateneo de Zamboanga University English

111 Reading and Composition Narration A Mothers Answer by Ben Carson and Gregg Lewis

Ben Carson is the director of pediatric neurosurgeon at the John Hopkins Hospital. But when he was an inner-city fifth grader, no one would have predicted he would ultimately obtain a scholarship to Yale and become a famous surgeon. At mid-term in the fifth grade, he had failed almost every subject. What took from zero grades to a scholarship at a prestigious university? In the selection below Ben Carson tells about the answer his mother found to help him and his brother. Her answer ultimately changed his life forever. Looking back, Ben Carson says, My poor mother was mortified. Here she was with a third-grade education, working two or three jobs as a domestic, cleaning other peoples houses, knowing that life didnt hold much for her. Seeing my brother and me going down the same road, she didnt know what to do. So what could she do to get her young sons to understand the importance of education so that they could determine their own destiny? God gave her wisdom though my brother and I didnt think it was all that wise. It was to turn off the television. From that point on she would let us watch a choice of only two or three television programs during the week. With all that spare time, we were to read two books a week from the Detroit Public Library. I was extraordinarily unhappy about this new arrangement. All my friends were outside, having a good time. I remember my mothers friends coming to her and saying, You cant keep boys in the house reading. Boys are supposed to be outside playing and developing their muscles. When they grow up, theyll hate you. They will be sissies. You cant do that! Sometimes I would overhear this and I would say, Listen to them mother. But she would never listen. We were going to have to read those books Sometimes, when I tell this story, people come up to me afterwards and ask, How was your mother able to get you to read those books? I cant get my kids to read or to ever turn off the television or Nintendo. I just have to chuckle and say, Well, back in those days, the parents ran the house. They didnt have to get permission from kids, That seems to be novel concept to a lot of people these days.

Ateneo de Zamboanga University English 111 Reading and Composition Narration

At any rate, I started reading. The nice thing was my mother did not dictate what we had to read. I loved animals, so I read every animal book in the Detroit Library. And when I finished those, I went on to plants. When I finished those, I went on to rocks because we lived in a dilapidated section of the city near the railroad tracks, and what is there along railroad tracks, but rocks? I would collect little boxes of rocks and take them home and get out my geology book. I would study until I could name virtually every rock, tell how it was formed, and identify where it came from. Months passed, I was still in fifth grade. Nobody knew about my reading project. I was still the dummy in the class.

One day the fifth grade science teacher walked in and held up a big shiny black rock. He asked, Can anybody tell me what this is? Keep in mind that I never raised my hand. I never answered questions. So I waited for some of the smart kids to raise their hands. None of them did. So I waited for some dumb kids to raise their hands. When none of them did, I thought, This is my big chance. So I raised my hand and everyone turned around to look. Some of my classmates were poking each other whispering, Look, look, Carsons got his hand up. This is gonna be good! They couldnt wait to see what was going to happen. And the teacher was shocked. He said, Benjamin? I said, Mr. Jack, thats obsidian, And there was silence in the room because it sounded good. But no one knew whether it was right or wrong. So, other kids didnt know if they should laugh or be impressed. Finally the teacher broke his silence and said. Thats right! This is obsidian. I went on to explain, Obsidian is formed after a volcanic eruption. Lava flows down and when it hits water there is a super cooling effect process. The elements coalesce, air is forced out, the surface glazes over, and I suddenly realized everyone was staring at me in amazement. They couldnt believe all this geological information spewing from the mouth of a dummy. But you know, I was perhaps the most amazed person in the room, because it dawned on me in that moment that I was no dummy. I thought, Carson, the reason you knew the answer is because you were reading books. What if you read books about all your subjects science, math,

Ateneo de Zamboanga University English 111 Reading and Composition Narration

history, geography, social studies? Couldnt you then know more than all these students who tease you and call you dummy? I must admit the idea appealed to me to the extent that no book was safe from my grasp. I read everything I could get my hands on. If I had five minutes, I had a book. If I was in the bedroom I was reading a book. If I was waiting for the bus I was reading a book. Within a year and a half, I went from the bottom of the class to the top of the class much to the consternation of all those students who used to tease me and call me dummy. The same ones would come to me in the seventh grade to ask, Hey Benny, how do you work this problem? And I would say, Sit at my feet youngster, while I instruct you. I was perhaps a little obnoxious. But after all those years it felt so good to say that to those who had tormented me. The important point here is that I had the same brain when I was still at the bottom of the class as I had when I reached the top of the class. The difference was this: in the fifth grade, I thought I was dumb so I acted like I was dumb, and I achieved like a dumb person. As a seventh grader I thought I was smart, so I acted and achieved accordingly. So what does that say about what a person thinks about his own abilities? What does this say about the importance of our self-image? What does it say about the incredible potential of the human brain our Creator has given us?

Ateneo de Zamboanga University English 111 Reading and Composition Narration Writing a Narration

If there is a rhetorical mode that can be said to be inborn in some people, it is narration. Most of us think we can tell good story, and almost all of us have tried our hand at narration. Granted our stories may have been oral and told on the front porch to family and friends, but story is a story and the techniques for telling one orally or in writing are essentially similar. Briefly and in order of importance, they are as follows: Have a Point The point of a story is what endows it with movement with a beginning, a middle, and an end. If your story has no point it will also seem to have no movement, to go nowhere, to become bogged down and stagnant. Good storytellers always begin with a point in mind. They want to show how absentminded Uncle Mickey has become; they wish to prove that haste makes waste. From this beginning the story should proceed without pause or slip. Sometimes a storyteller will even begin by telling us its point is George Orwells Shooting an Elephant. One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny accident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism the real motives for which despotic government act. This tells us what to expect. As we read on, we expect the author to deliver what he has advertised. Have a point and stick to it that age-old advice often given by writing teachers definitely applies to narration. Pace Your Story Fiction tells lies about time. It has to. Real time is not always action-packed, does not always carry us to the dizzying brink or make us feel the throb of life. In fact, time is usually humdrum and dull in real life. But no reader wants a story to trudge through uneventful hours. What the reader wants is for the dull and humdrum to disappear in the puff of a sentence, and foe the focus of the story

