Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, 6th edition

FICTION

Talking with Amy Tan

1. READING A STORY
   • THE ART OF FICTION
   • TYPES OF SHORT FICTION
   • Sufi Legend, Death Has an Appointment in Samarra A student tries to flee from Death in this brief, sardonic fable.
   • Aesop, The Fox and the Grapes Ever wonder where the phrase “sour grapes” comes from? Find out in this classic fable.
   • Bidpai, The Camel and His Friends With friends like these, you can guess what the camel doesn’t need.
   • Chuang Tzu, Independence The Prince of Ch’u asks the philosopher Chuang Tzu to become his advisor and gets a surprising reply in this classic Chinese fable.
   • Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Godfather Death Neither God nor the Devil came to the christening. In this stark folktale, a young man receives magical powers with a string attached.
   • PLOT
   • THE SHORT STORY
   • John Updike, A & P In walk three girls in nothing but bathing suits, and Sammy finds himself no longer an aproned checkout clerk but an armored knight.
   • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
   • THINKING ABOUT PLOT
   • CHECKLIST: Writing about Plot
   • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON PLOT
   • TERMS FOR REVIEW
2. POINT OF VIEW
   • IDENTIFYING POINT OF VIEW
   • TYPES OF NARRATORS
   • HOW MUCH DOES A NARRATOR KNOW?
   • STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
   • William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily Proud, imperious Emily Grierson defies the town from the fortress of her mansion. Who could have guessed the secret that lay within?
   • Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart An omniscient infant narrator, able to access any conversation or scene on the planet, is born into a time of war.
   • Eudora Welty, A Worn Path The smoldering eye at last extinguished, a murderer finds that, despite all his
   • attempts at a cover-up, his victim will be heard.
   • Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find Wanted: The Misfit, a cold-blooded killer. An ordinary family vacation leads to horror—and one moment of redeeming grace.
   • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
   • THINKING ABOUT POINT OF VIEW
   • CHECKLIST: Writing About Point of View
   • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON POINT OF VIEW
   • TERMS FOR REVIEW
3. CHARACTER
   • CHARACTERIZATION
   • MOTIVATION
   • Tobias Wolff, Bullet in the Brain Anders is in line when armed robbers enter the bank, and he can’t help but get involved.
   • Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Alone in the house, Connie finds herself helpless before the advances of Arnold Friend, a spellbinding imitation teenager.
   • Toni Morrison, Recitatif Over many decades, two women’s lives continue to collide, as they find that their relationship is complicated by the challenges of race, class, and circumstance.
   • Raymond Carver, Cathedral He never expected to find himself trying to describe a cathedral to a blind man. He hadn’t even wanted to meet this odd, old friend of his wife.
   • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
   • THINKING ABOUT CHARACTER
   • CHECKLIST: Writing about Character
   • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON CHARACTER
   • TERMS FOR REVIEW
4. SETTING
   • ELEMENTS OF SETTING
   • HISTORICAL FICTION
   • REGIONALISM
   • NATURALISM
   • HOW SETTING CAN HARMONIZE WITH OTHER ELEMENTS OF A STORY
   • Kate Chopin, The Storm Even with her husband away, Calixta feels happily, securely married. Why then should she not shelter an old admirer from the rain?
   • Jack London, To Build a Fire Seventy-five degrees below zero. Alone except for one mistrustful wolf dog, a man finds himself battling a relentless force.
   • Jorge Luis Borges, The Gospel According to Mark A young man from Buenos Aires is trapped by a flood on an isolated ranch. To pass the time, he reads the Gospel to a family with unforeseen results.
   • Amy Tan, A Pair of Tickets A young woman flies with her father to China to meet two half-sisters she never knew existed.
   • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
   • THINKING ABOUT SETTING
   • CHECKLIST: Writing About Setting
   • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON SETTING
   • TERMS FOR REVIEW
5. TONE AND STYLE
   • TONE
   • STYLE
   • DICTION
   • Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place All by himself each night, the old man lingers in the bright café. What does he need more than brandy?
   • William Faulkner, Barn Burning This time when Ab Snopes wields his blazing torch, his son Sarty faces a dilemma: whether to obey or defy the vengeful old man.
   • IRONY
   • O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi A young husband and wife find ingenious ways to buy each other Christmas presents, in the classic story that defines the word “irony.”
   • Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings John and Mary meet. What happens next? This witty experimental story offers several different outcomes.
   • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
   • THINKING ABOUT TONE AND STYLE
   • CHECKLIST: Writing about Tone and Style
   • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON TONE AND STYLE
   • TERMS FOR REVIEW
6. THEME
   • PLOT VERSUS THEME
   • SUMMARIZING THE THEME
   • FINDING THE THEME
   • Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried What each soldier carries into the combat zone is largely determined by necessity, but each man’s necessities differ.
   • Sandra Cisneros, Barbie-Q The trouble with buying Barbie dolls is that you want all the clothes, companions, and accessories. But in this neighborhood, things suddenly change.
