Literature and Ourselves: A Thematic Introduction for Readers and Writers Book

Contents

Introduction

Part One: Reading Literature

Critical Reading: Engagement, Response, and Analysis

Engaging with a Text: Annotation

Special Feature: Sample Student Annotation of Sandra Cisneros’s “Bread”

Responding to a Text: The Reader’s Journal

The Reader’s Box

Sample Student Reader’s Journal

Freewriting

Analyzing a Text

Approaches

Author-Oriented Approaches

Reader-Oriented Approaches

Text-Oriented Approaches

The Elements of the Essay

Style

Tone

Theme

The Reader’s Box

Questions for Engagement, Response, and Analysis

Essay

The Elements of Fiction

Point of View

Setting

Style

Character

Plot

Theme

The Reader’s Box

Questions for Engagement, Response and Analysis

Short Stories

The Elements of Poetry

Situation and Speaker

Structure and Sound

Style

Theme

The Reader’s Box

Questions for Engagement, Response, and Analysis

Poetry

The Elements of Drama

Dialogue and Stage Directions

Setting

Style

Character

Plot

Theme

The Reader’s Box

Questions for Engagement Response, and Analysis

Drama

Part Two: Writing About Literature

Critical Writing: Argument

Steps for Writing Arguments about Literature

Step One: Establishing Purpose and Audience

Modes

Debatable Topics

Audience

Step Two: Generating a Working Thesis

Re-reading

Pre-Writing Strategies

The Writer’s Box

Sample Student Brainstorming

Clustering and Listing

Honing the Thesis

Step Three: Gathering Evidence

Primary Source Evidence

Secondary Source Evidence

Step Four: Drafting, Revising, and Editing

Writing the Introduction

Crafting Body Paragraphs and Making Transitions

Concluding Well

Integrating Source Evidence

The Writer’s Box

Avoiding Common Pitfalls at the Drafting Stage

Revising and Editing

The Writer’s Box

Avoiding Common Pitfalls in the Editing Stage

Sample Student Paper

Thematic Anthology

Family

Writing about Family

Essays

Joan Didion, On Going Home

Bill Cosby, from Fatherhood**

Frances Mayes, Bramare: (Archaic) To Yearn For

Fiction

Carson McCullers, A Domestic Dilemma

James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues

Truman Capote, A Christmas Memory

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

Sherman Alexie, Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play TheStar-Spangled Banner at Woodstock

Poetry

William Butler Yeats, A Prayer for My Daughter

Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz

Gwendolyn Brooks, The Mother

Sylvia Plath, Daddy**

Luis Omar Salinas, My Father Is a Simple Man

Nikki Giovanni, Nikki-Rosa

Li-Young Lee, The Gift

Edward J. Whitelock, Future Connected By

Drama

Casebook on August Wilson

August Wilson

Fences

Sandra Shannon, The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson

Alan Nadel, Boundaries, Logistics, and Identity: The Property of Metaphor in Fences and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

John Timpane, Filling the Time: Reading History in the Drama of August Wilson

Harry Elam Jr., August Wilson’s Women

Bonnie Lyons, An Interview with August Wilson

A Student Essay

Family: Suggestions for Writing

Family: Writing about Film

Men and Women

Writing about Men and Women

Essays

Virginia Woolf, Professions for Women

Max Shulman, Love Is a Fallacy

David Osborne, Beyond the Cult of Fatherhood

Fiction

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Birth-Mark

Kate Chopin, Désirée’s Baby

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

Zora Neale Hurston, The Gilded Six-Bits

Ernest Hemingway, Hills Like White Elephants

Jhumpa Lahiri, A Temporary Matter

Poetry

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 138

Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet 43

Robert Browning, My Last Duchess

Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Woman

Marge Piercy, Barbie Doll

Janice Mirikitani, Breaking Tradition

Julia Alvarez, Abbot Academy**

Judith Ortiz Cofer, Anniversary

Rita Dove, Courtship from Beulah and Thomas, Courtship, Diligence

Drama

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House

Casebook on Robert Frost **

Robert Frost

The Pasture

The Silken Tent

Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same

Meeting and Passing

Putting in the Seed

The Subverted Flower

Home Burial

The Death of the Hired Man

Bereft

Judith Oster, Frost’s Poetry of Metaphor

Katherine Kearns, “The Place Is the Asylum”: Women and Nature in Robert Frost’s Poetry

Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks, The Craft of Poetry: Interview with Robert Frost

A Student Essay

Men and Women: Suggestions for Writing

Men and Women: Writing about Film

vulnerability

Writing about Vulnerability

Essays

Black Elk Speaks **

Elie Wiesel, Yom Kippur: The Day Without Forgiveness

Bill McKibben, Happiness Is **

Barbara Kingsolver, A Pure, High Note of Anguish **

Stephen Sloan, The Meaning of Terrorism from Terrorism: The Present Threat in Context **

