Because

of the
Firecat
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cosmogony ...........................................................................................................2
The Shivering Tree ...............................................................................................2
History Lesson ......................................................................................................10
Memento Mori ......................................................................................................11
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night .............................................................20
She Walks in Beauty ............................................................................................. 21
The Lottery ...........................................................................................................22
The Raven .............................................................................................................28
Micro Fiction ........................................................................................................31
Earthy Anecdotes .................................................................................................32
th tomato conspiracy aint worth a whol pome ....................................................32
Boys and Girls....................................................................................................... 33
Where All I Know Comes From ...........................................................................43
Ruba’i .................................................................................................................... 44
Haiku .................................................................................................................... 45
The Veldt...............................................................................................................46
Children of the Raven ...........................................................................................55
Epigrams ...............................................................................................................56
Terminology .........................................................................................................57
Questions Instructions .........................................................................................60

1
Cosmogony The Shivering Tree
Björk John McLeod
 
heaven Nanabush was walking; he’d been
heaven's bodies walking a long time. He’d been walk-
whirl around me ing a long time and he was feeling very
make me wonder tired and thirsty.
and they say: back then our universe   “My, my, my,” Nanabush said to
was an empty sea— himself, “I’ve been walking a long time
until a silver fox and boy oh boy am I tired and thirsty.
and her cunning mate It’s a good thing I’m such a smart fel-
began to sing low and decided to follow this river.
a song that became This way, if I get lost, I’ll still know
the world we know where I am even though I won’t.”
 And he liked what he said to him-
and they say: back then our universe self.
was a coal-black egg—
until the god inside   “Goodness me but I’m a bright
burst out and from its shattered shell fellow,” Nanabush said to himself.
he made what became And he had to stop in his tracks and
the world we know smile and just shake his head, he was
just so proud of himself for what he’d
and they say: back then our universe just said just before telling himself
was an endless land how bright he was.
until our ancestors   “Well, Nanabush, you bright fel-
woke up and low, let’s go down to the river and
before they went back to sleep have a drink and rest our old bones for
they carved it up into a year or two … heh, heh,” Nanabush
the world we know said to himself. And he agreed.

and they say: back then our universe   Feeling very proud of himself,
wasn't even there— Nanabush strutted down to the river.
until a sudden bang It wasn’t far at all and when he got
there was light—was sound— there Nanabush took a good long
was matter drink, threw some water in his face,
and it all became and lay back on the sandy bank.
the world we know   “It certainly is a big world,” he
thought. “Somewhere to the west of
here are the Tall Mountains that mark
the approach of the Home of the West
Wind. Someday I’ll go there, for I’ve a
score to settle with that Old Fellow.”
  That’s when his quick ears caught
another sound above the voice of the
river. It was another voice, a man’s
QUESTIONS
voice.
1. How are the four creation stories  Nanabush sat up, fast.
in this poem similar?
2
   “A man?” Nanabush thought.
“That just can’t be. No human being
has come this far.”
 But it was a man. At least it looked
like one. But that meant nothing back
in those times; after all, Nanabush
looked like a man—most of the time.
But Nanabush was far from being hu-
man. But just who or what was this
fellow anyway?
  Like I said, the stranger looked
human at least. He was tall and thin,
clad in buckskins with long fringe that
fluttered and shivered in the breeze.
He wore warm leggings and moccasins
as it was autumn and the weather was
getting colder.
  The stranger was juggling some-
thing. Now that was interesting.
  He was juggling with his eyes
closed. And that was mighty interest-
ing.
  Nanabush stood up, slowly, never
taking his eyes off the juggling
stranger.
  “Hello, Nanabush,” The Juggler
said, still juggling, his eyes still shut
firmly. “It is Nanabush, isn’t it?”
 Nanabush felt insulted.
  “Of course I’m Nanabush,”
Nanabush said. “Who else could I be?”
  The Juggler, eyes still firmly shut,
still juggling what appeared to be a
pair of small crystals, just smiled.
  “Well, let me see now,” The Jug-
gler said, still juggling, his eyes still
shut firmly. “You could be Me, seeing
as I’m the only person in these parts,
but as you are you and not me and I’m
here to see it, I guess I’m me and
you’re you and you must be
Nanabush, because I’ve heard you’ve
been spotted in these parts and I’m
the only person here who would have
heard about you besides you.”
 Nanabush glared at The Juggler.
3
 “It’s a fortunate thing for you that
I’m such a clever fellow,” Nanabush
said, “because if I wasn’t I might’ve
been confused by what you just said
and I’d’ve become very angry.”
  The Juggler just kept on juggling,
eyes closed and all.
  Nanabush felt himself getting im-
patient.
  “Well?” Nanabush said. “Are you
going to tell me who you are?”
 With a big, wide grin, The Juggler
stopped what he was doing, opened
his eyes, and turned to Nanabush.
 “Very well,” The Juggler said, “I’m
a juggler and conjuror and I am
known as Restless As The Wind; but
most people just call me The Juggler.”
  “I have never heard of you,”
Nanabush said. He didn’t like this fel-
low at all. No sir, Nanabush didn’t like
him at all.
  “I was just playing around with a
couple of pieces of crystal,” The Jug-
gler said. “That was nothing at all.
That was just ordinary juggling that a
child can do, eyes closed or not. Just
watch. I’ll show you some real conjur-
ing … Look, Nanabush, look.”
  Quick as lightning, The Juggler
plucked out his own eyes and started
to juggle them, rapidly from hand to
hand.
  He started to dance leaping into
the air, all the while juggling his eyes
hand to hand, back and forth, back
and forth, hand to hand. Nanabush
was stunned, couldn’t move.
  Now that in itself was something.
It takes a great deal to shake up some-
one like Nanabush, and everyone
knows that there just isn’t anyone to
compare with The Great Nanabush.
  The Juggler kept it up. Juggling,
hand to hand, back and forth, back
and forth, hand to hand, dancing,
leaping, juggling. Juggling his eyes.
  “Stop,” Nanabush said, shouting.
“Stop, you’re making me dizzy … stop
it.”
  And, just as quickly as he had
started, The Juggler stopped, came to
a halt just like that, arms out wide,
head back, just in time for his eyes to
fall right straight into their sockets.
  Nanabush’s own eyes almost fell
out, he stared so hard.
  The Juggler grinned: boy did he
grin.
 Nanabush couldn’t stop staring.
 I don’t blame The Great Nanabush
one bit, my friends. A sight like that
can be enough to jar anyone’s pre-
serves.
 “Now that is most certainly conjur-
ing at its best,” Nanabush said, “and
you may take that as the word of the
very one who invented conjuring.”
 The Juggler grinned.
  “Well, Great Nanabush, Father of
Conjuring. Perhaps I can show my
gratitude, indeed the gratitude of all of
us Conjurors,” The Juggler said, smil-
ing. “Allow me to show you how it’s
done. Allow me to show you how to
juggle one’s own eyes in one’s own
hands.”
  Now that got to Nanabush. For
great and powerful as he can be,
Nanabush can make the odd blunder
now and then, and when he does, it’s
usually a bad one. This was going to be
one of the worst.
  “I’m flattered,” Nanabush said,
smiling like a proud father. “And I’m
never too old to learn.”
 How true that was. Nanabush was
about to learn a lesson that he and we
are never going to forget.
4
“Will you allow me, then, to show
you how it is done?” The Juggler said,
smiling.
  “The honour will be mine,”
Nanabush said, stepping forward.
“Show me how it’s done, Nephew.”
  “Removing the eyes is the really
dangerous part,” The Juggler said.
“You have to apply some pressure just
below each eye, like this.”
  The Juggler demonstrated how it
was supposed to be done. Using his
thumbs, he applied some pressure
underneath his eye-sockets, and …
POP … out came the eyes. Very quick-
ly, but carefully, he caught the eyes
and, quickly and just as carefully,
placed them back in his sockets.
  “Did you see that?” The Juggler
said. “Now, very carefully, ’cause it’s
just the first time, try it yourself and
on yourself. Not too fast. This is only
the First Lesson.”
  Nanabush placed his thumbs un-
der his eye-sockets, carefully applied
some pressure.
  “Good, good … that’s good,” The
Juggler said, directing and urging
Nanabush. “Careful now … be very
careful.”
  Then … POP … out came
Nanabush’s eyes … Then … WHOOSH
out shot The Juggler’s right hand and
grabbed Nanabush’s eyes in mid-air.
  “I’ve got them … HA HA. I’ve got
them,”
 The Juggler cried, leaping into the
air and spinning like a top. “I’ve got
the most powerful charms of any con-
juror in The North. I have the very
eyes of Nanabush … HA HA I have
them.” Then, as quick as lightning,
The Juggler turned and ran, ran faster
than he’d ever run in his life, for
Nanabush is still Nanabush, blind or
not.
   But Nanabush was blind. Even
before The Juggler turned and ran,
Nanabush had made a lunge forward,
instinctively knowing that something
had gone wrong.
  As The Juggler ran off, laughing
and whooping, Nanabush landed, face
down in the river. Almost immediate-
ly, he was on his feet. Almost immedi-
ately he was the real Nanabush. He
stood still, turned his fear into cau-
tion.
 “I’ve been a fool, a vain, yes … even
a blind fool. With both my eyes in my
head, I was blind,” he said to himself.
He stood still, silent. He listened. He
began to take his bearings.
  The river was in front of him. He
turned his back to it.
  “Until I regain my sight … and I
will regain my sight, I must feel my
way about. I also need a weapon which
I can use easily and quickly should one
of my old enemies come upon me,”
Nanabush said to himself. “A staff,
that’s it. A big heavy staff, sharpened
at one end; it’ll act as a cane and a
weapon. I must find my way to the
bush.”
  So, stumbling over bits of drift-
wood and rocks, falling painfully but
always getting right back up on his
feet, Nanabush made his way toward
the bush, feeling his way with his
hands, carefully keeping his ears open
for every sound.
 “If a friend finds me, may he truly
be a friend,” Nanabush said. “If an
enemy should come upon me, may he
act with honour. If my enemy should
save me, I will gladly be in his debt. If
my enemy finds me and chooses to kill
me, then fine, I will still owe him
something, if only a good fight.”
  All around him was darkness. But
he knew that to be a false darkness.
The birds still sang and the warmth of
the sun made itself felt on his body
5
and he knew it to be daylight and he
knew himself to be in full view of
friend, foe, and stranger alike. But he
stumbled on, into the bush. He knew
he was in the bush, for he smelt pine
needles and the odour of fallen leaves.
He bent over and felt a pine cone be-
neath his hand.
  “I must find a stout pole to carve
into a pointed staff,” he said, feeling
about, moving more cautiously than
before.
  The forest was thick, for he con-
tinually bumped into trees and
stumps.
  “Trees, stumps, but no limbs of
any good size,” he thought. “At least
one old enemy of mine has been at
work here, Old Man Beaver and his
clan.”
  Then his left hand touched on
something, a young fallen tree. This
was it. He ran his hands up and down
the narrow trunk. This was exactly
what he wanted. He pulled out his
knife after using his great strength to
break off an appropriate length of
trunk. Carefully, he sat down and
carefully, very carefully, he began to
carve.
  A staff alone won’t be enough.
Nanabush knew that. He’d have to
find help from someone who knew the
country, someone he could trust,
someone who could be trusted as a
guide.
  But Nanabush had to concentrate
on his carving. He had to be really,
really careful or, in his blindness, he
might cut off a finger or two.
 So far, he hadn’t given a thought to
The Juggler.
  He kept on carving, clumsily but
carefully.
  Then, suddenly, he stopped.
Stopped everything. He had a strong
feeling that he was being watched. He
tightened his grip on the knife.
 Though he had no eyes with which
to see, he still instinctively moved his
head back and forth as if scanning the
area around him. He was certain that
he was being watched. The feeling was
even stronger.
  Then he heard the voice, a deep
clear voice, from somewhere above
him.
 “Well?” The Voice said. “Why have
you stopped? You were doing well.”
 Knife in hand, Nanabush leaped to
his feet.
  “Who is there?” he snapped. “If
you’re an enemy, come out and fight.”
 “Fight?” The Voice said. “I thought
you were busy working with that piece
of wood.”
  Nanabush recognized the voice. It
was indeed the voice of an enemy; a
very old enemy, too.
  “Owl, so it’s you,” Nanabush said,
more on his guard than ever. “Well.
What are you waiting for? Come and
fight.”
  “I’m an old warrior, not an old
fool,” Owl said. “There’s a thousand
eyes in these woods. If I fought you
and if I slew you in the condition
which you are in the whole of Creation
would hear of it. You’d be honoured.
I’d be disgraced.
  “No, Nanabush. I’m no coward. I
may be your enemy, but I would like
to think that I’m a worthy enemy.
  “Lower your weapon. There is no
danger from me, you have my word as
a Warrior and as the head of my clan.”
 Nanabush, on hearing this solemn
oath, placed his knife back into its
sheath. “I know that you’re blind,”
said the Owl. “So will others and soon,
Nanabush. Others who may not be so
generous. Something must be done to
6
restore your vision to you.” “I’ll find a
way myself,” said Nanabush. “I’m al-
ready far too much in debt to you,
Owl.”
  “Not if we decide to be friends,”
Owl said. “I am willing, for I wish
there to be peace for my children. If
you agree, then it’s done.”
 “Then it’s done,” Nanabush said.
  Their friendship sealed, the two
began to talk of Nanabush’s trouble.
 “There is a way to restore your vi-
sion,” Owl said. “I will give you a pair
of eyes. I will give you my eyes.”
  “But Owl, my friend. That will
leave you with no eyes. You will be as
blind as I now am,” Nanabush said.
  The Owl shook his head. If he
could have smiled, he would have.
  “Oh no, not me,” Owl said. “You
see, Nanabush, I have two sets of eyes.
One set for daytime and another set
for night. As most of my enemies are
daylight hunters like the hawk, I’ll do
my hunting at night from now on.
During the day, I’ll rest and stay safely
with my family. I’ll need only one set
of eyes then. The other set I give to
you.”
 Owl told Nanabush to hold out his
hands. Nanabush did so, and a pair of
eyes dropped into Nanabush’s hands.
Then … POP … Nanabush dropped the
eyes into his own sockets.
 “They are perfect, Owl,” Nanabush
said, joyously but seriously, as befits a
Warrior.
  “From this day, Owl, the night is
yours,” Nanabush declared. “From
this day and for all time, you will be
the Bird of The Night. You will be my
eyes at night. At night your vision will
be sure and your flight safe and clear.
You will be to night as the Eagle and
the Falcon are to the daylight. You’ll
rule the night skies. And out of respect
for the great favour you have done for
me, all who hear you call at night shall
show their respect. They must not
mimic your call if they hear you; that
is to say, they will not answer your
call. For them to do so would be to
mock you. Your call will be my mes-
sage in the night that I, Nanabush,
never sleep but with my ears open,
that even at night I watch those whom
I protect, and that I keep a watch out
for those who would do harm to The
Creation. So call out at night, Owl, my
friend and my Emissary.”
  Their friendship sealed for all
time, Owl and Nanabush bade each
other good hunting and a long life.
And so they parted, Owl with his new
honours, Nanabush with his new eyes.
  Springtime. Springtime, and
Nanabush was home. New eyes and
everything. “The World is very beauti-
ful this day,” Nanabush said to himself
as he walked along. “All is green and
fragrant with new life and the birds
are back. Yes, this is truly a beautiful
day.”
 “Can’t wait till the butterflies come
out,” Nanabush said. “My, but it’s a
wonderful day. Good thing that I have
my eyes to see it all.”
  Then came that little voice that is
sometimes to be heard in the back of
Nanabush’s mind. “Ah, Nanabush, but
they weren’t always your eyes, were
they?” Nanabush remembered, of
course. He remembered where his
new eyes had come from and he re-
membered also what had happened to
his old eyes. For the first time in
months he thought of The Juggler.
That ruined his day.
  “The Juggler,” Nanabush thought.
“If I ever again meet up with that
thieving rascal, he will regret the day
his parents met. He will need more
than an extra pair of eyes when I get
through with him.”
  His day was ruined, he sat down
and sulked. He couldn’t help but think
7
of The Juggler, couldn’t think of any-
thing else.
In the days which followed,
Nanabush was obsessed with his
strange enemy. He talked of little else.
He began to worry his friends and his
family.
His Grandmother advised him to
stop thinking about The Juggler.
 “You still have a great deal of work
to do in this world,” Grandmother
said. “You’ve much to do. You are the
teacher, the helper of all living things.
Go about your work, Grandson. Don’t
seek out enemies. They will find you
soon enough if they are not cowards.”
 So Nanabush carried on as always.
Sometimes sure of himself, sometimes
blundering, but always leaving his
mark somewhere, somehow, on the
world around him, making it more
and more like the world we know to-
day.
  Then, one afternoon in the late
summer, he felt in need of a drink of
water. He was deep in the woods at
this time, but he knew where there
was a clear, cold pool of water not far
from where he stood. Picking up his
kit, he made his way through the bush.
He’d just about reached the pool when
he saw, through the bushes around
him, that another was at the pool.
 A man.
 A tall, thin man.
 A tall, thin man who was juggling a
pair of crystals hand to hand, back and
forth, hand to hand, back and forth.
  Nanabush’s eyes narrowed; he
clenched his teeth.
  “I must think this out,” Nanabush
said to himself. “I must think quickly,
though. I may not get another chance
at this rascal; besides, in addition to
being my enemy, he’s a Sorcerer and a
dangerous one. Who is to tell how
much damage he has done to others
besides me? This fellow is very dan-
gerous and I must do something about
him.”
Quickly and quietly, as only he can
do it, Nanabush changed his appear-
ance. He took on the appearance of an
old man. Then he stepped out into the
open.
The Juggler gave him a quick
glance but kept right on juggling.
 “Good day, Old One,” The Juggler
said. “I’d wish you long life but it
seems a good number have already
done so.”
“So they have, Nephew,” Nanabush
said. “And they did so out of respect.”
“Forgive me if I sound disrespect-
ful,” The Juggler said, continuing to
juggle, “but I’m a very happy fellow
these days and I sometimes don’t give
thought to what I’m saying. It could be
that you’ve heard of me. I’m The Jug-
gler. My name is Restless As The
Wind.”
 “So,” Nanabush said. “You are the
fellow Nanabush is looking for, the
one who stole Nanabush’s eyes.”
“That’s me all right, Old One,” The
Juggler said. “Tell Nanabush if you
like to. Maybe I’ll take his ears this
time.”
  “He’ll find you without my telling
him,” Nanabush said, trying to hold
back a smile. “He is no longer blind,
by the way. A friend gave him a new
pair of eyes.”
 The Juggler stopped his juggling.
 Nanabush, still looking like an Old
Man, stepped over to the pool and
took a drink of water.
  “So, he’s got new eyes, has he?”
The Juggler said, trying not to sound
as scared as he was beginning to feel.
“Well, good for him. If he comes to
me, I just might take his new eyes, too.
I did it before and I can do it again.”
8
 Nanabush stood up.
 “So, you’re a mighty, powerful fel-
low?” Nanabush said. “You think that
you can beat Nanabush?”
  “I am a great Sorcerer,” The Jug-
gler said. “I can defeat anything or
anyone.”
  “Can you beat me?” Nanabush
said.
 “Anyone or anything,” The Juggler
said, trying very hard to sound brave.
  “I’ve heard that you can juggle
with your eyes out of your head. That
you don’t need eyes to see,” Nanabush
said.
  The Juggler grinned, popped out
his own eyes, and juggled them, hand
to hand, back and forth, hand to hand,
back and forth. The he stopped, threw
his head back. Then he tossed his eyes
into the air. Up went his eyes, down
they came and … plunk … landed safe-
ly in their sockets.
  “Is that good enough for you, Old
One?” The Juggler said, grinning at
Nanabush.
  But it wasn’t Nanabush as an old
man standing there. It was Nanabush
as The Juggler remembered him.
  “Well. If it isn’t The Great
Nanabush himself,” The Juggler said,
grinning and trying to sound (and
feel) braver than he really was.
  “I’ve already seen that trick,”
Nanabush said. And he was grinning,
too.
  “So, Nanabush, are you tired of
your new pair of eyes already?” The
Juggler said. “If you want to save us
both time and work, you can just hand
your eyes over to me right now.”
 “If you really want my eyes, you’re
going to have to work for them,
Nephew,” Nanabush said.
   “Fine by me. Just tell me how,”
The Juggler said.
 “Very good, Nephew. Nothing fan-
cy—I’ll toss my eyes to you and you
catch them,” Nanabush said. “If you
catch them, you get to keep them; if
you miss you won’t owe me a thing. All
or nothing. Fair enough.”
  “Too easy,” The Juggler said. “No
real chal le nge . Tell y ou what,
Nanabush. I’ll seal my eyes shut. How
does that sound?”
  “Fine by me, Nephew,” Nanabush
said. “But I warn you. I’m going to be
throwing from quite a distance, from
the very rim of the world itself.”
  “Ha. Go to the rim of the world.
Even that wouldn’t be far enough. I’d
know when it’s coming. I’ll just stand
here and wait. You’re the one who’ll
have all the work to do. If you want to
walk all the way to the edge of Cre-
ation just to toss a couple of eyes,
that’s fine by me, I’ll catch them. I
never miss,” The Juggler said proudly.
 With a shrug of his shoulders, The
Juggler obtained some sap from a
nearby tree. This sap he used to seal
his eyes shut. Then he stood calmly
and with very great confidence.
  “Well, Nanabush. I’m ready if you
are. Be on your way. It’s a long walk,
but I’ll wait. When victory is a sure
thing, I can wait,” The Juggler said.
Then he folded his arms in front of his
chest and said no more.
 Nanabush walked away.
 Nanabush walked away, but not to
the rim of the world. He just plain
walked away and didn’t look back.
  Nanabush went about his work of
making the world what it was meant
to be. He never gave The Juggler an-
other thought. Why?
  Because Nanabush knew that The
Juggler, like all Sorcerers, was a vain
fellow more than eager to show off his
9
power no matter how long it took. The
Juggler said he’d wait and so he did.
He’s still waiting. And he will wait for
all time, until The End of Time. Oh,
it’s not at all difficult to find him. He’s
very well known. He’s easily recogniz-
able.
 His name, you recall, is Restless As
The Wind. It’s a very descriptive
name. He’s still to be seen standing,
day in, day out, standing, rooted to the
spot, his fringes and hair swaying and
shivering constantly in the wind, at
the slightest breeze or draught. Even
when the air is perfectly still.
  To pass the long hours away, you
see, The Juggler, Restless As The
Wind, has taken the form of a tree. A
tree that never rests, whose leaves and
branches still shake and shiver even
when the air is still and quiet.
He’s become the Shivering Tree.
The Poplar Tree.
And that’s the way it is to this good
day. 
QUESTIONS
2. Discuss the blending of the natur-
al and supernatural world in this
story.
3. Discuss this story as a cautionary
tale.
4. From what point of view is the
story told? How does this con-
tribute to the effectiveness of an
oral story?
5. In Aboriginal Mythology what is
the relationship between people
and the environment?
History Lesson Somewhere among the remains
Jeannette C. Armstrong of skinless animals
is the termination
to a long journey
Out of the belly of Christopher’s ship and unholy search
a mob bursts for the power
Running in all directions glimpsed in a garden
Pulling furs off animals forever closed
Shooting buffalo forever lost
Shooting each other
left and right