Ateneo de Zamboanga University English 111 Reading and Composition Narration

always to be on time that is eventful and exciting. The technique of doing this is known as pacing. All storytellers pace their materials to focus only on eventful periods and to ignore all inconsequential stretches in between, in the following example; taken from Were Poor, an entire season disappears in a single paragraph: I didnt go back to school that fall. My mother said it was because I was sick. I did have a cold week that school opened; I had been playing in the gutters and had my feet wet, because they were holes in my shoes. . . . As long as I had to stay in the house anyway, they were all right. I stayed cooped up in the house, without any companionship. . . . . In Were Poor the author, Floyd Dell, learns from a Christian experience that his family is destitute. The story consequently spends a good deal of time and attention on that climactic Christmas Eve during which the narrator makes this discovery. But the inconsequential months of the preceding fall are quickly dismissed in a paragraph. Tell the Story from a Consistent Point of View The point of view of a story is the angle from which it is told. This angle may be personal and intimate, a narrator being referred to by the pronoun I. Or it may be an omniscient point of view, in which the narrator is like a supernatural video camera sweeping over the scene and pausing briefly to focus on selective characters describing how they look, what they say, and how they feel. Often this omniscient observer will select one central character, setting the person in relief so that he or she will catch the readers intense and undivided attention. In any case, you must always stay in character when telling a story, and you must always remain consistent to the viewpoint from which you are telling it. Here is an example of the omniscient point of view in a narration. It comes from In the Region of Ice (pp. 120-33). Joyce Carol Oates is telling the story of a troubled teacher-student relationship. As an omniscient narrator, Oates moves deftly from character to character as if seeing everything clearly and truthfully. About the main female character, the narrator observes: Sister Irene was a tall, deft woman in her early thirties. What one could see of her face made a striking impression serious, hard gray eyes, a long slender nose, a face waxen with thought. Seen at the right

Ateneo de Zamboanga University English 111 Reading and Composition Narration time, from the right angle, she was almost handsome. In her past teaching positions she had drawn a little upon the fact of her being young and brilliant and also a nun, but she was beginning to grow out of that.

A little further into the story, the narrator moves from Sister Irene to the male lead character, a student, seeing him just as clearly as she sees Sister Irene: About two weeks after the semester began, Sister Irene notices a new student in her class. He was slight and fair-haired, and his face was blank, but no blank by accident, blank on purpose, suppressed and restricted into a dumbness that looked hysterical. The story continues to develop both characters, the teacher and the student. Although Sister Irene is the central consciousness of the story, Allen Weinstein, the student, becomes a crucial part of the total narrative conflict with the author recording faithfully all he does, says, and feels, just as she also records the comings and goings of Sister Irene. In fact, in this story the narrator records even the actions and words of minor characters, which makes her a typical omniscient narrator. Now consider the following excerpt from Beryl Markhams vivid childhood memory, Praise God for the Blood of the Bull: I lean for a moment on my spear peering outward at what is nothing, and then turn toward my thorn tree. Are you here, Lakwani? Arap Mainas voice is cool as water on the shaded rocks. I am here, Maina. He is tall and naked and very dark beside me. Shuka is tied around his left forearm to allow his body freedom to run. You are alone, and you have suffered, my child. I am all right, Maina, but I fear for Buller. I think he may die. Arap Maina kneels on the earth and runs his hand over Bullers body. He has been seriously and perhaps mortally wounded, Lakwani, but do not permit your mind to be too obsessed with any imaginary deficiencies of self-recriminations on your part. I conjecture that your lance has rescued him from a certain death, and God will recompense you for that. . . . If the final paragraph sounds bizarre to you in the context of the excerpt, it should. We have altered the dialogue (and added italics to clearly distinguish it

Ateneo de Zamboanga University English 111 Reading and Composition Narration

from Markhams words_ to dramatize what we mean by a lapse in consistency. In the final paragraph Maina suddenly and inexplicably shifts from the simple speech of a native African to the pompous, long-winded speech of a British magistrate. A character in a narrative must always speak more or less the same way throughout and cannot lurch from one style of talk to another as we have made Maina do. Make your characters consistent and your narrative will seem believable. Insert Appropriate Details Details are indispensable to narrative writing and can make the difference between boredom and delight in a reader. No one can teach you the art of including captivating details, but common sense tells us that you are more likely to include the absolutely right details if you write your narrations what you truly know. Here, for example, in Beryl Markhams description of a warthog, we get the feeling that the writer has had personal experience with the animals: I know animals more gallant than the African warthog, but none more courageous. He is the peasant of the plains the drab and dowdy digger in the earth. He is the uncomely but intrepid defender of family, home, and bourgeois convention, and he will fight anything of any size that intrudes upon his smug existence. Even his weapons are plebeian curved tusks, sharp, deadly, but not beautiful, used inelegantly for rooting as well as for fighting. If you cannot write about what you know, the next big thing is to know about what you write. The advice to always research your subject before writing about it cannot be imparted too strongly. Even veteran fiction writers do not simply plunge into their narrations without doing the spadework necessary to make their scene authentic. And while person experience is probably the best basis for a narration, adequate and detailed research can be every bit as good.