Leonard Weinberg, Why Do People Become Terrorists fromGlobal Terrorism: A Beginner’s Guide **

Fiction

Anton Chekhov, The Lottery Ticket **

William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily

Chinua Achebe, Dead Men’s Path

Bharati Mukherjee, The Management of Grief

Todd James Pierce, Newsworld II **

Poetry

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory

Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask

John McCrae, In Flanders Fields

Claude McKay, If We Must Die

Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est

e. e. cummings, Buffalo Bill’s Defunct

Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Billy Collins, Forgetfulness

Sharon Olds, On the Subway

Ron Rash, Last Service **

Adam Zagajewski, Try to Praise the Mutilated World

Drama

William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice

Casebook on Amy Tan

Amy Tan

Young Girl’s Wish

Heart

E. D. Huntley, Amy Tan: A Critical Companion

Victoria Chen, Chinese American Women, Language, and Moving Subjectivity

The Salon Interview: Amy Tan, The Spirit Within

A Student Essay

Vulnerability: Suggestions for Writing

Vulnerability: Writing about Film

Freedom and Responsibility

Writing about Freedom and Responsibility

Essays

Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address

Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham City Jail

Fiction

Luke, The Parable of the Prodigal Son **

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Harrison Bergeron

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

John Updike, A & P

Madison Smartt Bell, Customs of the Country **

Poetry

William Wordsworth, The World Is Too Much with Us

Walt Whitman, For You O Democarcy **

Rudyard Kipling, If

W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen

Karl Shapiro, The Conscientious Objector

Anne Sexton, Ringing the Bells

Pat Mora, Immigrants

Dwight Okita, In Response to Executive Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers

Drama

Susan Glaspell, Trifles

Casebook on Tim O’Brien

Tim O’Brien

On the Rainy River

How to Tell a True War Story

The Man I Killed

Steven Kaplan, The Undying Uncertainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried

Catherine Calloway, “How to Tell a True War Story”: Metafiction in The Things They Carried

Daniel Robinson, Getting It Right: The Short Fiction of Tim O’Brien

A Student Essay

Freedom and Responsibility: Suggestions for Writing

Freedom and Responsibility: Writing about Film

CREATIVITY

Writing about Creativity

Essays

Genesis I **

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Child and the Shadow

David Mamet, Girl Copy **

bell hooks, Beauty Laid Bare: Aesthetics in the Ordinary **

Fiction

Mark Twain, A Fable

James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty **

Ray Bradbury, There Will Come Soft Rains

Woody Allen, The Kugelmass Episode

Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings **

Poetry

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Emily Dickinson

I cannot dance upon my Toes 326 **

They shut me up in Prose 613**

I dwell in Possibility 657 **

There is no Frigate like a Book 1263 **

Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica

Countee Cullen, Yet Do I Marvel

W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Constantly Risking Absurdity

Sylvia Plath, Metaphors **

Seamus Heaney, Digging

Billy Collins, Marginalia **

Alberto Ríos, The Vietnam Wall

Drama

Wendy Wasserstein, Tender Offer **

Casebook on Alice Walker **

Alice Walker

Everyday Use

Nineteen Fifty-five

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens

The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart: Epilogue

Donna Hairsty Winchell, from Alice Walker

Houston A Baker Jr. And Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Patches: Quilts and Community in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”

David Cowart, Heritage and Deracination in Walker’s “Everyday Use”

A Student Essay

Creativity: Suggestions for Writing

Creativity: Writing about Film

Quest

Writing about Quest

Essays

Plato, Allegory of the Cave

Matthew, Beatitudes

William Golding, Thinking As a Hobby

Fiction

James Joyce, Araby

Arthur C. Clarke, The Star

Toni Cade Bambara, Raymond’s Run

Isabel Allende, And of Clay Are We Created

Louise Erdrich, Naked Woman Playing Chopin: A Fargo Romance **

Poetry

John Donne, Holy Sonnet 14

John Milton, Sonnet 16

William Blake, The Lamb **

The Tyger

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Langston Hughes, Harlem

John Ciardi, In Place of a Curse **

N. Scott Momaday, Carriers of the Dream Wheel

Drama

Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

Casebook on Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Greenleaf

The Fiction Writer and His Country

Frederick J. Hoffman, The Search for Redemption: Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction

Gilbert H. Muller, Violence and the Grotesque

Margaret Earley Whitt, Understanding Flannery O’Connor: Greenleaf

A Student Essay

Quest: Suggestions for Writing

Quest: Writing about Film

Appendix A: Critical Approaches to Literature

Appendix B: Writing about Film

A Student Essay

Appendix C: Documenting a Research Paper: MLA Format

Glossary

Acknowledgments

Index