Father mean well

waves his makeshift wand
forgives saucer-eyed Indians

Red coated knights

gallop across the prairie
to get their men
and to build a new world

Pioneers and traders

bring gifts
Smallpox, Seagrams
and rice krispies

Civilization has reached

the promised land

Between the snap crackle pop

of smoke stacks
and multicoloured rivers
swelling with flower powered zee
are farmers sowing skulls and bones
and miners
pulling from gaping holes
green paper faces
of a smiling English lady

The colossi QUESTIONS


in which they trust
while burying 6. How does the speaker’s perspective
breathing forests and fields of colonial history compare with
beneath concrete and steel yours?
stand shaking fists
waiting to mutilate 7. What do you think is the ‘lesson’
whole civilizations that the reader is meant to learn
ten generations at a blow from the poem.
8. Analyze the relationship between
historical context and theme.

10
Memento Mori
Johnathan Nolan
"What like a bullet can undeceive!"
—Herman Melville
1 Your wife always used to say you'd
be late for your own funeral. Remem-
ber that? Her little joke because you
were such a slob—always late, always
forgetting stuff, even before the inci-
dent.
Right about now you're probably
wondering if you were late for hers.
You were there, you can be sure of
that. That's what the picture's for—the
one tacked to the wall by the door. It's
not customary to take pictures at a
funeral, but somebody, your doctors, I
guess, knew you wouldn't remember.
They had it blown up nice and big and
stuck it right there, next to the door,
so you couldn't help but see it every
time you got up to find out where she
was.
The guy in the picture, the one with
the flowers? That's you. And what are
you doing? You're reading the head-
stone, trying to figure out whose fu-
neral you're at, same as you're reading
it now, trying to figure why someone
stuck that picture next to your door.
But why bother reading something
that you won't remember?
She's gone, gone for good, and you
must be hurting right now, hearing the
news. Believe me, I know how you
feel. You're probably a wreck. But give
it five minutes, maybe ten. Maybe you
can even go a whole half hour before
you forget.
But you will forget—I guarantee it.
A few more minutes and you'll be
heading for the door, looking for her
all over again, breaking down when
you find the picture. How many times
do you have to hear the news before
some other part of your body, other
than that busted brain of yours, starts
to remember?
11
Never-ending grief, never-ending
anger. Useless without direction.
Maybe you can't understand what's
happened. Can't say I really under-
stand, either. Backwards amnesia.
That's what the sign says. CRS disease.
Your guess is as good as mine.
Maybe you can't understand what
happened to you. But you do remem-
ber what happened to HER, don't
you? The doctors don't want to talk
about it. They won't answer my ques-
tions. They don't think it's right for a
man in your condition to hear about
those things. But you remember
enough, don't you? You remember his
face.
This is why I'm writing to you. Fu-
tile, maybe. I don't know how many
times you'll have to read this before
you listen to me. I don't even know
how long you've been locked up in this
room already. Neither do you. But
your advantage in forgetting is that
you'll forget to write yourself off as a
lost cause.
Sooner or later you'll want to do
something about it. And when you do,
you'll just have to trust me, because
I'm the only one who can help you.
2 Earl opens one eye after another
to a stretch of white ceiling tiles inter-
rupted by a hand-printed sign taped
right above his head, large enough for
him to read from the bed. An alarm
clock is ringing somewhere. He reads
the sign, blinks, reads it again, then
takes a look at the room.
It's a white room, overwhelmingly
white, from the walls and the curtains
to the institutional furniture and the
bedspread. The alarm clock is ringing
from the white desk under the window
with the white curtains. At this point
Earl probably notices that he is lying
on top of his white comforter. He is
already wearing a dressing gown and
slippers.
 He lies back and reads the sign
taped to the ceiling again. It says, in
crude block capitals, THIS IS YOUR
ROOM. THIS IS A ROOM IN A HOS-
PITAL. THIS IS WHERE YOU LIVE
NOW.
Earl rises and takes a look around.
The room is large for a hospital—emp-
ty linoleum stretches out from the bed
in three directions. Two doors and a
window. The view isn't very helpful,
either—a close of trees in the center of
a carefully manicured piece of turf
that terminates in a sliver of two-lane
blacktop. The trees, except for the
evergreens, are bare—early spring or
late fall, one or the other.
Every inch of the desk is covered
with Post-it notes, legal pads, neatly
printed lists, psychological textbooks,
framed pictures. On top of the
mess is a half-completed crossword
puzzle. The alarm clock is riding a pile
of folded newspapers. Earl slaps the
snooze button and takes a cigarette
from the pack taped to the sleeve of
his dressing gown. He pats the empty
pockets of his pajamas for a light. He
rifles the papers on the desk, looks
quickly through the drawers. Eventu-
ally he finds a box of kitchen matches
taped to the wall next to the window.
Another sign is taped just above the
box. It says in loud yellow letters,
CIGARETTE? CHECK FOR LIT ONES
FIRST, STUPID.
Earl laughs at the sign, lights his
cigarette, and takes a long draw.
Taped to the window in front of him is
another piece of looseleaf paper head-
ed YOUR SCHEDULE.
It charts off the hours, every hour,
in blocks: 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. is
labeled GO BACK TO SLEEP. Earl
consults the alarm clock: 8:15. Given
the light outside, it must be morning.
He checks his watch: 10:30. He press-
es the watch to his ear and listens. He
gives the watch a wind or two and sets
it to match the alarm clock.
12
According to the schedule, the en-
tire block from 8:00 to 8:30 has been
labeled BRUSH YOUR TEETH. Earl
laughs again and walks over to the
bathroom.
The bathroom window is open. As
he flaps his arms to keep warm, he
notices the ashtray on the windowsill.
A cigarette is perched on the ashtray,
burning steadily through a long finger
of ash. He frowns, extinguishes the old
butt, and replaces it with the new one.
The toothbrush has already been
treated to a smudge of white paste.
The tap is of the push-button variety—
a dose of water with each nudge. Earl
pushes the brush into his cheek and
fiddles it back and forth while he
opens the medicine cabinet. The
shelves are stocked with single-serving
packages of vitamins, aspirin, antidi-
uretics. The mouthwash is also single-
serving, about a shot-glass-worth of
blue liquid in a sealed plastic bottle.
Only the toothpaste is regular-sized.
Earl spits the paste out of his mouth
and replaces it with the mouthwash.
As he lays the toothbrush next to the
toothpaste, he notices a tiny wedge of
paper pinched between the glass shelf
and the steel backing of the medicine
cabinet. He spits the frothy blue fluid
into the sink and nudges for some
more water to rinse it down. He closes
the medicine cabinet and smiles at his
reflection in the mirror.
"Who needs half an hour to brush
their teeth?"
The paper has been folded down to
a minuscule size with all the precision
of a sixth-grader's love note. Earl un-
folds it and smooths it against the
mirror. It reads—
IF YOU CAN STILL READ THIS,
THEN YOU'RE A REAL COWARD.
Earl stares blankly at the paper,
then reads it again. He turns it over.
On the back it reads—
P.S.: AFTER YOU'VE READ THIS,
HIDE IT AGAIN.
 Earl reads both sides again, then
folds the note back down to its original
size and tucks it underneath the
toothpaste.
Maybe then he notices the scar. It
begins just beneath the ear, jagged
and thick, and disappears abruptly
into his hairline. Earl turns his head
and stares out of the corner of his eye
to follow the scar's progress. He traces
it with a fingertip, then looks back
down at the cigarette burning in the
ashtray. A thought seizes him and he
spins out of the bathroom.
He is caught at the door to his
room, one hand on the knob. Two pic-
tures are taped to the wall by the door.
Earl's attention is caught first by the
MRI, a shiny black frame for four
windows into someone's skull. In
marker, the picture is labeled YOUR
BRAIN. Earl stares at it. Concentric
circles in different colors. He can
make out the big orbs of his eyes and,
behind these, the twin lobes of his
brain. Smooth wrinkles, circles, semi-
circles. But right there in the middle of
his head, circled in marker, tunneled
in from the back of his neck like a
maggot into an apricot, is something
different. Deformed, broken, but un-
mistakable. A dark smudge, the shape
of a flower, right there in the middle of
his brain.
He bends to look at the other pic-
ture. It is a photograph of a man hold-
ing flowers, standing over a fresh
grave. The man is bent over, reading
the headstone. For a moment this
looks like a hall of mirrors or the be-
ginnings of a sketch of infinity: the
one man bent over, looking at the
smaller man, bent over, reading the
headstone. Earl looks at the picture
for a long time. Maybe he begins to
cry. Maybe he just stares silently at the
picture. Eventually, he makes his way
back to the bed, flops down, seals his
eyes shut, tries to sleep.
The cigarette burns steadily away
in the bathroom. A circuit in the alarm
13
clock counts down from ten, and it
starts ringing again.
Earl opens one eye after another to
a stretch of white ceiling tiles, inter-
rupted by a hand-printed sign taped
right above his head, large enough for
him to read from the bed.
3 You can't have a normal life any-
more. You must know that. How can
you have a girlfriend if you can't re-
member her name? Can't have kids,
not unless you want them to grow up
with a dad who doesn't recognize
them. Sure as hell can't hold down a
job. Not too many professions out
there that value forgetfulness. Prosti-
tution, maybe. Politics, of course.
No. Your life is over. You're a dead
man. The only thing the doctors are
hoping to do is teach you to be less of
a burden to the orderlies. And they'll
probably never let you go home, wher-
ever that would be.
So the question is not "to be or not
to be," because you aren't. The ques-
tion is whether you want to do some-
thing about it. Whether revenge mat-
ters to you.
It does to most people. For a few
weeks, they plot, they scheme, they
take measures to get even. But the
passage of time is all it takes to erode
that initial impulse. Time is theft, isn't
that what they say? And time eventu-
ally convinces most of us that forgive-
ness is a virtue. Conveniently, cow-
ardice and forgiveness look identical
at a certain distance. Time steals your
nerve.
If time and fear aren't enough to
dissuade people from their revenge,
then there's always authority, softly
shaking its head and saying, We un-
derstand, but you're the better man
for letting it go. For rising above it.
For not sinking to their level. And be-
sides, says authority, if you try any-
thing stupid, we'll lock you up in a lit-
tle room.
 But they already put you in a little
room, didn't they? Only they don't
really lock it or even guard it too care-
fully because you're a cripple. A
corpse. A vegetable who probably
wouldn't remember to eat or take a
shit if someone wasn't there to remind
you.
And as for the passage of time,
well, that doesn't really apply to you
anymore, does it? Just the same ten
minutes, over and over again. So how
can you forgive if you can't remember
to forget?
You probably were the type to let it
go, weren't you? Before. But you're not
the man you used to be. Not even half.
You're a fraction; you're the ten-
minute man.
Of course, weakness is strong. It's
the primary impulse. You'd probably
prefer to sit in your little room and
cry. Live in your finite collection of
memories, carefully polishing each
one. Half a life set behind glass and
pinned to cardboard like a collection
of exotic insects. You'd like to live be-
hind that glass, wouldn't you? Pre-
served in aspic.
You'd like to but you can't, can
you? You can't because of the last ad-
dition to your collection. The last thing
you remember. His face. His face and
your wife, looking to you for help.
And maybe this is where you can
retire to when it's over. Your little col-
lection. They can lock you back up in
another little room and you can live
the rest of your life in the past. But
only if you've got a little piece of paper
in your hand that says you got him.
You know I'm right. You know
there's a lot of work to do. It may seem
impossible, but I'm sure if we all do
our part, we'll figure something out.
But you don't have much time. You've
only got about ten minutes, in fact.
Then it starts all over again. So do
something with the time you've got.
14
4 Earl opens his eyes and blinks into
the darkness. The alarm clock is ring-
ing. It says 3:20, and the moonlight
streaming through the window means
it must be the early morning. Earl
fumbles for the lamp, almost knocking
it over in the process. Incandescent
light fills the room, painting the metal
furniture yellow, the walls yellow, the
bedspread, too. He lies back and looks
up at the stretch of yellow ceiling tiles
above him, interrupted by a handwrit-
ten sign taped to the ceiling. He reads
the sign two, maybe three times, then
blinks at the room around him.
It is a bare room. Institutional,
maybe. There is a desk over by the
window. The desk is bare except for
the blaring alarm clock. Earl probably
notices, at this point,
that he is fully clothed. He even
has his shoes on under the sheets. He
extracts himself from the bed and
crosses to the desk. Nothing in the
room would suggest that anyone lived
there, or ever had, except for the odd
scrap of tape stuck here and there to
the wall. No pictures, no books, noth-
ing. Through the window, he can see a
full moon shining on carefully mani-
cured grass.
Earl slaps the snooze button on the
alarm clock and stares a moment at the
two keys taped to the back of his hand.
He picks at the tape while he searches
through the empty drawers. In the left
pocket of his jacket, he finds a roll of
hundred-dollar bills and a letter sealed
in an envelope. He checks the rest of
the main room and the bathroom. Bits
of tape, cigarette butts. Nothing else.
Earl absentmindedly plays with the
lump of scar tissue on his neck and
moves back toward the bed. He lies
back down and stares up at the ceiling
and the sign taped to it. The sign
reads, GET UP, GET OUT RIGHT
NOW. THESE PEOPLE ARE TRYING
TO KILL YOU.
Earl closes his eyes.