   • Luke, The Parable of the Prodigal Son A father has two sons. One demands his inheritance now and leaves to spend it with ruinous results.
   • Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Harrison Bergeron Are you handsome? Then off with your eyebrows! Are you brainy? Then a transmitter will sound thought-shattering beeps inside your ear.
   • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
   • THINKING ABOUT THEME
   • CHECKLIST: Writing About Theme
   • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON THEME
   • TERMS FOR REVIEW
7. SYMBOL
   • ALLEGORY
   • SYMBOLS
   • RECOGNIZING SYMBOLS
   • John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums Fenced-in Elisa feels emotionally starved—then her life promises to blossom with the arrival of the scissors-grinding man.
   • Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper A doctor prescribes a “rest cure” for his wife after the birth of their child. The new mother tries to settle in to life in the isolated and mysterious country house they have rented for the summer. The cure proves worse than the disease in this Gothic classic.
   • Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas Omelas is the perfect city. All of its inhabitants are happy. But everyone’s prosperity depends on a hidden evil.
   • Shirley Jackson, The Lottery Splintered and faded, the sinister black box has worked its annual terror for longer than anyone in town can remember.
   • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
   • THINKING ABOUT SYMBOLS
   • CHECKLIST: Writing About Symbols
   • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON SYMBOLS
   • TERMS FOR REVIEW
8. GALLERY OF INTERNATIONAL VOICES
   • NIGERIA: Chinua Achebe, Dead Men’s Path The new headmaster of the village school is determined to fight superstition, but the villagers do not agree.
   • MEXICO: Inés Arredondo, The Shunammite When Luisa visits her dying uncle, she has no idea that her life is about to change forever.
   • COLUMBIA: Gabriel García Marquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World Even in death, a mysterious stranger has a profound effect on all of the people in the village.
   • CHINA: Ha Jin, Saboteur When the police unfairly arrest Mr. Chiu, he hopes for justice. After witnessing their brutality, he quietly plans revenge.
   • ANTIGUA: Jamaica Kincaid, Girl “Try to walk like a lady, and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming.” An old-fashioned mother tells her daughter how to live.
   • EGYPT: Naguib Mahfouz, The Lawsuit He thought he’d seen the last of his late father’s second wife, but now she’s back to trouble his peaceful existence.
   • INDIA: Bharati Mukherjee, Saints Shawn wanders around his neighborhood at night, imagining an existence other than the sad, confusing, and often frightening home life dominated by the unwelcome presence of his mom’s boyfriend, Wayne.
9. STORIES FOR FURTHER READING
   • Sherman Alexie, This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona The only one who can help Victor when his father dies is a childhood friend he’s been avoiding for years.
   • T. Coraghessan Boyle, Greasy Lake Murky and strewn with beer cans, the lake appears to be a wasteland. One grim night on its shore, three “dangerous characters” learn a lesson.
   • Ray Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder In 2055, you can go on a Time Safari to hunt dinosaurs 60 million years
   • ago. But put one foot wrong, and suddenly the future’s not what it used to be.
   • Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name.”
   • Neil Gaiman, How to Talk to Girls at Parties Two teenage boys try to navigate their way through a party filled with exotic, mysterious girls.
   • Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown Urged on through deepening woods, a young Puritan sees—or dreams he sees—good villagers hasten toward a diabolic rite.
   • Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat Delia’s hard work paid for her small house. Now her drunken husband Sykes has promised it to another woman.
   • James Joyce, Araby If only he can find her a token, she might love him in return. As night falls, a Dublin boy hurries to make his dream come true.
   • Franz Kafka, Before the Law A man from the country comes in search of the Law. He never guesses what
   • will prevent him from finding it, in this modern parable.
   • Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill Sundays had long brought joy to solitary Miss Brill, until one fateful day when she happens to share a bench with two lovers in the park.
   • Alice Walker, Everyday Use When successful Dee visits from the city, she has changed her name to reflect her African roots. Her mother and sister notice other things have changed, too.
   • Virginia Woolf, A Haunted House Whatever hour you wake, a door is shutting. From room to room the ghostly couple walks, hand in hand.

POETRY

Talking with Kay Ryan

10. READING A POEM
    • POETRY OR VERSE
    • HOW TO READ A POEM
    • PARAPHRASE
    • William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree
    • LYRIC POETRY
    • Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
    • Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
    • NARRATIVE POETRY
    • Anonymous, Sir Patrick Spence
    • Robert Frost, “Out, Out—”
    • DRAMATIC POETRY
    • Robert Browning, My Last Duchess
    • DIDACTIC POETRY
    • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
    • THINKING ABOUT PARAPHRASING
    • William Stafford, Ask Me
    • William Stafford, A Paraphrase of “Ask Me”
    • CHECKLIST: Writing a Paraphrase
    • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON PARAPHRASING
    • TERMS FOR REVIEW
11. LISTENING TO A VOICE
    • TONE
    • Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz
    • Stephen Crane, The Wayfarer
    • Rhina Espaillat, