The Millennium Reader Book

Rhetorical Contents xi

Preface xvii

Introduction: Reading in the Various

Genres 1

Reading Essays 1

Reading Fiction 20

Reading Poetry 22

Reading Drama 23

Literary Works in Context 25

Reading and Analyzing Visual Texts 26

Elements of Design 27

Reading Images as Cultural Signs 30

1 REFLECTIONS ON EXPERIENCE 33

Nonfiction

George Orwell Shooting an Elephant 34

Ruth Reichl Betty 40

Jill Nelson Number One! 50

Fritz Peters Boyhood with Gurdjieff 54

Beryl Markham West with the Night 58

Dave Barry Just Say No to Rugs 68

Douchan Gersi Initiated into an Iban

Tribe of Headhunters 70

James Herriot Rumenotomy on a Cow 75

Fiction

William Maxwell The Pilgrimage 77

Andre Dubus The Fat Girl 85

Poetry

Elizabeth Barrett Browning How Do I Love Thee? 97

Sara Teasdale The Solitary 98

Nikki Giovanni Nikki-Rosa 99

Connections for Chapter 1:

Reflections on Experience 100

2 MEMORABLE PEOPLE AND PLACES 102

Nonfiction

Maya Angelou Liked for Myself 103

Gayle Pemberton Antidisestablishmentarianism 107

Mikhal Gilmore My Brother, Gary Gilmore 114

Fatima Mernissi Moonlit Nights of Laughter 125

Richard Rhodes A Hole in the World 130

Rudolph Chelminski Turning Point 134

Rick Bass A Fitting Desire 141

Aldo Leopold Thinking Like a Mountain 143

Fiction

Raymond Carver Neighbors 146

John Cheever Reunion151

Poetry

Robert Hayden Those Winter Sundays 154

Marianne Moore A Grave 155

William Carlos Williams At the Ball Game 157

Connections for Chapter 2:

Memorable People and Places 160

3 THE VALUE OF EDUCATION 162

Nonfiction

Frederick Douglass Learning to Read and Write 163

Jonathan Kozol The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society 168

Mike Adams The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome 175

Richard Rodriguez On Becoming a Chicano 181

Sabine Reichel Learning What Was Never Taught 188

Nat Hentoff “Speech Codes” on the Campus 197

Mary Crow Dog and Richard Erdoes Civilize Them with a Stick 204

Judy Blume Is Harry Potter Evil? 211

Mark Salzman Lessons 213

Fiction

Edward P. Jones The First Day 219

Poetry

Linda Hogan Workday 223

Tom Wayman Did I Miss Anything? 225

Connections for Chapter 3:

The Value of Education 227

4 PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE 228

Nonfiction

Helen Keller The Day Language Came into My Life 229

Temple Grandin Thinking in Pictures 231

Deborah Tannen Sex, Lies, and Conversation 236

George Lakoff Anger 241

Alison Lurie The Language of Clothes 250

Amy Tan Mother Tongue 256

Aldous Huxley Propaganda under a Dictatorship 261

Stuart Hirschberg The Rhetoric of Advertising 267

Fiction

Gish Jen Who’s Irish? 276

Poetry

Kenneth Koch Permanently 285

Connections for Chapter 4:

Perspectives on Language 288

5 EVERYDAY MATTERS 289

Nonfiction

Juliet B. Schor The Culture of Consumerism 290

Philip Slater Want-Creation Fuels Americans’ Addictiveness 300

Jan Harold Brunvand Urban Legends: “The Boyfriend’s Death” 304

Rosalind Coward The Body Beautiful 313

Bill Bryson What’s Cooking? Eating in America 320

Jessica Mitford Mortuary Solaces 330

Judith Ortiz Cofer The Myth of the Latin Woman 335

Mark Twain The Lowest Animal 339

Fiction

Kate Chopin Désirée’s Baby 345

Gloria Anzaldúa Cervicide 349

Poetry

Marge Piercy Barbie Doll 351

Grace C. Kuhns Lisa’s Ritual, Age 10 353

Bruce Springsteen Streets of Philadelphia 354

Gregory Corso Marriage 356

Drama

David Ives Sure Thing 361

Connections for Chapter 5:

Everyday Matters 369

6 OUR PLACE IN NATURE 371

Nonfiction

Charles Darwin From the Origin of Species 372

Gunjan Sinha You Dirty Vole 382

Joseph K. Skinner Big Mac and the Tropical Forests 387

Alice Walker Am I Blue? 393

Konrad Lorenz The Dove and the Wolf 397

Robert W. Felix Fatal Flaw 408

Elizabeth Kolbert Shishmaref, Alaska415

Robert Sapolsky Bugs in the Brain 422

Fiction

Doris Lessing A Sunrise on the Veld 425

Poetry

Mary Oliver Sleeping in the Forest 432

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Sound of the Sea 433

Xu Gang Red Azalea on the Cliff 434

Sharon Chmielarz New Water 436

Connections for Chapter 6:

Our Place in Nature 437

7 PAST TO PRESENT 439

Nonfiction

Herodotus Concerning Egypt 440

Thomas Paine Rights of Man 451

Gilbert Highet The Gettysburg Address 454

Jack London The San Francisco Earthquake 461

Hanson W. Baldwin R. M. S. Titanic 466

Haunani-Kay Trask From a Native Daughter 477

Maurizio Chierici The Man from Hiroshima 486

Don DeLillo In the Ruins of the Future 492

Fiction

Ambrose Bierce An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge 502

Irene Zabytko Home Soil 510

Poetry

Bertolt Brecht A Worker Reads History 515

Wilfred Owen Strange Meeting 517

W. B. Yeats The Second Coming 519

Connections for Chapter 7:

Past to Present 521

8 POWER AND POLITICS 523

Nonfiction

Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl 524

Kenneth M. Stampp To Make Them Stand in Fear 529

Martin Luther King, Jr. I Have a Dream 532

Barbara Ehrenreich Nickel-and-Dimed 537

Luis Sepúlveda Daisy 557

Tim O’Brien If I Die in a Combat Zone 562

Stephen Chapman The Prisoner’s Dilemma 568

Michael Levin The Case for Torture 574

Fiction

Jonathan Swift A Modest Proposal 577

Panos Ioannides Gregory 585

Poetry

W. H. Auden The Unknown Citizen 590

Carolyn Forché The Colonel 591

Drama

Susan Glaspell Trifles 593

Connections for Chapter 8:

Power and Politics 605

9 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 607

Nonfiction

David Ewing Duncan DNA as Destiny 608

Bill McKibben It’s Easy Being Green 617

Henry Petroski The Pencil 622

Anwar F. Accawi The Telephone 626

Charles H. Townes Harnessing Light 632

Donald A. Norman Emotional Robots 638

Fiction

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Harrison Bergeron 644

Poetry

Walt Whitman When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer 649

Connections for Chapter 9:

Science and Technology 651

10 THE ARTISTIC IMPULSE 652

Nonfiction

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. How to Write with Style 653

Stephen King On Writing 656

Ross King Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling 661

Agnes De Mille Pavlova 671

Aaron Copland Film Music 673

Lance Morrow Imprisoning Time in a Rectangle 679

Germaine Greer One Man’s Mutilation Is Another Man’s Beautification 682

Valerie Steele and John S. Major China Chic: East Meets West 691

Fiction

Carson McCullers Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland 698

Poetry

Emily Dickinson Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant 705

Charles Bukowski So You Want to be a Writer 706

Connections for Chapter 10:

The Artistic Impulse 708

11 THE ETHICAL DIMENSION 710

Nonfiction

Philip Wheelwright The Meaning of Ethics 711

Marya Mannes The Unwilled 717

Hans Ruesch Slaughter of the Innocent 719

Garrett Hardin Lifeboat Ethics 732

Stanley Milgram The Perils of Obedience 742

Dalai Lama The Role of Religion in Modern Society 755

Jean-Paul Sartre Existentialism 762

John M. Darley and Bibb Latané Why People Don’t Help in a Crisis 767

Fiction

Joyce Carol Oates Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? 772

Parables

Plato The Allegory of the Cave 786

Matthew Parables in the New Testament 791

Buddha Parables of Buddha 794

Nasreddin Hodja Islamic Folk Stories 796

Poetry

Linda Pastan Ethics 798

Robert Frost The Road Not Taken 800

Connections for Chapter 11:

The Ethical Dimension 801

Appendix: The MLA Style of Documentation 803

Tara Miles Prelude to the Internet 804

Glossary 811

Credits 817

Index of First Lines of Poems 823

Index of Authors and Titles 825