5 They tried to teach you to make
lists in grade school, remember? Back
when your day planner was the back
of your hand. And if your assignments
came off in the shower, well, then they
didn't get done. No direction, they
said. No discipline. So they tried to get
you to write it all down somewhere
more permanent.
Of course, your grade-school
teachers would be laughing their pants
wet if they could see you now. Because
you've become the exact product of
their organizational lessons. Because
you can't even take a piss without con-
sulting one of your lists.
They were right. Lists are the only
way out of this mess.
Here's the truth: People, even regu-
lar people, are never just any one per-
son with one set of attributes. It's not
that simple. We're all at the mercy of
the limbic system, clouds of electricity
drifting through the brain. Every man
is broken into twenty-four-hour frac-
tions, and then again within those
twenty-four hours. It's a daily pan-
tomime, one man yielding control to
the next: a backstage crowded with old
hacks clamoring for their turn in the
spotlight. Every week, every day. The
angry man hands the baton over to the
sulking man, and in turn to the sex
addict, the introvert, the conversa-
tionalist. Every man is a mob, a chain
gang of idiots.
This is the tragedy of life. Because
for a few minutes of every day, every
man becomes a genius. Moments of
clarity, insight, whatever you want to
call them. The clouds part, the planets
get in a neat little line, and everything
becomes obvious. I should quit smok-
ing, maybe, or here's how I could
make a fast million, or such and such
is the key to eternal happiness. That's
the miserable truth. For a few mo-
ments, the secrets of the universe are
opened to us. Life is a cheap parlor trick.
But then the genius, the savant, has
15
to hand over the controls to the next
guy down the pike, most likely the guy
who just wants to eat potato chips,
and insight and brilliance and salva-
tion are all entrusted to a moron or a
hedonist or a narcoleptic.
The only way out of this mess, of
course, is to take steps to ensure that
you control the idiots that you be-
come. To take your chain gang, hand
in hand, and lead them. The best way
to do this is with a list.
It's like a letter you write to your-
self. A master plan, drafted by the guy
who can see the light, made with steps
simple enough for the rest of the idiots
to understand. Follow steps one through
one hundred. Repeat as necessary.
Your problem is a little more acute,
maybe, but fundamentally the same
thing.
It's like that computer thing, the
Chinese room. You remember that?
One guy sits in a little room, laying
down cards with letters written on
them in a language he doesn't under-
stand, laying them down one letter at
a time in a sequence according to
someone else's instructions. The cards
are supposed to spell out a joke in
Chinese. The guy doesn't speak Chi-
nese, of course. He just follows his
instructions.
There are some obvious differences
in your situation, of course: You broke
out of the room they had you in, so the
whole enterprise has to be portable.
And the guy giving the instructions—
that's you, too, just an earlier version
of you. And the joke you're telling,
well, it's got a punch line. I just don't
think anyone's going to find it very
funny.
So that's the idea. All you have to
do is follow your instructions. Like
climbing a ladder or descending a
staircase. One step at a time. Right
down the list. Simple.
And the secret, of course, to any list
is to keep it in a place where you're
bound to see it.
6 He can hear the buzzing through
his eyelids. Insistent. He reaches out
for the alarm clock, but he can't move
his arm.
Earl opens his eyes to see a large
man bent double over him. The man
looks up at him, annoyed, then re-
sumes his work. Earl looks around
him. Too dark for a doctor's office.
Then the pain floods his brain,
blocking out the other questions. He
squirms again, trying to yank his fore-
arm away, the one that feels like it's
burning. The arm doesn't move, but
the man shoots him another scowl.
Earl adjusts himself in the chair to see
over the top of the man's head.
The noise and the pain are both
coming from a gun in the man's hand
—a gun with a needle where the barrel
should be. The needle is digging into
the fleshy underside of Earl's forearm,
leaving a trail of puffy letters behind
it.
Earl tries to rearrange himself to
get a better view, to read the letters on
his arm, but he can't. He lies back and
stares at the ceiling.
Eventually the tattoo artist turns
off the noise, wipes Earl's forearm
with a piece of gauze, and wanders
over to the back to dig up a pamphlet
describing how to deal with a possible
infection. Maybe later he'll tell his wife
about this guy and his little note.
Maybe his wife will convince him to
call the police.
Earl looks down at the arm. The
letters are rising up from the skin,
weeping a little. They run from just
behind the strap of Earl's watch all the
way to the inside of his elbow. Earl
blinks at the message and reads it
again. It says, in careful little capitals,
I RAPED AND KILLED YOUR WIFE.
16
7 It's your birthday today, so I got
you a little present. I would have just
bought you a beer, but who knows
where that would have ended?
So instead, I got you a bell. I think I
may have had to pawn your watch to
buy it, but what the hell did you need a
watch for, anyway?
You're probably asking yourself,
Why a bell? In fact, I'm guessing
you're going to be asking yourself that
question every time you find it in your
pocket. Too many of these letters now.
Too many for you to dig back into
every time you want to know the an-
swer to some little question.
It's a joke, actually. A practical
joke. But think of it this way: I'm not
really laughing at you so much as with
you.
I'd like to think that every time
you take it out of your pocket and
wonder, Why do I have this bell? a
little part of you, a little piece of your
broken brain, will remember and
laugh, like I'm laughing now.
Besides, you do know the answer.
It was something you learned before.
So if you think about it, you'll know.
Back in the old days, people were
obsessed with the fear of being buried
alive. You remember now? Medical
science not being quite what it is to-
day, it wasn't uncommon for people to
suddenly wake up in a casket. So rich
folks had their coffins outfitted with
breathing tubes. Little tubes running
up to the mud above so that if some-
one woke up when they weren't sup-
posed to, they wouldn't run out of
oxygen. Now, they must have tested
this out and realized that you could
shout yourself hoarse through the
tube, but it was too narrow to carry
much noise. Not enough to attract at-
tention, at least. So a string was run
up the tube to a little bell attached to
the headstone. If a dead person came
back to life, all he had to do was ring
his little bell till someone came and
dug him up again.
I'm laughing now, picturing you on
a bus or maybe in a fast-food restau-
rant, reaching into your pocket and
finding your little bell and wondering
to yourself where it came from, why
you have it. Maybe you'll even ring it.
Happy birthday, buddy.
I don't know who figured out the
solution to our mutual problem, so I
don't know whether to congratulate
you or me. A bit of a lifestyle change,
admittedly, but an elegant solution,
nonetheless.
Look to yourself for the answer.
That sounds like something out of
a Hallmark card. I don't know when
you thought it up, but my hat's off to
you. Not that you know what the hell
I'm talking about. But, honestly, a real
brainstorm. After all, everybody else
needs mirrors to remind themselves
who they are. You're no different.
8 The little mechanical voice pauses,
then repeats itself. It says, "The time is
8:00 a.m. This is a courtesy call." Earl
opens his eyes and replaces the receiv-
er. The phone is perched on a cheap
veneer headboard that stretches be-
hind the bed, curves to meet the cor-
ner, and ends at the minibar. The TV
is still on, blobs of flesh color natter-
ing away at each other. Earl lies back
down and is surprised to see himself,
older now, tanned, the hair pulling
away from his head like solar flares.
The mirror on the ceiling is cracked,
the silver fading in creases. Earl con-
tinues to stare at himself, astonished
by what he sees. He is fully dressed,
but the clothes are old, threadbare in
places.
Earl feels the familiar spot on his
left wrist for his watch, but it's gone.
He looks down from the mirror to his
arm. It is bare and the skin has
changed to an even tan, as if he never
owned a watch in the first place. The
17
skin is even in color except for the sol-
id black arrow on the inside of Earl's
wrist, pointing up his shirtsleeve. He
stares at the arrow for a moment. Per-
haps he doesn't try to rub it off any-
more. He rolls up his sleeve.
The arrow points to a sentence tat-
tooed along Earl's inner arm. Earl
reads the sentence once, maybe twice.
Another arrow picks up at the begin-
ning of the sentence, points farther up
Earl's arm, disappearing under the
rolled-up shirtsleeve. He unbuttons
his shirt.
Looking down on his chest, he can
make out the shapes but cannot bring
them into focus, so he looks up at the
mirror above him.
The arrow leads up Earl's arm,
crosses at the shoulder, and descends
onto his upper torso, terminating at a
picture of a man's face that occupies
most of his chest. The face is that of a
large man, balding, with a mustache
and a goatee. It is a particular face, but
like a police sketch it has a certain un-
real quality.
The rest of his upper torso is cov-
ered in words, phrases, bits of infor-
mation, and instructions, all of them
written backward on Earl, forward in
the mirror.
Eventually Earl sits up, buttons his
shirt, and crosses to the desk. He takes
out a pen and a piece of notepaper
from the desk drawer, sits, and begins
to write.
9 I don't know where you'll be when
you read this. I'm not even sure if
you'll bother to read this. I guess you
don't need to.
It's a shame, really, that you and I
will never meet. But, like the song
says, "By the time you read this note,
I'll be gone.” We're so close now. That's
the way it feels. So many pieces put
together, spelled out. I guess it's just a
matter of time until you find him.
 Who knows what we've done to get
here? Must be a hell of a story, if only
you could remember any of it. I guess
it's better that you can't.
I had a thought just now. Maybe
you'll find it useful.
Everybody is waiting for the end to
come, but what if it already passed us
by? What if the final joke of Judgment
Day was that it had already come and
gone and we were none the wiser?
Apocalypse arrives quietly; the chosen
are herded off to heaven, and the rest
of us, the ones who failed the test, just
keep on going, oblivious. Dead al-
ready, wandering around long after
the gods have stopped keeping score,
still optimistic about the future.
I guess if that's true, then it doesn't
matter what you do. No expectations.
If you can't find him, then it doesn't
matter, because nothing matters. And
if you do find him, then you can kill
him without worrying about the con-
sequences. Because there are no con-
sequences.
That's what I'm thinking about
right now, in this scrappy little room.
Framed pictures of ships on the wall. I
don't know, obviously, but if I had to
guess, I'd say we're somewhere up the
coast. If you're wondering why your
left arm is five shades browner than
your right, I don't know what to tell
you. I guess we must have been dri-
ving for a while. And, no, I don't know
what happened to your watch.
And all these keys: I have no idea.
Not a one that I recognize. Car keys and
house keys and the little fiddly keys for
padlocks. What have we been up to?
I wonder if he'll feel stupid when you
find him. Tracked down by the ten-
minute man. Assassinated by a vegetable.
I'll be gone in a moment. I'll put
down the pen, close my eyes, and then
you can read this through if you want.
I just wanted you to know that I'm
proud of you. No one who matters is
left to say it. No one left is going to
want to.
18
10 Earl’s eyes are wide open, star-
ing through the window of the car.
Smiling eyes. Smiling through the
window at the crowd gathering across
the street. The crowd gathering
around the body in the doorway. The
body emptying slowly across the side-
walk and into the storm drain.
A stocky guy, facedown, eyes open.
Balding head, goatee. In death, as in
police sketches, faces tend to look the
same. This is definitely somebody in
particular. But really, it could be any-
body.
Earl is still smiling at the body as
the car pulls away from the curb. The
car? Who's to say? Maybe it's a police
cruiser. Maybe it's just a taxi.
As the car is swallowed into traffic,
Earl's eyes continue to shine out into
the night, watching the body until it
disappears into a circle of concerned
pedestrians. He chuckles to himself as
the car continues to make distance
between him and the growing crowd.
Earl's smile fades a little. Some-
thing has occurred to him. He begins
to pat down his pockets; leisurely at
first, like a man looking for his keys,
then a little more desperately. Maybe
his progress is impeded by a set of
handcuffs. He begins to empty the
contents of his pockets out onto the
seat next to him. Some money. A
bunch of keys. Scraps of paper.
A round metal lump rolls out of his
pocket and slides across the vinyl seat.
Earl is frantic now. He hammers at the
plastic divider between him and the
driver, begging the man for a pen.
Perhaps the cabbie doesn't speak
much English. Perhaps the cop isn't in
the habit of talking to suspects. Either
way, the divider between the man in
front and the man behind remains
closed. A pen is not forthcoming.
The car hits a pothole, and Earl
blinks at his reflection in the rearview
mirror. He is calm now. The driver
makes another corner, and the metal
lump slides back over to rest against ment. Like you're the center of the
Earl's leg with a little jingle. He picks clock, the axis on which the hands
it up and looks at it, curious now. It is turn. Time moves about you but never
a little bell. A little metal bell. In- moves you. It has lost its ability to af-
scribed on it are his name and a set of fect you. What is it they say? That time
dates. He recognizes the first one: the is theft? But not for you. Close your
year in which he was born. But the eyes and you can start all over again.
second date means nothing to him. Conjure up that necessary emotion,
Nothing at all. fresh as roses.
As he turns the bell over in his Time is an absurdity. An abstrac-
hands, he notices the empty space on tion. The only thing that matters is
his wrist where his watch used to sit. this moment. This moment a million
There is a little arrow there, pointing times over. You have to trust me. If
up his arm. Earl looks at the arrow, this moment is repeated enough, if
then begins to roll up his sleeve. you keep trying—and you have to keep
trying—eventually you will come
across the next item on your list.
11 "You'd be late for your own fu-
neral," she'd say. Remember? The
more I think about it, the more trite
that seems. What kind of idiot, after
all, is in any kind of rush to get to the
end of his own story?
And how would I know if I were
late, anyway? I don't have a watch
anymore. I don't know what we did
with it.
What the hell do you need a watch
for, anyway? It was an antique. Dead-
weight tugging at your wrist. Symbol
of the old you. The you that believed in
time.
No. Scratch that. It's not so much
that you've lost your faith in time as
that time has lost its faith in you. And
who needs it, anyway? Who wants to QUESTIONS
be one of those saps living in the safe-
ty of the future, in the safety of the 9. Compare the common memorial
moment after the moment in which tattoos to those of the narrator’s.
they felt something powerful? Living 10. Identify one instance of foreshad-
in the next moment, in which they feel owing. How does it enhance the
nothing. Crawling down the hands of story?
the clock, away from the people who
did unspeakable things to them. Be- 11. How are forgetfulness and idiocy
lieving the lie that time will heal all portrayed in this story as part of
wounds—which is just a nice way of the human condition?
saying that time deadens us. 12. What is the significance of the
But you're different. You're more quotation at the start of the story?
perfect. Time is three things for most Use evidence from the text to sup-
people, but for you, for us, just one. A port your answer.
singularity. One moment. This mo-
19
Do Not Go Gentle into That
Good Night
Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

QUESTIONS

13. Notice the repetition of the first

line of the poem and the line that
ends the first stanza. How do the
meaning, especially the connota-
tions, of these lines change and
expand as the poem goes on?
14. W h a t v o w e l a n d c o n s o n a n t
sounds are used to create a feeling
of struggle and anger? How so?
15. Consider the imagery, the metre
and the sound of this poem; then
explain how they enhance the
poem.

20
She Walks in Beauty
Lord Byron

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

QUESTIONS

16. How does the rhythm contribute

to the sense, feeling, tone and in-
tention of the poem?
17. Why do so many people think of
this as a love poem, when the
speaker never once mentions be-
ing in love?
18. The poem emphasizes that the
woman's beauty has to do with the
harmonious blending of light and
dark in her features. Does the
speaker believe one better than
the other? Explain.
19. Most critics believe that the
woman described in this poem is
Byron's cousin by marriage, Lady
Wilmot Horton, whom he met at a
party the night before writing this
piece. How does your interpreta-
tion of the poem change, knowing
that it may have been inspired by
a specific woman?

21
The Lottery
Shirley Jackson
The morning of June 27th was
clear and sunny, with the fresh
warmth of a full-summer day; the
flowers were blossoming profusely
and the grass was richly green. The
people of the village began to gather in
the square, between the post office
and the bank, around ten o’clock; in
some towns there were so many peo-
ple that the lottery took two days and
had to be started on June 20th, but in
this village, where there were only
about three hundred people, the whole
lottery took less than two hours, so it
could begin at ten o’clock in the morn-
ing and still be through in time to al-
low the villagers to get home for noon
dinner.
The children assembled first, of
course. School was recently over for
the summer, and the feeling of liberty
sat uneasily on most of them; they
tended to gather together quietly for a
while before they broke into boister-
ous play, and their talk was still of the
classroom and the teacher, of books
and reprimands. Bobby Martin had
already stuffed his pockets full of
stones, and the other boys soon fol-
lowed his example, selecting the
smoothest and roundest stones; Bob-
by and Harry Jones and Dickie
Delacroix—the villagers pronounced
this name “Dellacroy”—eventually
made a great pile of stones in one cor-
ner of the square and guarded it
against the raids of the other boys.
The girls stood aside, talking among
themselves, looking over their shoul-
ders at the boys, and the very small
children rolled in the dust or clung to
the hands of their older brothers or
sisters.
Soon the men began to gather, sur-
veying their own children, speaking of
planting and rain, tractors and taxes.
They stood together, away from the
pile of stones in the corner, and their
22
jokes were quiet and they smiled
rather than laughed. The women,
wearing faded house dresses and
sweaters, came shortly after their
menfolk. They greeted one another
and exchanged bits of gossip as they
went to join their husbands. Soon the
women, standing by their husbands,
began to call to their children, and the
children came reluctantly, having to
be called four or five times. Bobby
Martin ducked under his mother’s
grasping hand and ran, laughing, back
to the pile of stones. His father spoke
up sharply, and Bobby came quickly
and took his place between his father
and his oldest brother.
The lottery was conducted—as were
the square dances, the teen club, the
Halloween program—by Mr. Sum-
mers, who had time and energy to de-
vote to civic activities. He was a
round-faced, jovial man and he ran
the coal business, and people were
sorry for him because he had no chil-
dren and his wife was a scold. When
he arrived in the square, carrying the
black wooden box, there was a mur-
mur of conversation among the vil-
lagers, and he waved and called. “Lit-
tle late today, folks. ” The postmaster,
Mr. Graves, followed him, carrying a
three-legged stool, and the stool was
put in the center of the square and Mr.
Summers set the black box down on it.
The villagers kept their distance, leav-
ing a space between themselves and
the stool, and when Mr. Summers
said, “Some of you fellows want to give
me a hand?” there was a hesitation
before two men. Mr. Martin and his
oldest son, Baxter, came forward to
hold the box steady on the stool while
Mr. Summers stirred up the papers
inside it.
The original paraphernalia for the
lottery had been lost long ago, and the
black box now resting on the stool had
been put into use even before Old Man
Warner, the oldest man in town, was
born. Mr. Summers spoke frequently
to the villagers about making a new
box, but no one liked to upset even as
much tradition as was represented by
the black box. There was a story that
the present box had been made with
some pieces of the box that had pre-
ceded it, the one that had been con-
structed when the first people settled
down to make a village here. Every
year, after the lottery, Mr. Summers
began talking again about a new box,
but every year the subject was allowed
to fade off without anything’s being
done. The black box grew shabbier
each year: by now it was no longer
completely black but splintered badly
along one side to show the original
wood color, and in some places faded
or stained.
Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Bax-
ter, held the black box securely on the
stool until Mr. Summers had stirred
the papers thoroughly with his hand.
Because so much of the ritual had
been forgotten or discarded, Mr.
Summers had been successful in hav-
ing slips of paper substituted for the
chips of wood that had been used for
generations. Chips of wood, Mr.
Summers had argued, had been all
very well when the village was tiny,
but now that the population was more
than three hundred and likely to keep
on growing, it was necessary to use
something that would fit more easily
into he black box. The night before the
lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves
made up the slips of paper and put
them in the box, and it was then taken
to the safe of Mr. Summers’ coal com-
pany and locked up until Mr. Sum-
mers was ready to take it to the square
next morning. The rest of the year, the
box was put way, sometimes one
place, sometimes another; it had spent
one year in Mr. Graves’s barn and an-
other year underfoot in the post office.
and sometimes it was set on a shelf in
the Martin grocery and left there.
There was a great deal of fussing to
be done before Mr. Summers declared
23
the lottery open. There were the lists
to make up–of heads of families,
heads of households in each family,
members of each household in each
family. There was the proper swear-
ing-in of Mr. Summers by the post-
master, as the official of the lottery; at
one time, some people remembered,
there had been a recital of some sort,
performed by the official of the lottery,
a perfunctory, tuneless chant that had
been rattled off duly each year; some
people believed that the official of the
lottery used to stand just so when he
said or sang it, others believed that he
was supposed to walk among the peo-
ple, but years and years ago this p3rt
of the ritual had been allowed to lapse.
There had been, also, a ritual salute,
which the official of the lottery had
had to use in addressing each person
who came up to draw from the box,
but this also had changed with time,
until now it was felt necessary only for
the official to speak to each person
approaching. Mr. Summers was very
good at all this; in his clean white shirt
and blue jeans, with one hand resting
carelessly on the black box, he seemed
very proper and important as he
talked interminably to Mr. Graves and
the Martins.
Just as Mr. Summers finally left off
talking and turned to the assembled
villagers, Mrs. Hutchinson came hur-
riedly along the path to the square, her
sweater thrown over her shoulders,
and slid into place in the back of the
crowd. “Clean forgot what day it was,”
she said to Mrs. Delacroix, who stood
next to her, and they both laughed
softly. “Thought my old man was out
back stacking wood,” Mrs. Hutchinson
went on, “and then I looked out the
window and the kids was gone, and
then I remembered it was the twenty-
seventh and came a-running. ” She
dried her hands on her apron, and
Mrs. Delacroix said, “You’re in time,
though. They’re still talking away up
there. “
 Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck
to see through the crowd and found
her husband and children standing
near the front. She tapped Mrs.
Delacroix on the arm as a farewell and
began to make her way through the
crowd. The people separated good-
humoredly to let her through: two or
three people said, in voices just loud
enough to be heard across the crowd,
“Here comes your, Missus, Hutchin-
son,” and “Bill, she made it after all. ”
Mrs. Hutchinson reached her hus-
band, and Mr. Summers, who had
been waiting, said cheerfully.
“Thought we were going to have to get
on without you, Tessie. ” Mrs.
Hutchinson said, grinning, “Wouldn’t
have me leave m’dishes in the sink,
now, would you, Joe?” and soft laugh-
ter ran through the crowd as the peo-
ple stirred back into position after
Mrs. Hutchinson’s arrival.
“Well, now. ” Mr. Summers said
soberly, “guess we better get started,
get this over with, so’s we can go back
to work. Anybody ain’t here?”
“Dunbar. ” several people said.
“Dunbar. Dunbar. “
Mr. Summers consulted his list.
“Clyde Dunbar. ” he said. “That’s right.
He’s broke his leg, hasn’t he? Who’s
drawing for him?”
“Me. I guess,” a woman said, and
Mr. Summers turned to look at her.
“Wife draws for her husband. ” Mr.
Summers said. “Don’t you have a
grown boy to do it for you, Janey?”
Although Mr. Summers and everyone
else in the village knew the answer
perfectly well, it was the business of
the official of the lottery to ask such
questions formally. Mr. Summers
waited with an expression of polite
interest while Mrs. Dunbar answered.
“Horace’s not but sixteen yet. ”
Mrs. Dunbar said regretfully. “Guess I
gotta fill in for the old man this year. “
“Right. ” Sr. Summers said. He
made a note on the list he was hold-
24
ing. Then he asked, “Watson boy
drawing this year?”
A tall boy in the crowd raised his
hand. “Here,” he said. “I m drawing
for my mother and me. ” He blinked
his eyes nervously and ducked his
head as several voices in the crowd
said things like “Good fellow, lack. ”
and “Glad to see your mother’s got a
man to do it. “
“Well,” Mr. Summers said, “guess
that’s everyone. Old Man Warner
make it?”
“Here,” a voice said, and Mr. Sum-
mers nodded.
A sudden hush fell on the crowd as
Mr. Summers cleared his throat and
looked at the list. “All ready?” he
called. “Now, I’ll read the names–
heads of families first–and the men
come up and take a paper out of the
box. Keep the paper folded in your
hand without looking at it until every-
one has had a turn. Everything clear?”
The people had done it so many
times that they only half listened to
the directions: most of them were qui-
et, wetting their lips, not looking
around. Then Mr. Summers raised one
hand high and said, “Adams. ” A man
disengaged himself from the crowd
and came forward. “Hi. Steve. ” Mr.
Summers said, and Mr. Adams said.
“Hi. Joe. ” They grinned at one anoth-
er humorlessly and nervously. Then
Mr. Adams reached into the black box
and took out a folded paper. He held it
firmly by one corner as he turned and
went hastily back to his place in the
crowd, where he stood a little apart
from his family, not looking down at
his hand.
“Allen. ” Mr. Summers said. “An-
derson… Bentham. “
“Seems like there’s no time at all
between lotteries any more. ” Mrs.
Delacroix said to Mrs. Graves in the
back row.
 “Seems like we got through with
the last one only last week. “
“Time sure goes fast” Mrs. Graves
said.
“Clark… Delacroix. “
“There goes my old man. ” Mrs.
Delacroix said. She held her breath
while her husband went forward.
“Dunbar,” Mr. Summers said, and
Mrs. Dunbar went steadily to the box
while one of the women said. “Go on,
Janey,” and another said, “There she
goes. “
“We’re next. ” Mrs. Graves said.
She watched while Mr. Graves came
around from the side of the box, greet-
ed Mr. Summers gravely and selected
a slip of paper from the box. By now,
all through the crowd there were men
holding the small folded papers in
their large hand, turning them over
and over nervously Mrs. Dunbar and
her two sons stood together, Mrs.
Dunbar holding the slip of paper.
“Harburt… Hutchinson. “
“Get up there, Bill,” Mrs. Hutchin-
son said, and the people near her
laughed.
“Jones. “
“They do say,” Mr. Adams said to
Old Man Warner, who stood next to
him, “that over in the north village
they’re talking of giving up the lottery.
“ no one moved, and then all the slips of
Old Man Warner snorted. “Pack of
crazy fools,” he said. “Listening to the
young folks, nothing’s good enough
for them. Next thing you know, they’ll
be wanting to go back to living in
caves, nobody work any more, live hat
way for a while. Used to be a saying
about Lottery in June, corn be heavy
soon. ‘ First thing you know, we’d all
be eating stewed chickweed and
acorns. There’s always been a lottery,”
he added petulantly. “Bad enough to
see young Joe Summers up there jok-
ing with everybody. “
25
“Some places have already quit lot-
teries,” Mrs. Adams said.
“Nothing but trouble in that,” Old
Man Warner said stoutly. “Pack of
young fools. “
“Martin. ” And Bobby Martin
watched his father go forward.
“Overdyke… Percy. “
“I wish they’d hurry,” Mrs. Dunbar
said to her older son. “I wish they’d
hurry.”
“They’re almost through,” her son
said.
“You get ready to run tell Dad,”
Mrs. Dunbar said.
Mr. Summers called his own name
and then stepped forward precisely
and selected a slip from the box. Then
he called, “Warner. “
“Seventy-seventh year I been in the
lottery,” Old Man Warner said as he
went through the crowd. “Seventy-
seventh time. “
“Watson. ” The tall boy came awk-
wardly through the crowd. Someone
said, “Don’t be nervous, Jack,” and
Mr. Summers said, “Take your time,
son. “
“Zanini. “
After that, there was a long pause, a
breathless pause, until Mr. Summers,
holding his slip of paper in the air,
said, “All right, fellows. ” For a minute,
paper were opened. Suddenly, all the
women began to speak at once, saving.
“Who is it?,” “Who’s got it?,” “Is it the
Dunbars?,” “Is it the Watsons?” Then
the voices began to say, “It’s Hutchin-
son. It’s Bill,” “Bill Hutchinson’s got it.”
“Go tell your father,” Mrs. Dunbar
said to her older son.
People began to look around to see
the Hutchinsons. Bill Hutchinson was
standing quiet, staring down at the
paper in his hand. Suddenly, Tessie
Hutchinson shouted to Mr. Summers.
“You didn’t give him time enough to
take any paper he wanted. I saw you.
It wasn’t fair!”
“Be a good sport, Tessie,” Mrs.
Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves
said, “All of us took the same chance. “
“Shut up, Tessie,” Bill Hutchinson
said.
“Well, everyone,” Mr. Summers
said, “that was done pretty fast, and
now we’ve got to be hurrying a little
more to get done in time. ” He con-
sulted his next list. “Bill,” he said, “you
draw for the Hutchinson family. You
got any other households in the
Hutchinsons?”
“There’s Don and Eva,” Mrs.
Hutchinson yelled. “Make them take
their chance!”
“Daughters draw with their hus-
bands’ families, Tessie,” Mr. Summers
said gently. “You know that as well as
anyone else. “
“It wasn’t fair,” Tessie said.
“I guess not, Joe,” Bill Hutchinson
said regretfully. “My daughter draws
with her husband’s family; that’s only
fair. And I’ve got no other family ex-
cept the kids. “
“Then, as far as drawing for fami-
lies is concerned, it’s you,” Mr. Sum-
mers said in explanation, “and as far
as drawing for households is con-
cerned, that’s you, too. Right?”
“Right,” Bill Hutchinson said.
“How many kids, Bill?” Mr. Sum-
mers asked formally.
“Three,” Bill Hutchinson said.
“There’s Bill, Jr. , and Nancy, and
little Dave. And Tessie and me. “
“All right, then,” Mr. Summers
said. “Harry, you got their tickets
back?”
Mr. Graves nodded and held up the
slips of paper. “Put them in the box,
then,” Mr. Summers directed. “Take
Bill’s and put it in. “
26
“I think we ought to start over,”
Mrs. Hutchinson said, as quietly as
she could. “I tell you it wasn’t fair. You
didn’t give him time enough to choose.
Everybody saw that. “
Mr. Graves had selected the five
slips and put them in the box, and he
dropped all the papers but those onto
the ground, where the breeze caught
them and lifted them off.
“Listen, everybody,” Mrs. Hutchin-
son was saying to the people around
her.
“Ready, Bill?” Mr. Summers asked,
and Bill Hutchinson, with one quick
glance around at his wife and children,
nodded.
“Remember,” Mr. Summers said,
“take the slips and keep them folded
until each person has taken one. Har-
ry, you help little Dave. ” Mr. Graves
took the hand of the little boy, who
came willingly with him up to the box.
“Take a paper out of the box, Davy,”
Mr. Summers said. Davy put his hand
into the box and laughed. “Take just
one paper. ” Mr. Summers said. “Har-
ry, you hold it for him. ” Mr. Graves
took the child’s hand and removed the
folded paper from the tight fist and
held it while little Dave stood next to
him and looked up at him wondering-
ly.
“Nancy next,” Mr. Summers said.
Nancy was twelve, and her school
friends breathed heavily as she went
forward switching her skirt, and took a
slip daintily from the box “Bill, Jr. ,”
Mr. Summers said, and Billy, his face
red and his feet overlarge, near
knocked the box over as he got a paper
out. “Tessie,” Mr. Summers said. She
hesitated for a minute, looking around
defiantly, and then set her lips and
went up to the box. She snatched a
paper out and held it behind her.
“Bill,” Mr. Summers said, and Bill
Hutchinson reached into the box and
felt around, bringing his hand out at
last with the slip of paper in it.
 The crowd was quiet. A girl whis-
pered, “I hope it’s not Nancy,” and the
sound of the whisper reached the
edges of the crowd.
“It’s not the way it used to be,” Old
Man Warner said clearly. “People ain’t
the way they used to be. “
“All right,” Mr. Summers said.
“Open the papers. Harry, you open
little Dave’s. “
Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper
and there was a general sigh through
the crowd as he held it up and every-
one could see that it was blank. Nancy
and Bill, Jr. , opened theirs at the
same time, and both beamed and
laughed, turning around to the crowd
and holding their slips of paper above
their heads.
“Tessie,” Mr. Summers said. There
was a pause, and then Mr. Summers
looked at Bill Hutchinson, and Bill
unfolded his paper and showed it. It
was blank.
“It’s Tessie,” Mr. Summers said,
and his voice was hushed. “Show us
her paper, Bill. “
Bill Hutchinson went over to his
wife and forced the slip of paper out of
her hand. It had a black spot on it, the
black spot Mr. Summers had made the
night before with the heavy pencil in
the coal company office. Bill Hutchin-
son held it up, and there was a stir in
the crowd.
“All right, folks. ” Mr. Summers
said. “Let’s finish quickly. “
Although the villagers had forgot-
ten the ritual and lost the original
black box, they still remembered to
use stones. The pile of stones the boys
had made earlier was ready; there
were stones on the ground with the
blowing scraps of paper that had come
out of the box Delacroix selected a
stone so large she had to pick it up
with both hands and turned to Mrs.
Dunbar. “Come on,” she said. “Hurry
up. “
27
Mrs. Dunbar had small stones in
both hands, and she said, gasping for
breath. “I can’t run at all. You’ll have
to go ahead and I’ll catch up with you.
“
The children had stones already.
And someone gave little Davy
Hutchinson a few pebbles.
Tessie Hutchinson was in the cen-
ter of a cleared space by now, and she
held her hands out desperately as the
villagers moved in on her. “It isn’t
fair,” she said. A stone hit her on the
side of the head. Old Man Warner was
saying, “Come on, come on, everyone.
” Steve Adams was in the front of the
crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves
beside him.
“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs.
Hutchinson screamed, and then they
were upon her.
QUESTIONS
20. What is the fundamental irony of
the story?
21. What is the significance of the fact
that the original box has been lost
and many parts of the ritual for-
gotten?
22. What is the author saying about
human nature by transporting a
primitivistic ritual into a modern
setting?

The Raven
Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
            Only this and nothing more.”

    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
    Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
    From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
            Nameless here for evermore.

    And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
    So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
    “’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
            This it is and nothing more.”

    Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
    But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
    And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
            Darkness there and nothing more.

    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
    But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
    And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
            Merely this and nothing more.

    Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
    “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
      Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
            ’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

    Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
    Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
    But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
            Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

28
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
    For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
    Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
            With such name as “Nevermore.”

    But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
    Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
    Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
            Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

    Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
    Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
    Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
            Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”

    But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
    Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
    Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
            Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

    This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
    This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
    On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
            She shall press, ah, nevermore!

    Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
    “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
    Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
29
    Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
    On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
    Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
    It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    “Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
    Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
    Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

    And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
    And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
    And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
            Shall be lifted—nevermore!

QUESTIONS
23. Describe the atmosphere of the
room before and after the raven’s
entry. Provide evidence from the
poem.
24. Is the speaker of the poem reli-
able? Does he give an accurate
version of reality? Explain.
25. How is madness explored in this
poem, especially in the 5th stanza?
26. What significant event in the nar-
rator's life has occurred before the
events in this poem?
30
Micro Fiction
PAYBACK TIME by Chris Patton
I woke up on the couch with a stiff
back. Quietly, I eased into bed and lay
there without sleeping, replaying our
argument. Beside me, Karen writhed,
screamed, trapped in one of her night
terrors. I always woke her. Tonight, I
let her suffer and savored my revenge.
DEATH TRAP by Ernie Glenesk
The growing hatred between Mary and
Robert was such that a killing was in-
evitable. Mary had a plan, baiting
Robert incessantly in the hope that he
would kill her. The note he found after
he shot her read, "Thank you, Robert.
Doctors had given me only two
months. I hope you rot in prison for-
ever."
AT THE AUTOPSY by Ross Lesko
"Victim’s blood is completely drained,
apparently through two small punc-
ture wounds in the neck," said the
coroner. "Hey ... you don’t suppose
it’s, you know, the real deal?" asked
his assistant. "No, just some psycho."
"You sure?" They stared at each other
for a moment, then burst out laugh-
ing–but stopped when the corpse
laughed, too.
RUDE INTERRUPTION by N. Nauert
I began wirting my 55 Fiction story
when suddenly a loud humming arose
outside. I opened the door to find—a
space ship!
Four tiny creatures emerged. I invited
them for tea. I told them my story
idea. They said it was boring and that I
should write about them instead, so I
did.
31
ONE YEAR LATER by Martha Phillips
"Good morning, Eva."
"Morning, Sheryl."
"So how’s your garden doing?"
"Growing like a weed!"
They laughed.
"I’m sure it’s given you a lot of comfort
since Henry disappeared," said Sheryl
kindly.
"Actually," said Eva, "I often feel he
never really left me at all."
Her roses were unusually large that
summer.
BREAKING NEWS by Tupper student
Samantha walked into her home and
turned the news on, and she listened
closely about a person who was
stabbed in the back. The witness spoke
about how the victim walked away as
if nothing happened. Sam laid down
and died.
QUESTIONS
27. How is each story enhanced by its
length?
28. What genre would best lend itself
to this style of fiction? Why?
29. Rewrite your favourite book or
movie as a microfiction (55 words
max). Discuss the rewards and
challenges of this exercise.
30. Compose an original microfiction.
Earthy Anecdotes th tomato conspiracy aint
Wallace Stevens worth a whol pome
Bill Bisset
Every time the bucks went clattering
Over Oklahoma very few peopul
A firecat bristled in the way. realize ths but altho yu have 5 or 6
billyum peopul walking around beleeving
Wherever they went,
They went clattering, that tomatoez ar red they ar
Until they swerved, actually blu  nd ar sprayd
In a swift, circular line, red to make ther apperance
To the right, consistent with peopuls beleef
Because of the firecat.
i was whuns inside th
Or until they swerved, largest tomato spraying plant
In a swift, circular line, in th world with binoculars nd
To the left, camoflage material all ovr me
Because of the firecat.
nd ive got th pictures to proov it
The bucks clattered. oranges uv corz ar not orange nor ar lemons
The firecat went leaping, lemon color  its all a marage  it
To the right, to the left,
And was decreed what color things
Bristled in the way. wud b at th beginning nd then
theyve bin colord that
Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes way evr since
And slept.
it adds to th chemicals nd artifishul-
ness uv everything
we eet tho did yu know what oranges
ar actually a discouraging off
color

i was luky really to get

out uv th tomatao factoree alive
th tomatoez wer really
QUESTIONS upset to b xposed

31. What is a firecat? What could it

symbolize?
32. Draw a diagram outlining the
events in this poem and use it to
describe your interpretation of the
poem’s meaning.
33. Wallace Stevens often refrains
from revealing his interpretation
of the poem as he believes “expla-
nations spoil things.” Do you
agree or disagree? Use evidence
from this poem to support your
position.
32
QUESTIONS
34. Discuss how the poem’s form re-
lates to its speaker, situation and
audience.
35. What do you think are the theme
and intent of the poem? Did the
poet achieve his purpose? Give
reasons for your opinion.
Boys and Girls
Alice Munro
My father was a fox farmer. That is,
he raised silver foxes, in pens; and in
the fall and early winter, when their
fur was prime, he killed them and
skinned them and sold their pelts to
the Hudson's Bay Company or the
Montreal Fur Traders. These compa-
nies supplied us with heroic calendars
to hang, one on each side of the
kitchen door. Against a background of
cold blue sky and black pine forests
and
treacherous northern rivers,
plumed adventures planted the flags
of England and or of France; magnifi-
cent savages bent their backs to the
portage.
For several weeks before Christ-
mas, my father worked after supper in
the cellar of our house. The cellar was
whitewashed, and lit by a hundred-
watt bulb over the worktable. My
brother Laird and I sat on the top step
and watched. My father removed the
pelt inside-out from the body of the
fox, which looked surprisingly small,
mean, and rat-like, deprived of its ar-
rogant weight of fur. The naked, slip-
pery bodies were collected in a sack
and buried in the dump. One time the
hired man, Henry Bailey, had taken a
swipe at me with this sack, saying,
"Christmas present!" My mother
thought that was not funny. In fact she
disliked the whole pelting operation--
that was what the killing, skinning,
and preparation of the furs was called
– and wished it did not have to take
place in the house. There was the
smell. After the pelt had been
stretched inside-out on a long board
my father scraped away delicately,
removing the little clotted webs of
blood vessels, the bubbles of fat; the
smell of blood and animal fat, with the
strong primitive odour of the fox itself,
penetrated all parts of the house. I
33
found it reassuringly seasonal, like the
smell of oranges and pine needles.
Henry Bailey suffered from
bronchial troubles. He would cough
and cough until his narrow face
turned scarlet, and his light blue, deri-
sive eyes filled up with tears; then he
took the lid off the stove, and, stand-
ing well back, shot out a great clot of
phlegm – hss – straight into the heart
of the flames. We admired his for this
performance and for his ability to
make his stomach growl at will, and
for his laughter, which was full of high
whistlings and gurglings and involved
the whole faulty machinery of his
chest. It was sometimes hard to tell
what he was laughing at, and always
possible that it might be us.
After we had sent to bed we could
still smell fox and still hear Henry's
laugh, but these things, reminders of
the warm, safe, brightly lit downstairs
world, seemed lost and diminished,
floating on the stale cold air upstairs.
We were afraid at night in the winter.
We were not afraid of outside though
this was the time of year when snow-
drifts curled around our house like
sleeping whales and the wind harassed
us all night, coming up from the
buried fields, the frozen swamp, with
its old bugbear chorus of threats and
misery. We were afraid of inside, the
room where we slept. At this time up-
stairs of our house was not finished. A
brick chimney went up one wall. In
the middle of the floor was a square
hole, with a wooden railing around it;
that was where the stairs came up. On
the other side of the stairwell were the
things that nobody had any use for
anymore – a soldiery roll of linoleum,
standing on end, a wicker bay car-
riage, a fern basket, china jugs and
basins with cracks in them, a picture
of the Battle of Balaclava, very sad to
look at. I had told Laird, as soon as he
was old enough to understand such
things, that bats and skeletons lived
over there; whenever a man escaped
from the county jail, twenty miles
away, I imagined that he had some-
how let himself in the window and was
hiding behind the linoleum. But we
had rules to keep us safe. When the
light was on, we were safe as long as
we did not step off the square of worn
carpet which defined our bedroom-
space; when the light was off no place
was safe but the beds themselves. I
had to turn out the light kneeling on
the end of my bed, and stretching as
far as I could to reach the cord.
In the dark we lay on our beds, our
narrow life rafts, and fixed our eyes on
the faint light coming up the stairwell,
and sang songs. Laird sang "Jingle
Bells", which he would sing any time,
whether it was Christmas or not, and I
sang "Danny Boy". I loved the sound
of my own voice, frail and supplicat-
ing, rising in the dark. We could make
out the tall frosted shapes of the win-
dows now, gloomy and white. When I
came to the part, WhenI am dead, as
dead I well may be – a fit of shivering
caused not by the cold sheets but by
pleasurable emotions almost silenced
me. You'll kneel and say an Ave there
above me —What was an Ave? Every
day I forgot to find out.
Laird went straight from singing to
sleep; I could hear his long, satisfied,
bubbly breaths. Now for the time that
remained to me, the most perfectly
private and perhaps the best time of
the whole day, I arranged myself tight-
ly under the covers and went on with
one of the stories I was telling myself
from night to night. These stories were
about myself, when I had grown a lit-
tle older; they took place in a world
that was recognizably mine, yet one
that presented opportunities for
courage, boldness, and self-sacrifice,
as mine never did. I rescued people
from a bombed building (it discour-
aged me that the real war had gone on
so far away from Jubilee). I shot two
34
rabid wolves who were menacing the
schoolyard (the teachers cowered ter-
rified at my back). Rode a fine horse
spiritedly down the main street of Ju-
bilee, acknowledging the townspeo-
ple’s gratitude for some yet-to-be-
worked-out piece of heroism (nobody
ever rode a horse there, except King
Billy in the Orangemen’s Day parade).
There was always riding and shooting
in these stories, though I had only
been on a horse twice — the first be-
cause we did not own a saddle — and
the second time I had slid right
around and dropped under the horse's
feet; it had stepped placidly over me. I
really was learning to shoot, but could
not hit anything yet, not even tin cans
on fence posts.
Alive, the foxes inhabited a world
my father made for them. It was sur-
rounded by a high guard fence, like a
medieval town, with a gate that was
padlocked at night. Along the streets
of this town were ranged large, sturdy
pens. Each of them had a real door
that a man could go through, a wood-
en ramp along the wire, for the foxes
to run up and down on, and a kennel
— sometimes like a clothes chest with
airholes — where they slept and stayed
in winter and had their young. There
were feeding and watering dishes at-
tached to the wire in such a way that
they could be emptied and cleaned
from the outside. The dishes were
made of old tin cans, and the ramps
and kennels of odds and ends of old
lumber. Everything was tidy and inge-
nious; my father was tirelessly inven-
tive and his favourite book in the
world was Robinson Crusoe. He had
fitted a tin drum on a wheelbarrow,
for bringing water down to the pens.
This was my job in the summer, when
the foxes had to have water twice a
day. Between nine and ten o'clock in
the morning, and again after supper, I
filled the drum at the pump and trun-
dled it down through the barnyard to
the pens, where I parked it, and filled
my watering can and went along the
streets. Laird came too, with his little
cream and green gardening can, filled
too full and knocking against his legs
and slopping water on his canvas
shoes. I had the real watering can, my
father's, though I could only carry it
three-quarters full.
The foxes all had names, which
were printed on a tin plate and hung
beside their doors. They were not
named when they were born, but
when they survived the first year’s
pelting and were added to the breed-
ing stock. Those my father had named
were called names like Prince, Bob,
Wally, and Betty. Those I had named
were called Star or Turk, or Maureen
or Diana. Laird named one Maude
after a hired girl we had when he was
little, one Harold after a boy at school,
and one Mexico, he did not say why.
Naming them did not make pets
out of them, or anything like it. No-
body but my father ever went into the
pens, and he had twice had blood-poi-
soning from bites. When I was bring-
ing them their water they prowled up
and down on the paths they had made
inside their pens, barking seldom —
they saved that for nighttimes, when
they might get up a chorus of commu-
nity frenzy--but always watching me,
their eyes burning, clear gold, in their
pointed, malevolent faces. They were
beautiful for their delicate legs and
heavy, aristocratic tails and the bright
fur sprinkled on dark down their back
— which gave them their name — but
especially for their faces, drawn ex-
quisitely sharp in pure hostility, and
their golden eyes.
Besides carrying water I helped my
father when he cut the long grass, and
the lamb's quarter and flowering
money-musk, that grew between the
pens. He cut with they scythe and I
raked into piles. Then he took a pitch-
fork and threw fresh-cut grass all over
the top of the pens to keep the foxes
35
cooler and shade their coats, which
were browned by too much sun. My
father did not talk to me unless it was
about the job we were doing. In this he
was quite different from my mother,
who, if she was feeling cheerful, would
tell me all sorts of things – the name
of a dog she had had when she was a
little girl, the names of boys she had
gone out with later on when she was
grown up, and what certain dresses of
hers had looked like – she could not
imagine now what had become of
them. Whatever thoughts and stories
my father had were private, and I was
shy of him and would never ask him
questions. Nevertheless I worked will-
ingly under his eyes, and with a feeling
of pride. One time a feed salesman
came down into the pens to talk to
him and my father said, "Like to have
you meet my new hired hand." I
turned away and raked furiously, red
in the face with pleasure.
"Could of fooled me," said the
salesman. "I thought it was only a
girl."
After the grass was cut, it seemed
suddenly much later in the year. I
walked on stubble in the earlier
evening, aware of the reddening skies,
the entering silences, of fall. When I
wheeled the tank out of the gates and
put the padlock on, it was almost dark.
One night at this time I saw my moth-
er and father standing talking on the
little rise of ground we called the
gangway, in front of the barn. My fa-
ther had just come from the
meathouse; he had his stiff bloody
apron on, and a pail of cut-up meat in
his hand.
It was an odd thing to see my
mother down at the barn. She did not
often come out of the house unless it
was to do something – hang out the
wash or dig potatoes in the garden.
She looked out of place, with her bare
lumpy legs, not touched by the sun,
her apron still on and damp across the
stomach from the supper dishes. Her
hair was tied up in a kerchief, wisps of
it falling out. She would tie her hair up
like this in the morning, saying she did
not have time to do it properly, and it
would stay tied up all day. It was true,
too; she really did not have time.
These days our back porch was piled
with baskets of peaches and grapes
and pears, bought in town, and onions
and tomatoes and cucumbers grown at
home, all waiting to be made into jelly
and jam and preserves, pickles and
chilli sauce. In the kitchen there was a
fire in the stove all day, jars clinked in
boiling water, sometimes a cheese-
cloth bag was strung on a pole be-
tween two chairs straining blue-back
grape pulp for jelly. I was given jobs to
do and I would sit at the table peeling
peaches that had been soaked in hot
water, or cutting up onions, my eyes
smarting and streaming. As soon as I
was done I ran out of the house, trying
to get out of earshot before my mother
thought of what she wanted me to do
next. I hated the hot dark kitchen in
summer, the green blinds and the fly-
papers, the same old oilcloth table and
wavy mirror and bumpy linoleum. My
mother was too tired and preoccupied
to talk to me, she had no heart to tell
about the Normal School Graduation
Dance; sweat trickled over her face
and she was always counting under
breath, pointing at jars, dumping cups
of sugar. It seemed to me that work in
the house was endless, dreary, and
peculiarly depressing; work done out
of doors, and in my father's service,
was ritualistically important.
I wheeled the tank up to the barn,
where it was kept, and I heard my
mother saying, "Wait till Laird gets a
little bigger, then you'll have a real
help."
What my father said I did not hear.
I was pleased by the way he stood lis-
tening, politely as he would to a
salesman or a stranger, but with an air
36
of wanting to get on with his real
work.
I felt my mother had no business
down here and I wanted him to feel
the same way. What did she mean
about Laird? He was no help to any-
body. Where was he now? Swinging
himself sick on the swing, going
around in circles, or trying to catch
caterpillars. He never once stayed with
me till I was finished.
"And then I can use her more in the
house," I heard my mother say. She
had a dead-quiet regretful way of talk-
ing about me that always made me
uneasy. "I just get my back turned and
she runs off. It's not like I had a girl in
the family at all."
I went and sat on a feed bag in the
corner of the barn, not wanting to ap-
pear when this conversation was going
on. My mother, I felt, was not to be
trusted. She was kinder than my fa-
ther and more easily fooled, but you
could not depend on her, and the real
reasons for the things she said and did
were not to be known. She loved me,
and she sat up late at night making a
dress of the difficult style I wanted, for
me to wear when school started, but
she was also my enemy. She was al-
ways plotting. She was plotting now to
get me to stay in the house more, al-
though she knew I hated it (because
she knew I hated it) and keep me from
working for my father. It seemed to
me she would do this simply out of
perversity, and to try her power. It did
not occur to me that she could be
lonely, or jealous. No grown-up could
be; they were too fortunate. I sat and
kicked my heels monotonously against
a feed bag, raising dust, and did not
come out till she was gone.
At any rate, I did not expect my
father to pay any attention to what she
said. Who could imagine Laird doing
my work – Laird remembering the
padlock and cleaning out the watering
dishes with a leaf on the end of a stick,
or even wheeling the tank without it
tumbling over? It showed how little
my mother knew about the way things
really were.
I had forgotten to say what the fox-
es were fed. My father's bloody apron
reminded me. They were fed horse-
meat. At this time most farmers still
kept horses, and when a horse got too
old to work, or broke a leg or got down
and would not get up, as they some-
times did, the owner would call my
father, and he and Henry went out to
the farm in the truck. Usually they
shot and butchered the horse there,
paying the farmer from five to twelve
dollars. If they had already too much
meat on hand, they would bring the
horse back alive, and keep it for a few
days or weeks in our stable, until the
meat was needed. After the war the
farmers were buying tractors and
gradually getting rid of horses, that
there was just no use for any more. If
this happened in the winter we might
keep the horse in our stable till spring,
for we had plenty of hay and if there
was a lot of snow – and the plow did
not always get our roads cleared – it
was convenient to be able to go to
town with a horse and cutter.
The winter I was eleven years old
we had two horses in the stable. We
did not know what names they had
had before, so we called them Mack
and Flora. Mack was an old black
workhorse, sooty and indifferent. Flo-
ra was a sorrel mare, a driver. We took
them both out in the cutter. Mack was
slow and easy to handle. Flora was
given to fits of violent alarm, veering
at cars and even at other horses, but
we loved her speed and high-stepping,
her general air of gallantry and aban-
don. On Saturdays we went down to
the stable and as soon as we opened
the door on its cozy, animal-smelling
darkness Flora threw up her head,
rolled here eyes, whinnied despairing-
ly, and pulled herself through a crisis
37
of nerves on the spot. It was not safe
to go into her stall, she would kick.
This winter also I began to hear a
great deal more on the theme my
mother had sounded when she had
been talking in front of the barn. I no
longer felt safe. It seemed that in the
minds of the people around me there
was a steady undercurrent of thought,
not to be deflected, on this one sub-
ject. The word girl had formerly
seemed to me innocent and unbur-
dened like the word child; now it ap-
peared that it was no such thing. A girl
was not, as I had supposed, simply
what I was; it was what I had to be-
come. It was a definition, always
touched with emphasis, with reproach
and disappointment. Also it was a joke
on me. Once Laird and I were fighting,
and for the first time ever I had to use
all my strength against him; even so,
he caught and pinned my arm for a
moment, really hurting me. Henry saw
this, and laughed, saying, "Oh, that
there Laird’s gonna show you, one of
these days!" Laird was getting a lot
bigger. But I was getting bigger too.
My grandmother came to stay with
us for a few weeks and I heard other
things. "Girls don't slam doors like
that." "Girls keep their knees together
when they sit down." And worse still,
when I asked some questions, "That's
none of girls’ business." I continued to
slam the doors and sit as awkwardly as
possible, thinking that by such mea-
sures I kept myself free.
When spring came, the horses were
let out in the barnyard. Mack stood
against the barn wall trying to scratch
his neck and haunches, but Flora trot-
ted up and down and reared at the
fences, clattering her hooves against
the rails. Snow drifts dwindled quick-
ly, revealing the hard grey and brown
earth, the familiar rise and fall of the
ground, plain and bare after the fan-
tastic landscape of winter. There was a
great feeling of opening-out, of re-
lease. We just wore rubbers now, over
our shoes; our feet felt ridiculously
light. One Saturday we went out to the
stable and found all the doors open,
letting in the unaccustomed sunlight
and fresh air. Henry was there, just
idling around looking at his collection
of calendars which were tacked up
behind the stalls in a part of the stable
my mother probably had never seen.
"Come to say goodbye to your old
friend Mack?" Henry said. "Here, you
give him a taste of oats." He poured
some oats into Laird’s cupped hands
and Laird went to feed Mack. Mack's
teeth were in bad shape. He ate very
slowly, patiently shifting the oats
around in his mouth, trying to find a
stump of a molar to grind it on. "Poor
old Mack, said Henry
mournfully. ”When a horse's teeth’s
gone, he's gone. That's about the way.
"Are you going to shoot him
today?" I said. Mack and Flora had
been in the stables so long I had al-
most forgotten they were going to be
shot.
Henry didn't answer me. Instead
he started to sing in a high, trembly,
mocking-sorrowful voice. Oh, there's
no more work, for poor Uncle Ned,
he's gone where the good darkies go.
Mack's thick, blackish tongue worked
diligently at Laird’s hand. I went out
before the song was ended and sat
down on the gangway.
I had never seen them shoot a
horse, but I knew where it was done.
Last summer Laird and I had come
upon a horse's entrails before they
were buried. We had thought it was a
big black snake, coiled up in the sun.
That was around in the field that ran
up beside the barn. I thought that if
we went inside the barn, and found a
wide crack or a knothole to look
through, we would be able to see them
do it. It was not something I wanted to
see; just the same, if a thing really
38
happened it was better to see, and
know.
My father came down from the
house, carrying a gun. "What are you
doing here?" he said.
"Nothing."
"Go on up and play around the
house."
He sent Laird out of the stable. I
said to Laird, "Do you want to see
them shoot Mack?" and without wait-
ing for an answer led him around to
the front door of the barn, opened it
carefully, and went in. "Be quiet or
they'll hear us," I said. We could hear
Henry and my father talking in the
stable; then the heavy shuffling steps
of Mack being backed out of his stall.
In the loft it was cold and dark.
Thin crisscrossed beams of sunlight
fell through the cracks. The hay was
low. It was rolling country, hills and
hollows, slipping under our feet.
About four feet up was a beam going
around the walls, We piled hay up in
one corned and I boosted Laird up and
hoisted myself. The beam was not very
wide; we crept along it with our hands
flat on the barn walls. There were
plenty of knotholes, and I found one
that gave me the view I wanted – a
corner of the barnyard, the gate, part
of the field. Laird did not have a knot-
hole and began to complain.
I showed him a widened crack be-
tween two boards. "Be quiet and wait.
If they hear you you'll get us in trou-
ble."
My father came in sight carrying
the gun. Henry was leading Mack by
the halter. He dropped it and took out
his cigarette papers and tobacco; he
rolled cigarettes for my father and
himself. While this was going on Mack
nosed around in the old, dead grass
along the fence. Then my father
opened the gate and they took Mack
through. Henry led Mack away from
the path to a patch of ground and they
talked together, not loud enough for
us to hear. Mack again began to
searching for a mouthful of fresh
grass, which was not found. My father
walked away in a straight line, and
stopped short at a distance which
seemed to suit him. Henry was walk-
ing away from Mack too, but sideways,
still negligently holding on to the hal-
ter. My father raised the gun and
Mack looked up as if he had noticed
something and my father shot him.
Mack did not collapse at once but
swayed, lurched sideways, and fell,
first on his side; then he rolled over on
his back and, amazingly, kicked his
legs for a few seconds in the air. At
this Henry laughed, as if Mack had
done a trick for him. Laird, who had
drawn a long, groaning breath of sur-
prise when the shot was fired, said out
loud, "He's not dead." And it seemed
to me it might be true. But his legs
stopped, he rolled on his side again,
his muscles quivered and sank. The
two men walked over and looked at
him in a businesslike way; they bent
down and examined his forehead
where the bullet had gone in, and now
I saw his blood on the brown grass.
"Now they just skin him and cut
him up," I said. "Let's go." My legs
were a little shaky and I jumped grate-
fully down into the hay. "Now you've
seen how they shoot a horse," I said in
a congratulatory way, as if I had seen
it many times before. "Let's see if any
barn cats had kittens in the hay."
Laird jumped. He seemed young and
obedient again. Suddenly I remem-
bered how, when he was little, I had
brought him into the barn and told
him to climb the ladder to the top
beam. That was in the spring, too,
when the hay was low. I had done it
out of a need for excitement, a desire
for something to happen so that I
could tell about it. He was wearing a
little bulky brown and white checked
39
coat, made down from one of mine.
He went all the way up just as I told
him, and sat down on the beam with
the hay far below him on one side, and
the barn floor and some old machin-
ery on the other. Then I ran screaming
to my father. "Laird’s up on the top
beam!" My father came, my mother
came, my father went up the ladder
talking very quietly and brought Laird
down under his arm, at which my
mother leaned against the ladder and
began to cry. They said to me, "Why
weren't you watching him?" but no-
body ever knew the truth. Laird did
not know enough to tell. But whenever
I saw the brown and white checked
coat hanging in the closet, or at the
bottom of the rag bag, which was
where it ended up, I felt a weight in
my stomach, the sadness of unexor-
cised guilt.
I looked at Laird, who did not even
remember this, and I did not like the
look on this thing, winter-paled face.
His expression was not frightened or
upset, but remote, concentrating. "Lis-
ten," I said in an unusually bright and
friendly voice, "you aren't going to tell,
are you?”
"No," he said absently.
"Promise."
"Promise," he said. I grabbed the
hand behind his back to make sure he
was not crossing his fingers. Even so,
he might have a nightmare; it might
come out that way. I decided I had
better work hard to get all thoughts of
what he had seen out of his mind –
which, it seemed to me, could not hold
very many things at a time. I got some
money I had saved and that afternoon
we went into Jubilee and saw a show,
with Judy Canova, at which we both
laughed a great deal. After that I
thought it would be all right.
Two weeks later I knew they were
going to shoot Flora. I knew from the
night before, when I heard my mother
ask if the hay was holding out all right,
and my father said, "Well, after to-
morrow there'll just be the cow, and
we should be able to put her out to
grass in another week." So I knew it
was Flora's turn in the morning.
This time I didn't think of watching
it. That was something to see just one
time. I had not thought about it very
often since, but sometimes when I was
busy, working at school, or standing in
front of the mirror combing my hair
and wondering if I would be pretty
when I grew up, the whole scene
would flash into my mind: I would see
the easy, practiced way my father
raised the gun, and hear Henry laugh-
ing when Mack kicked his legs in the
air. I did not have any great feelings of
horror and opposition, such as a city
child might have had; I was too used
to seeing the death of animals as a
necessity by which we lived. Yet I felt a
little ashamed, and there was a new
wariness, a sense of holding-off, in my
attitude to my father and his work.
It was a fine day, and we were go-
ing around the yard picking up tree
branches that had been torn off in
winter storms. This was something we
had been told to do, and also we want-
ed to use them to make a teepee. We
heard Flora whinny, and then my fa-
ther's voice and Henry's shouting, and
we ran down to the barnyard to see
what was going on.
The stable door was open. Henry
had just brought Flora out, and she
had broken away from him. She was
running free in the barnyard, from one
end to the other. We climbed on the
fence. It was exciting to see her run-
ning, whinnying, going up on her hind
legs, prancing and threatening like a
horse in a Western movie, an unbro-
ken ranch horse, though she was just
an old driver, an old sorrel mare. My
father and Henry ran after her and
tried to grab the dangling halter. They
tried to work her into a corner, and
40
they had almost succeeded when she
made a run between them, wild-eyed,
and disappeared round the corner of
the barn. We heard the rails clatter
down as she got over the fence, and
Henry yelled. "She's into the field
now!"
That meant she was in the long L-
shaped field that ran up by the house.
If she got around the center, heading
towards the lane, the gate was open;
the truck had been driven into the
field this morning. My father shouted
to me, because I was on the other side
of the fence, nearest the lane, "Go shut
the gate!"
I could run very fast. I ran across
the garden, past the tree where our
swing was hung, and jumped across a
ditch into the lane. There was the open
gate. She had not got out, I could not
see her up on the road; she must have
run to the other end of the field. There
gate was heavy. I lifted it out of the
gravel and carried it across the road-
way. I had it half way across when she
came in sight, galloping straight to-
ward me. There was just time to get
the chain on. Laird came scrambling
though the ditch to help me.
Instead of shutting the gate, I
opened it as wide as I could. I did not
make any decision to do this; it was
just what I did. Flora never slowed
down; she galloped straight past me,
and Laird jumped up and down,
yelling, "Shut it, shut it!" even after it
was too late. My father and Henry ap-
peared in the field a moment too late
to see what I had done. They only saw
Flora heading for the township road.
They would think I had not got there
in time.
They did not waste any time asking
about it. They went back to the barn
and got the gun and the knives they
used, and put these in the truck; then
they turned the truck around and
came bounding up the field toward us.
Laird called to them, "Let me go too,
let me go too!" and Henry stopped the and I went right on but the next night
truck and they took him in. I shut the I did not start. There was not so much
gate after they were all gone. need to anyway, we were no longer
afraid. We knew it was just old furni-
I supposed Laird would tell. I won-
ture over there, old jumble and confu-
dered what would happen to me. I had
sion. We did not keep to the rules. I
never disobeyed my father before, and
still stayed away after Laird was asleep
I could not understand why I had
and told myself stories, but even in
done it. Flora would not really get
these stories something different was
away. They would catch up with her in
happening, mysterious alterations
the truck. Or if they did not catch her
took place. A story might start off in
this morning somebody would see her
the old way, with a spectacular danger,
and telephone us this afternoon or
a fire or wild animals, and for a while I
tomorrow. There was no wild country
might rescue people; then things
here for her, we needed the meat to
would change around, and instead,
feed the foxes, we needed the foxes to
somebody would be rescuing me. It
make our living. All I had done was
might be a boy from our class at
make more work for my father who
school, or even Mr. Campbell, our
worked hard enough already. And
teacher, who tickled girls under the
when my father found out about it he
arms. And at this point the story con-
was not going to trust me any more;
cerned itself at great length with what
he would know that I was not entirely
I looked like – how long my hair was,
on his side. I was on Flora's side, and
and what kind of dress I had on; by
that made me no use to anybody, not
the time I had these details worked
even to her. Just the same, I did not
out the real excitement of the story
regret it; when she came running at
was lost.
me I held the gate open, that was the
only thing I could do. It was later than one o'clock when
the truck came back. The tarpaulin
I went back to the house, and my
was over the back, which meant there
mother said, "What's all the commo-
was meat in it. My mother had to heat
tion?" I told her that Flora had kicked
dinner up all over again. Henry and
down the fence and got away. "Your
my father had changed from their
poor father," she said, "now he'll have
bloody overalls into ordinary working
to go chasing over the countryside.
overalls in the barn, and they washed
Well, there isn't any use planning din-
arms and necks and faces at the sink,
ner before one." She put up the iron-
and splashed water on their hair and
ing board. I wanted to tell her, but
combed it. Laird lifted his arm to show
thought better of it and went upstairs
off a streak of blood. "We shot old Flo-
and sat on my bed.
ra," he said, "and cut her up in fifty
Lately I had been trying to make pieces."
my part of the room fancy, spreading
"Well I don't want to hear about it,"
the bed with old lace curtains, and
my mother said. "And don't come to
fixing myself a dressing table with
my table like that."
some leftovers of cretonne for a skirt. I
planned to put up some kind of barri- My father made him go wash the
cade between my bed and Laird’s, to blood off.
keep my section separate from his. In We sat down and my father said
the sunlight, the lace curtains were grace and Henry pasted his chewing
just dusty rags. We did not sing at gum on the end of his fork, the way he
night any more. One night when I was always did; when he took it off he
singing Laird said, "You sound silly," would have us admire the pattern. We
41
began to pass the bowls of steaming,
overcooked vegetables. Laird looked
across the table at me and said proud-
ly distinctly, "Anyway it was her fault
Flora got away."
"What?" my father said.
"She could of shut the gate and she
didn't. She just open’ it up and Flora
ran out."
"Is that right?" my father said.
Everybody at the table was looking
at me. I nodded, swallowing food with
great difficulty. To my shame, tears
flooded my eyes.
My father made a curt sound of
disgust. "What did you do that for?”
I didn't answer. I put down my fork
and waited to be sent from the table,
still not looking up.
But this did not happen. For some
time nobody said anything, then Laird
said matter-of- factly, "She's crying."
"Never mind," my father said. He
spoke with resignation, even good
humour the words which absolved and
dismissed me for good. "She's only a
girl," he said.
QUESTIONS
I didn't protest that, even in my
heart. Maybe it was true.
36. Which parent and which roles
does the protagonist identify with
at various times i the story? What
foreshadows her sympathy for
Flora and her won act of rebel-
lion?
37. What are the reactions of the fam-
ily members to the narrator letting
the horse escape? How do you
think she feels at the end of the
story?
38. Explore the symbolism of the
opened gate and the various ani-
mals in the story.
39. Discuss the message of this story
in relation to topics of gender
identity and differences.
42
 Where All I Know Comes From
Lauren Marx

Where All I Know Comes

From

QUESTIONS

40. From where does the fox origi-

nate? What does that say about
the artist’s views on death, also
considering the work’s title?
41. Explore the connections between
“Boys and Girls,” this illustration,
and the one featured on the cover.
43
Ruba’i

Omar Khayyam:

Ah, would there were a loaf of bread as fare,

A joint of lamb, a jug of vintage rare,
And you and I in wilderness encamped—
No Sultan’s pleasure could with ours compare

The sphere upon which mortals come and go,

Has no end nor beginning that we know;
And none there is to tell us in plain truth:
Whence do we come and whither do we go

Jalal Al-Din Rumi:

In your wild dreams, what are you looking for?

In tears and blood, what are you looking for?
You—from head to foot—you are the Truth. You
can’t find yourself! What are you looking for?

Find the water of life, drink, and be healed.

Find the Friend in the rose garden—no thorns.
They say there’s a window from heart to heart.
But, why a window?—there are no walls here.

Abū-Sa'īd Abul-Khayr:

stay in my breast or it’ll brim with blood

you’re all i see or rivers out my eyes
my spirit pines to be with you or
with a thousand tricks i’ll banish it from my flesh

QUESTIONS

42. How does the rhyme pattern of a

Ruba’i compliment its message?
43. Identify the tones and themes of
these samples and discuss their
significance.
44. The rhyme scheme of the last
Ruba’i is not incorporated in its
translation. How does this affect
the poem?

44
Haiku

The wren The lamp once out

Earns his living Cool stars enter
Noiselessly. The window frame.
- Kobayahsi Issa - Natsume Soseki

Consider me
From time to time As one who loved poetry
The clouds give rest And persimmons.
To the moon-beholders. - Masaoaka Shiki
- Matsuo Bashō

Over the wintry

In the cicada's cry forest, winds howl in rage
No sign can foretell with no leaves to blow.
How soon it must die. - Natsume Soseki
- Matsuo Bashō

An old silent pond...
A frog jumps in,
splash! Silence again.
- Matsuo Bashō
Winter seclusion -
Listening, that evening,
To the rain in the mountain.
- Kobayashi Issa

I kill an ant
and realize my three children
have been watching.
- Kato Shuson

Toward those short trees

We saw a hawk descending
On a day in spring.
- Masaoka Shiki
QUESTIONS

No one travels 45. Explain the importance of imagery

Along this way but I,
This autumn evening.
- Matsuo Bashō
First autumn morning
the mirror I stare into
shows my father's face.
- Murakami Kijo
in two of the provided Haikus.
46. Identify the role of each line in the
poem in unfolding the image and
the narrative.
47. In what ways are Haikus and
Rubais similar?
48. Reread these samples closely and
compile a list of rules and parame-
ters for Haikus. Ensure to explore
beyond form and format.

45
The Veldt
Ray Bradbury
“George, I wish you’d look at the
nursery. “What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then.”
“I just want you to look at it, is all,
or call a psychologist in to look at it.”
“What would a psychologist want with
a nursery?”
“You know very well what he’d
want.” His wife was standing in the
middle of the kitchen watching the
stove busy humming to itself, making
supper for four.
“It’s just that it is different now than
it was.”
“All right, let’s have a look.”
They walked down the hall of their
HappyLife Home, which had cost
them thirty thousand dollars with
everything included. This house which
clothed and fed and rocked them to
sleep and played and sang and was
good to them. Their approach was
sensed by a hidden switch and the
nursery light turned on when they
came within ten feet of it. Similarly,
behind them, in the halls, lights went
on and off automatically as they left
them behind.
“Well,” said George Hadley. They
stood on the grass-like floor of the
nursery. It was forty feet across by
forty feet long and thirty feet high; it
had cost half again as much as the rest
of the house. “But nothing’s too good
for our children,” George had said.
The room was silent and empty. The
walls were white and two dimensional.
Now, as George and Lydia Hadley
stood in the center of the room, the
walls made a quiet noise and seemed
to fall away into the distance. Soon an
African veldt appeared, in three di-
mensions, on all sides, in color. It
looked real to the smallest stone and
bit of yellow summer grass. The ceil-
46
ing above them became a deep sky
with a hot yellow sun.
George Hadley started to sweat from
the heat. “Let’s get out of this sun,” he
said. “This is a little too real. But I
don’t see anything wrong.”
“Wait a moment, you’ll see,” said his
wife.
Now hidden machines were begin-
ning to blow a wind containing pre-
pared smells toward the two people in
the middle of the baked veldt. The hot
straw smell of lion grass, the cool
green smell of the hidden water hole,
the strong dried blood smell of the
animals, the smell of dust like red
pepper in the hot air. And now the
sounds: the thump of distant antelope
feet on soft grassy ground, the papery
rustle of vultures. A shadow passed
through the sky. George Hadley
looked up, and as he watched the
shadow moved across his sweating
face. “Horrible creatures,” he heard
his wife say.
“The vultures.”
“You see, there are the lions, far
over, that way. Now they’re on their
way to the water hole.
They’ve just been eating,” said Ly-
dia. “I don’t know what.”
“Some animal.” George Hadley put
his hand above his eyes to block off
the burning light and looked carefully.
“A zebra or a baby giraffe, maybe.”
“Are you sure?” His wife sounded
strangely nervous.
“No, it’s a little late to be sure,” he
said, with a laugh. “Nothing over there
I can see but cleaned bone, and the
vultures dropping for what’s left.”
“Did you hear that scream?” she
asked. “No.”
“About a minute ago?”
“Sorry, no.”
The lions were coming. And again
George Hadley was filled with respect
for the brilliant mind that had come
up with the idea for this room. A won-
der of efficiency selling for an unbe-
lievably low price. Every home should
have one. Oh, occasionally they fright-
ened you with their realism, they
made you jump, gave you a scare. But
most of the time they were fun for
everyone. Not only your own son and
daughter, but for yourself when you
felt like a quick trip to a foreign land, a
quick change of scenery. Well, here it
was!
And here were the lions now, fifteen
feet away. They looked so real, so
powerful and shockingly real, that you
could feel the hairs stand up on the
back of your neck. Your mouth was
filled with the dusty smell of their
heated fur. The yellow of the lions and
the summer grass was in your eyes
like a picture in an expensive French
wall hanging. And there was the sound
of the lions quick, heavy breaths in the
silent mid-day sun, and the smell of
meat from their dripping mouths.
The lions stood looking at George
and Lydia Hadley with terrible green-
yellow eyes. “Watch out!” screamed
Lydia.
The lions came running at them.
Lydia turned suddenly and ran. With-
out thinking, George ran after her.
Outside in the hall, after they had
closed the door quickly and noisily
behind them, he was laughing and she
was crying. And they both stood
shocked at the other’s reaction.
“George!”
“Lydia! Oh, my dear poor sweet Ly-
dia!” “They almost got us!”
“Walls, Lydia, remember; glass
walls, that’s all they are. Oh, they look
real, I must admit – Africa in your
living room. But it’s all created from
three dimensional color film behind
glass screens. And the machines that
deliver the smells and sounds to go
with the scenery. Here’s my handker-
chief.”
“I’m afraid.” She came to him and
put her body against him and cried as
47
he held her. “Did you see? Did you
feel? It’s too real.”
“Now, Lydia...”
“You’ve got to tell Wendy and Peter
not to read any more on Africa.” “Of
course – of course.” He patted her.
“Promise?”
“Sure.”
“And lock the nursery for a few days
until I can get over this.”
“You know how difficult Peter is
about that. When I punished him a
month ago by locking it for even a few
hours – the way he lost his temper!
And Wendy too. They live for the
nursery.”
“It’s got to be locked, that’s all there
is to it.”
“All right.” Although he wasn’t hap-
py about it, he locked the huge door.
“You’ve been working too hard. You
need a rest.”
“I don’t know – I don’t know,” she
said, blowing her nose, sitting down in
a chair that immediately began to rock
and comfort her. “Maybe I don’t have
enough to do. Maybe I have time to
think too much. Why don’t we shut
the whole house off for a few days and
take a vacation?”
“You mean you want to fry my eggs
for me?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
“And mend my socks?”
“Yes.” She nodded again excitedly,
with tears in her eyes. “And clean the
house?”
“Yes, yes – oh, yes!”
“But I thought that’s why we bought
this house, so we wouldn’t have to do
anything?”
“That’s just it. I feel like I don’t be-
long here. The house is wife and
mother now, and nurse for the chil-
dren. Can I compete with an African
veldt? Can I give a bath and clean the
children as efficiently or quickly as the
automatic body wash can? I cannot.
And it isn’t just me. It’s you. You’ve
been awfully nervous lately.”
“I suppose I have been smoking too
much.”
“You look as if you didn’t know what
to do with yourself in this house, ei-
ther. You smoke a little more every
morning and drink a little more every
afternoon, and you are taking more
pills to help you sleep at night. You’re
beginning to feel unnecessary too.”
“Am I?” He thought for a moment as
he and tried to feel into himself to see
what was really there.
“Oh, George!” She looked past him,
at the nursery door. “Those lions can’t
get out of there, can they?”
He looked at the door and saw it
shake as if something had jumped
against it from the other side.
“Of course not,” he said.
At dinner they ate alone, for Wendy
and Peter were at a special plastic fair
across town. They had called home
earlier to say they’d be late. So George
Hadley, deep in thought, sat watching
the dining-room table produce warm
dishes of food from the machines in-
side.
“We forgot the tomato sauce,” he
said.
“Sorry,” said a small voice within the
table, and tomato sauce appeared.
As for the nursery, thought George
Hadley, it won’t hurt for the children
to be locked out of it a while. Too
much of anything isn’t good for any-
one. And it was clearly indicated that
the children had been spending a little
too much time on Africa. That sun. He
could still feel it on his neck, like a hot
paw. And the lions. And the smell of
blood. Remarkable how the nursery
read the thoughts in the children’s
minds and created life to fill their
every desire. The children thought
lions, and there were lions. The chil-
dren thought zebras, and there were
zebras. Sun – sun. Giraffes – giraffes.
Death and death.
48
That last. He ate the meat that the
table had cut for him without tasting
it. Death thoughts. They were awfully
young, Wendy and Peter, for death
thoughts. Or, no, you were never too
young, really. Long before you knew
what death was you were wishing it on
someone else. When you were two
years old you were shooting people
with toy guns.
But this – the long, hot African
veldt. The awful death in the jaws of a
lion. And repeated again and again.
“Where are you going?”
George didn’t answer Lydia... he was
too busy thinking of something else.
He let the lights shine softly on ahead
of him, turn off behind him as he
walked quietly to the nursery door. He
listened against it. Far away, a lion
roared. He unlocked the door and
opened it. Just before he stepped in-
side, he heard a faraway scream. And
then another roar from the lions,
which died down quickly. He stepped
into Africa.
How many times in the last year had
he opened this door and found Won-
derland with Alice and the Mock Tur-
tle, or Aladdin and his Magical Lamp,
or Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, or Dr.
Doolittle, or the cow jumping over a
very real-looking moon. All the most
enjoyable creations of an imaginary
world. How often had he seen Pegasus
the winged horse flying in the sky ceil-
ing, or seen explosions of red fire-
works, or heard beautiful singing.
But now, is yellow hot Africa, this
bake oven with murder in the heat.
Perhaps Lydia was right. Perhaps they
needed a little vacation from the fan-
tasy which was growing a bit too real
for ten-year- old children. It was all
right to exercise one’s mind with un-
usual fantasies, but when the lively
child mind settled on one pattern..?
It seemed that, at a distance, for the
past month, he had heard lions roar-
ing, and noticed their strong smell
which carried as far away as his study
door. But, being busy, he had paid it
no attention.
George Hadley stood on the African
veldt alone. The lions looked up from
their feeding, watching
him. The only thing wrong with the
image was the open door. Through it
he could see his wife, far down the
dark hall, like a framed picture. She
was still eating her dinner, but her
mind was clearly on other things.
“Go away,” he said to the lions.
They did not go. He knew exactly
how the room should work. You sent
out your thoughts. Whatever you
thought would appear. “Let’s have Al-
addin and his lamp,” he said angrily.
The veldt remained; the lions re-
mained.
“Come on, room! I demand
Aladdin!” he said.
Nothing happened. The lions made
soft low noises in the hot sun.
“Aladdin!”
He went back to dinner. “The fool
room’s out of order,” he said. “It won’t
change.”
“Or...”
“Or what?”
“Or it can’t change,” said Lydia, “be-
cause the children have thought about
Africa and lions and killing so many
days that the room’s stuck in a pattern
it can’t get out of.”
“Could be.”
“Or Peter’s set it to remain that
way.”
“Set it?”
“He may have got into the machin-
ery and fixed something.”
“Peter doesn’t know machinery.”
“He’s a wise one for ten. That I.Q. of
his...”
“But...”
“Hello, Mom. Hello, Dad.”
The Hadleys turned. Wendy and
Peter were coming happily in the front
49
door, with bright blue eyes and a smell
of fresh air on their clothes from their
trip in the helicopter.
“You’re just in time for supper,” said
both parents.
“We’re full of strawberry ice-cream
and hot dogs,” said the children, hold-
ing hands. “But we’ll sit and watch.”
“Yes, come tell us about the
nursery,” said George Hadley.
The brother and sister looked at him
and then at each other. “Nursery?”
“All about Africa and everything,”
said the father with a false smile. “I
don’t understand,” said Peter.
“Your mother and I were just travel-
ing through Africa.
“There’s no Africa in the nursery,”
said Peter simply.
“Oh, come now, Peter. We know
better.”
“I don’t remember any Africa,” said
Peter to Wendy. “Do you?”
“No.”
“Run see and come tell.”
She did as he told her.
“Wendy, come back here!” said
George Hadley, but she was gone. The
house lights followed her like fireflies.
Too late, he realized he had forgotten
to lock the nursery door after his last
visit.
“Wendy’ll look and come tell us,”
said Peter. “She doesn’t have to tell
me. I’ve seen it.” “I’m sure you’re mis-
taken, Father.”
“I’m not, Peter. Come along now.”
But Wendy was back. “It’s not
Africa,” she said breathlessly.
“We’ll see about this,” said George
Hadley, and they all walked down the
hall together and opened the door.
There was a green, lovely forest, a
lovely river, a purple mountain, high
voices singing. And there was Rima
the bird girl, lovely and mysterious.
She was hiding in the trees with color-
ful butterflies, like flowers coming to
life, flying about her long hair. The
African veldt was gone. The lions were
gone. Only Rima was here now,
singing a song so beautiful that it
brought tears to your eyes.
George Hadley looked in at the
changed scene. “Go to bed,” he said to
the children.
They opened their mouths.
“You heard me,” he said.
They went off to the air tube, where
a wind blew them like brown leaves up
to their sleeping rooms.
George Hadley walked through the
forest scene and picked up something
that lay in the corner near where the
lions had been. He walked slowly back
to his wife.
“What is that?” she asked.
“An old wallet of mine,” he said. He
showed it to her. The smell of hot
grass was on it... and the smell of a
lion. It was wet from being in the
lion’s mouth, there were tooth marks
on it, and there was dried blood on
both sides. He closed the door and
locked it, tight.
They went to up to bed but couldn’t
sleep. “Do you think Wendy changed
it?” she said at last, in the dark room.
“Of course.”
“Made it from a veldt into a forest
and put Rima there instead of lions?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But it’s staying locked
until I find out.”
“How did your wallet get there?”
“I don’t know anything,” he said,
“except that I’m beginning to be sorry
we bought that room for the children.
If children are suffering from any kind
of emotional problem, a room like
that...”
“It’s supposed to help them work off
their emotional problems in a healthy
way.” “I’m starting to wonder.” His
50
eyes were wide open, looking up at the
ceiling.
“We’ve given the children everything
they ever wanted. Is this our reward –
secrecy, not doing what we tell them?”
“Who was it said, ‘Children are car-
pets, they should be stepped on occa-
sionally’? We’ve never lifted a hand.
They’re unbearable – let’s admit it.
They come and go when they like; they
treat us as if we were the children in
the family. They’re spoiled and we’re
spoiled.”
“They’ve been acting funny ever
since you wouldn’t let them go to New
York a few months ago.” “They’re not
old enough to do that alone, I ex-
plained.”
“I know, but I’ve noticed they’ve
been decidedly cool toward us since.”
“I think I’ll have David McClean
come tomorrow morning to have a
look at Africa.”
“But it’s not Africa now, it’s South
America and Rima.” “I have a feeling
it’ll be Africa again before then.”
A moment later they heard the
screams. Two screams. Two people
screaming from downstairs. And then
a roar of lions.
“Wendy and Peter aren’t in their
rooms,” said his wife.
He lay in his bed with his beating
heart. “No,” he said. “They’ve broken
into the nursery.”
“Those screams – they sound famil-
iar.”
“Do they?”
“Yes, awfully.”
And although their beds tried very
hard, the two adults couldn’t be
rocked to sleep for another hour. A
smell of cats was in the night air.
* **
“Father?” asked Peter the next
morning. “Yes.”
 Peter looked at his shoes. He never
looked at his father any more, nor at
his mother. “You aren’t going to lock
up the nursery for good, are you?”
“That all depends.”
“On what?” said Peter sharply.
“On you and your sister. If you
break up this Africa with a little vari-
ety – oh, Sweden perhaps, or Den-
mark or China...”
“I thought we were free to play as we
wished.”
“You are, within reasonable limits.”
“What’s wrong with Africa, Father?”
“Oh, so now you admit you have
been thinking up Africa, do you?”
“I wouldn’t want the nursery locked
up,” said Peter coldly. “Ever.”
“Matter of fact, we’re thinking of
turning the whole house off for about
a month. Live sort of a happy family
existence.”
“That sounds terrible! Would I have
to tie my own shoes instead of letting
the machine do it? And brush my own
teeth and comb my hair and give my-
self a bath?”
“It would be fun for a change, don’t
you think?”
No, it would be horrible. I didn’t like
it when you took out the picture
painter last month.” “That’s because I
wanted you to learn to paint all by
yourself, son.”
“I don’t want to do anything but
look and listen and smell; what else is
there to do?”
“All right, go play in Africa.”
“Will you shut off the house some-
time soon?”
“We’re considering it.”
“I don’t think you’d better consider
it any more, Father.” “I won’t have any
threats from my son!”
“Very well.” And Peter walked off to
the nursery.
“Am I on time?” said David Mc-
Clean. “Breakfast?” asked George
51
Hadley. “Thanks, had some. What’s
the trouble?” “David, you’re a psy-
chologist.”
“I should hope so.”
* **
“Well, then, have a look at our nurs-
ery. You saw it a year ago when you
dropped by; did you notice anything
unusual about it then?”
“Can’t say I did; the usual violences,
a tendency toward a slight paranoia
here or there. But this is usual in chil-
dren because they feel their parents
are always doing things to make them
suffer in one way or another. But, oh,
really nothing.”
They walked down the hall. “I locked
it up,” explained the father, “and the
children broke back into it during the
night. I let them stay so they could
form the patterns for you to see.”
There was a terrible screaming from
the nursery.
“There it is,” said George Hadley.
“See what you make of it.”
They walked in on the children
without knocking. The screams had
stopped. The lions were feeding.
“Run outside a moment, children,”
said George Hadley. “No, don’t change
the mental picture. Leave the walls as
they are. Get!”
With the children gone, the two men
stood studying the lions sitting togeth-
er in the distance, eating with great
enjoyment whatever it was they had
caught.
“I wish I knew what it was,” said
George Hadley. “Sometimes I can al-
most see. Do you think if I brought
high-powered binoculars here and...”
David McClean laughed dryly.
“Hardly.” He turned to study all four
walls. “How long has this been going
on?”
“A little over a month.”
“It certainly doesn’t feel good.”
“I want facts, not feelings.”
 “My dear George, a psychologist
never saw a fact in his life. He only
hears about feelings; things that aren’t
always clearly expressed. This doesn’t
feel good, I tell you. Trust me. I have a
nose for something bad. This is very
bad. My advice to you is to have the
whole damn room torn down and your
children brought to me every day dur-
ing the next year for treatment.”
“Is it that bad?”
“I’m afraid so. One of the original
uses of these rooms was so that we
could study the patterns left on the
walls by the child’s mind. We could
study them whenever we wanted to,
and help the child. In this case, how-
ever, the room has become a means of
creating destructive thoughts, instead
of helping to make them go away.”
“Didn’t you sense this before?”
“I sensed only that you had spoiled
your children more than most. And
now you’re letting them down in some
way. What way?”
“I wouldn’t let them go to New
York.” “What else?”
“I’ve taken a few machines from the
house and threatened them, a month
ago, with closing up the nursery unless
they did their homework. I did close it
for a few days to show I meant busi-
ness.”
“Ah, ha!”
“Does that mean anything?”
“Everything. Where before they had
a Santa Claus now they have a
Scrooge. Children prefer Santa. You’ve
let this room and this house replace
you and your wife in your children’s
feelings. This room is their mother
and father, far more important in their
lives than their real parents. And now
you come along and want to shut it off.
No wonder there’s hatred here. You
can feel it coming out of the sky. Feel
that sun. George, you’ll have to change
your life. Like too many others, you’ve
built it around creature comforts.
Why, you’d go hungry tomorrow if
52
something went wrong in your
kitchen. You wouldn’t know how to
cook an egg. All the same, turn every-
thing off. Start new. It’ll take time. But
we’ll make good children out of bad in
a year, wait and see.”
“But won’t the shock be too much
for the children, shutting the room up
without notice, for good?” “I don’t
want them going any deeper into this,
that’s all.”
The lions were finished with their
bloody meat. They were standing on
the edge of the clearing watching the
two men.
“Now I’m feeling worried,” said Mc-
Clean. “Let’s get out of here. I never
have cared for these damned rooms.
Make me nervous.”
“The lions look real, don’t they?”
said George Hadley. I don’t suppose
there’s any way...” “What?”
“...that they could become real?”
“Not that I know.”
“Some problem with the machinery,
someone changing something inside?”
“No.”
They went to the door.
“I don’t imagine the room will like
being turned off,” said the father.
“Nothing ever likes to die – even a
room.”
“I wonder if it hates me for wanting
to switch it off?”
“Paranoia is thick around here to-
day,” said David McClean. “You can
see it everywhere. Hello.” He bent and
picked up a bloody scarf. “This yours?”
“No.” George Hadley’s face set like
stone. “It belongs to Lydia.”
They went to the control box togeth-
er and threw the switch that killed the
nursery.
The two children were so upset that
they couldn’t control themselves. They
screamed and danced around and
threw things. They shouted and cried
and called them rude names and
jumped on the furniture.
 “You can’t do that to the nursery,
you can’t!”
“Now, children.”
The children threw themselves onto
a sofa, crying.
“George,” said Lydia Hadley, “turn it
on again, just for a few moments. You
need to give them some more time.”
“No.”
“You can’t be so cruel...”
“Lydia, it’s off, and it stays off. And
the whole damn house dies as of here
and now. The more I see of the mess
we’ve put ourselves in, the more it
sickens me. We’ve been thinking of
our machine assisted selves for too
long. My God, how we need a breath
of honest air!”
And he marched about the house
turning off the voice clocks, the stoves,
the heaters, the shoe cleaners, the
body washer, the massager, and every
other machine he could put his hand
to.
The house was full of dead bodies, it
seemed. It felt like a mechanical ceme-
tery. So silent. None of
the humming hidden energy of ma-
chines waiting to function at the tap of
a button.
“Don’t let them do it!” cried Peter to
the ceiling, as if he was talking to the
house, the nursery. “Don’t let Father
kill everything.” He turned to his fa-
ther. “Oh, I hate you!”
“Saying things like that won’t get
you anywhere.” “I wish you were
dead!”
“We were, for a long while. Now
we’re going to really start living. In-
stead of being handled and massaged,
we’re going to live.”
Wendy was still crying and Peter
joined her again. “Just a moment, just
one moment, just another moment of
nursery,” they cried.
“Oh, George,” said the wife, “it can’t
hurt.”
53
“All right – all right, if they’ll just
shut up. One minute, mind you, and
then off forever.” “Daddy, Daddy,
Daddy!” sang the children, smiling
with wet faces.
“And then we’re going on a vacation.
David McClean is coming back in half
an hour to help us move out and get to
the airport. I’m going to dress. You
turn the nursery on for a minute, Ly-
dia, just a minute, mind you.”
And the three of them went off talk-
ing excitedly while he let himself be
transported upstairs through the air
tube and set about dressing himself. A
minute later Lydia appeared.
“I’ll be glad when we get away,” she
said thankfully.
“Did you leave them in the nursery?”
“I wanted to dress too. Oh, that hor-
rible Africa. What can they see in it?”
“Well, in five minutes we’ll be on our
way to Iowa. Lord, how did we ever
get in this house? What made us buy a
nightmare?”
“Pride, money, foolishness.”
“I think we’d better get downstairs
before those kids spend too much time
with those damned beasts again.”
Just then they heard the children
calling, “Daddy, Mommy, come quick
– quick!”
They went downstairs in the air tube
and ran down the hall. The children
were nowhere in sight. “Wendy? Pe-
ter!”
They ran into the nursery. The veldt
was empty save for the lions waiting,
looking at them. “Peter, Wendy?”
The door closed loudly.
“Wendy, Peter!”
George Hadley and his wife turned
quickly and ran back to the door.
“Open the door!” cried George
Hadley, trying the handle. “Why,
they’ve locked it from the outside! Pe-
ter!” He beat at the door. “Open up!”
 He heard Peter’s voice outside,
against the door.
“Don’t let them switch off the nurs-
ery and the house,” he was saying.
Mr. and Mrs. George Hadley beat at
the door. “Now, don’t be silly, chil-
dren. It’s time to go. Mr. McClean’ll be
here in a minute and...”
And then they heard the sounds.
The lions were on three sides of
them in the yellow veldt grass. They
walked quietly through the dry grass,
making long, deep rolling sounds in
their throats. The lions!
Mr. Hadley looked at his wife and
they turned and looked back at the
beasts edging slowly forward, knees
bent, tails in the air.
Mr. and Mrs. Hadley screamed.
And suddenly they realized why
those other screams had sounded fa-
miliar.

* **
“Well, here I am,” said David Mc-
Clean from the nursery door. “Oh, hel-
lo.” He looked carefully at the two
children seated in the center of the
room eating a little picnic lunch. On
the far them he could see the water
hole and the yellow veldt. Above was
the hot sun. He began to sweat.
“Where are your father and mother?”
The children looked up and smiled.
“Oh, they’ll be here directly.”
“Good, we must get going.”
At a distance Mr. McClean saw the
lions fighting over something and then
quietening down to feed in silence un-
der the shady trees. He put his hand to
his eyes to block out the sun and
looked at them. Now the lions were
done feeding. They moved to the water
hole to drink. A shadow moved over
Mr. McClean’s hot face. Many shad-
ows moved. The vultures were drop-
ping down from the burning sky.
“A cup of tea?” asked Wendy in the
silence.
54
QUESTIONS
49. What mistakes have George and
Lydia made in raising their chil-
dren? Give examples.
50. What message or moral lesson is
the author trying to convey to his
readers about technology? Provide
examples from the text to support
your claim.
51. The Veldt was published in 1951.
It is a prediction of life and tech-
nology around the year 2000. In
what ways are these predictions
accurate? How are they not? Ex-
plain.
52. Write a paragraph about your own
views on technology and its place
in your life making references to
the short story.
Children of the Raven
Bill Reid

QUESTIONS
53. Research Bill Ried’s carving, titled
“The Raven and the First Men,”
and the creation story that in-
spired it. Discuss the similarities
and differences between these
works.
55
54. How does the artist relate a narra-
tive throughout this print?
55. Contrast the mythical role of
ravens in the Haida culture with
the symbolic presence of the bird
in the poem by Edgar Allan Poe.
Epigrams
Love for your brother what you love
for yourself
What is an Epigram? —Prophet Muhammad
a dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul. I can resist everything but temptation.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge The way to get rid of temptation is to
yield to it.
Little strokes —Oscar Wilde
Fell great oaks.
—Benjamin Franklin Some cause happiness wherever they
go; others whenever they go.
I'm tired of Love: I'm still more tired —Oscar Wilde
of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure all the An eye for an eye leaves the whole
time. world blind.
—Hilaire Belloc —Mohandas Gandhi

If you can't be a good example, you'll For most of history, Anonymous was a
just have to be a horrible warning. woman.
—Catherine Aird —Virginia Woolf

It is better to light a candle than curse I'm starting with the man in the mir-
the darkness. ror.
—Eleanor Roosevelt —Michael Jackson

"Mankind must put an end to war, or The Earth is but one country, and
war will put and end to mankind." mankind its citizens.
—John F. Kennedy —Bahaullah

If religion becomes a cause of dislike,

hatred and division it would be better
to be without it.
—Abdul Baha

All my best is dressing old words new,

Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
— William Shakespeare
Whatsoever ye do unto the least of
these, my brethren, ye do it unto me.
—Jesus Christ
No one can make you feel inferior
without your consent.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
An unbending tree is easily broken.
—Lao Tzu
56
QUESTIONS
56. What would you say is the pur-
pose of an epigram?
57. What are some other forms of
communication in our current
culture that resemble an epigram.
58. Compose an epigram of your own
based on a life lesson or observa-
tions that you have come to your-
self or learned from someone
close to you.
Terminology
Speaker*: The voice used by a poet
to speak a poem. The speaker is often
a created identity and should not au-
tomatically be equated with the au-
thor. The speaker is not the same as
the author.
Types of Poems
• Ballad*: A long poem that tells a
story, usually a folk tale or legend, in
rhyme. Often set to music, the tradi-
tional ballad typically has a refrain or
chorus, which adds to its musical
qualities.
• Concrete: Concrete poetry exper-
iments with the very materials of the
poem itself: words, letters, format.
The final product does what it says in
that its words, letters, and format
demonstrate the poem’s meaning.
Concrete poems rely heavily on the
visual or phonetic to get across their
meaning.
• Dramatic Monologue*: The
words of a single speaker who reveals
his/her own personality and the dra-
matic situation (setting, audience)
through his/her words. It is different
from a stage soliloquy because there is
no play to help the reader understand
setting – the poem does it all. (NT)
• Elegy*: This is a particular type of
lyric that is written to mourn the pass-
ing of something or someone. (NT) 
 Poetic Devices A. Sound
• Epic*: This is a very, very long
poem that tells a story. Epic poems are
narrative poems that are long enough
to be in a book of their own, rather
than an anthology. 
 the reader’s attention. I kicked cold
• Epitaph*: Epitaphs are poems
about the dead that are written to be
on a tombstone; this means they are
usually very short. 
 sounds in the middle of words. This
• Epigram*: These are very short,
witty poems that make a pithy pro-
nouncement about something. Usually
they are written as a couplet. 
 fully. Twinkle twinkle little star is an
• Free Verse*: Modern poetry that
has no regular pattern of rhythm,
57
rhyme or line length. Free verse po-
ems experiment with words to create
images for the reader. 

• Lyric*: Shorter poems of intense
feeling and emotion. Some are mod-
ern free verse poems and others are
more “old-fashioned” poems that have
rhythm and rhyme. Types: sonnet,
ode, and elegy. 

• Narrative*: A poem that tells a
story. Narratives may or may not
rhyme, but they almost always follow
the plot structure of a short story. 

• Parody*: A parody is a mockery of
another piece of literature; it copies
the style and voice, and sometimes
language of the original for comedic
effect. Parodies can exist in any genre,
not just poetry. 

• Pastoral*: A pastoral is a poem
that is set in the countryside. It often
presents an unrealistic, idealistic no-
tion of country living. 

• Sonnet*: A fourteen-line lyric writ-
ten in iambic pentameter. Sonnets
follow a rigid rhyme scheme. Typical
rhyme schemes for sonnets are the
Shakespearian or English sonnet
(abab cdcd efef gg) or the Italian or
Petrarchan sonnet (abba abba cdc cdc
OR abba abba cde cde).

• Ode*: This is a very serious form of
the lyric; it is written about a serious
topic and is very dignified, if not state-
ly, in tone and style. (NT)
• Alliteration*: Repeated consonant
sounds at the beginning of a series of
words. This device uses sound to catch
coffee coloured puddles is alliteration
because of the repeating “ck” sound.
• Assonance*: Repeating vowel
device also uses sound to catch the
reader’s attention. This is a subtle de-
vice for which you have to listen care-
example of assonance because of the
repeating short “i” sound. 

• Cacophony*: Sounds that are un-
pleasant and harsh to the ear. Usually,
cacophony is achieved through repeat-
ing “s”, “c”, “k” or other, similarly
harsh- sounding sounds. For example:
“and squared and stuck their squares
of soft white chalk.” The opposite of
euphony. 
 the significant part is used for the
• Consonance*: Repeating conso-
nant sounds in the middle of words. If
elephants laugh carefully, it is be-
cause they are afraid is an example of
consonance with the repeating “f”
sound. 
 • Allusion*: A reference in one piece
• Dissonance*: Similar to ca-
cophony, dissonance involves the
mingling together of discordant or
clashing sounds. (NT) 
 places in history, religion, or myth.
• Euphony*: Sounds that are very
pleasant to the ear. The opposite of
cacophony. 
 or absent person, or an abstraction or
• Onomatopoeia*: Words that
sound like what they mean are called
onomatopoeia. “Buzz”, “hiss”, “splash”
are typical examples of this sound de-
vice.
B. Comparison
• Extended Metaphor*: In an ex-
tended metaphor, the comparison is
stretched through an entire stanza or
poem, often by multiple comparisons
of unlike objects or ideas. 

• Metaphor*: A direct comparison
between two dissimilar items. She is a
monster is a metaphor comparing a
girl to a monster. 

• Metonymy*: This is a type of
metaphor in which a reference point is
substituted for the thing to which ref-
erence is actually made. The pen is
mightier than the sword, the kettle is
boiling.

• Personification*: A comparison
between a non-human item and a hu-
man so that the non-human item is
given human characteristics. The trees
stretched their arms to the sky is a
personification because the trees are
described as if they are people stretch-
ing. 

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• Simile*: A comparison between
two dissimilar items using “like” or
“as” to make the comparison. The
stars are like diamonds in the sky is a
simile, comparing stars to diamonds. 

• Synecdoche*: Very similar to
metonymy, synecdoche occurs when
whole. All hands on deck! and Five
sails appeared in the harbour are ex-
amples of synecdoche. 

C. Word Play

of literature to something from anoth-
er piece of literature. Allusions can
also be references to person/events/


• Apostrophe*: A rhetorical figure
in which the speaker addresses a dead
inanimate object. 

• Cliché: A phrase, line or expres-
sion that has been so overused, it is
boring and commonplace, such as “it
was a dark and stormy night” or “red
with anger.” 

• Connotation*: The unspoken,
unwritten series of associations made
with a particular word. For example,
the word “dog,” depending on how it is
used, might connote loyalty or vi-
ciousness. 

• Denotation*: The literal meaning
of the word that a person would find
in the dictionary. 

• Euphemism*: Substituting a
pleasant or polite word or phrase for
an unpleasant reality. she passed
away, friendly fire. 

• Figurative Language*: The
imaginative language that makes a
poem rich to a reader. Figurative lan-
guage often relies on comparison de-
vices like simile, metaphor, and per-
sonification to make the point. Figura-
tive language is the opposite of literal
language. 

• Hyperbole: A deliberate exaggera-
tion to make a point. I am hungry
enough to eat a horse is a hyperbole. 

• Idiom*: A phrase that can’t be • Syntax: Word order—the way
translated literally into another lan- words are put together to form phras-
guage because the meaning isn’t the es, clauses or sentences in a poem.
same as the words that make up the Sometimes poets play with syntax to
phrase. Some examples include: “it is increase the richness of their figura-
raining cats and dogs”; “flat broke”; tive language or to make a line of po-
and “head in the clouds.” (NT) 
 etry work into a particular rhythm.
• Image*: A single mental picture (NT) 

that the poem creates in the reader’s • Tone*: The narrator’s attitude to-
mind. 
 ward the subject of the poem and,
• Imagery*: Poets create pictures in sometimes, toward the reader of the
the reader’s mind that appeal to the poem. Tone is not the same as mood,
sense of sight; they also create de- although the two can overlap. 

scriptions to appeal to the other four • Understatement*: The opposite
senses. This collection of appeals to of hyperbole. Understatement
the five senses is called the imagery of achieves its effect through stating less
the poem. 
 than what is necessary. For example, a
• Literal language*: The literal person might say to a hospitalized car
meaning of the poem, which ignores crash victim, “I bet that hurt.” 

imagery, symbolism, figurative lan- • Voice*: Voice is the personality of
guage and any imagination on the part the writing, the specific characteristics
of the poet or the reader. Literal lan- that make the writing unique. The
guage is the opposite of figurative lan- voice of a piece of writing is assessed
guage. 
 in terms of style and/or tone. Every
• Mood*: The emotion of the poem. writer/narrator/speaker has a unique
The atmosphere. The predominant and recognizable voice. (NT) 

feeling created by or in the poem, usu-
ally through word choice or descrip-
tion. Mood is best discovered through Verse Forms
careful consideration of the images • Ballad Stanza*: A ballad stanza is
presented by the poem, and thinking a quatrain (4 line verse) of alternating
about what feelings those images tetrameter and trimeter lines. The
prompt. Mood and tone are not the rhyme scheme is a-b-c-b (sometimes
same. 
 abab). Not all ballads have stanzas
• Oxymoron*: An oxymoron is a that follow this formula.
pair of single word opposites placed • Couplet*: Two lines of poetry that
side by side for dramatic effect. A con- rhyme. The last two lines of an English
tradiction in terms. “jumbo shrimp”. 
 sonnet work together to make a cou-
• Paradox*: A large oxymoron. An plet. The following is an example of a
apparently contradictory statement couplet: 

that, despite the contradiction, has an Roses are red, violets are blue Sugar
element of truth in it. Wordsworth’s is sweet and so are you 

“the child is the father of the man” is a • Octave*: Eight lines of poetry that
paradoxical statement. 
 have a rhyme scheme. The first part of
• Repetition*: Deliberately repeated an Italian sonnet is an octave.
words, sounds, phrases, or whole • Quatrain*: Four lines of poetry
stanzas. Repetition is used to make a that have a rhyme scheme. Quatrains
point in the poem. 
 often have an abab, abcb, or aabb
• Symbol*: Something that repre- rhyme scheme. The first three verses
sents something else. Ex: A dove often of an English sonnet are quatrains.
represents the concept of peace. 

59
• Stanza*: Another word for “verse patterns of syllables. Lines 1 and 3 in
paragraph”. See below. the “typical” ballad stanza are in
• Verse: A paragraph of writing in a tetrameter. (NT) 

poem. These paragraphs are written as • Trimeter: “Tri” means “three”, so
clusters of rhyming lines in traditional trimeter means three repeating pat-
poetry, such as octaves, sestets and terns of syllables. Lines 2 and 4 in the
quatrains. Also known as a stanza. 
 ballad stanza above are in trimeter.

• Refrain*: The chorus of a ballad,
Rhythm and Rhyme or a repeating set of words or lines, is
the refrain of a poem. Refrains add to
• Blank Verse*: Unrhymed iambic
the musical quality of a poem and
pentameter. All sonnets, Shakespeari-
make them more song-like. This is
an plays and the King James version
interesting because the ancestral ori-
of the Bible are written in blank verse.
gin of poetry was song.
Unrhymed iambic pentameter is said
• Rhyme*: When sounds match at
to closely mimic the cadences of nat-
the end of lines of poetry, they rhyme
ural speech. See below for more in-
(technically, it is end-rhyme). The ex-
formation on iambic pentameter.
amples below in “rhyme scheme” and
• End Rhyme: Rhyme that occurs at
“couplet” demonstrate this. 

the ends of verse lines. The nursery
• Rhyme Scheme*: The pattern of
rhyme in “rhyme scheme” below is
rhyme in a poem, indicated with let-
written with end rhyme.
ters of the alphabet. To decide on a
• Iambic Pentameter*: A line of
rhyme scheme, you assign a letter of
poetry that is ten syllables in length.
the alphabet to all rhyming words at
The syllables follow a pattern in which
the ends of lines of poetry, starting
an unstressed syllable is followed by a
with the letter “a”. When you run out
stressed one. The words “giraffe” and
of one rhyme sound, you start with the
“destroy” are iambs. An iamb is two
next letter of the alphabet.

syllables, and “penta” means five, so
• Rhythm*: A pattern of sound in a
five iambs in a row = iambic pentame-
poem; it may be a regular or irregular
ter. A line of iambic pentameter
pattern. Rhythm is the musical beat of
bounces gently along (soft-hard-soft-
the poem, and some poems are more
hard-soft-hard-soft-hard-soft- hard).
musical than others.
• Internal Rhyme: When two or
more words rhyme within the same
line of poetry. For example, “Once
upon a midnight dreary, while I pon-
dered weak and weary” is an example
of internal rhyme. 

• Metre (meter)*: The regular beat
of a poem. There are different kinds of
meters, depending on the syllable pat-
tern in the line of poetry. Different Questions Instructions
syllable patterns, and different num-
bers of patterns, have different names. Your response to each questions must
For example: dimeter. trimeter, be at least 40 words and include one
tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, literary term (circled).
heptameter, and octameter. (NT) 
 You must at least have 35 different
• Tetrameter: “Penta” means “five”, terms in total, which means some
and “tetra” means “four.” So, if pen- terms can be used for more than one
tameter is five repeating patterns of response.
syllables, tetrameter is four repeating
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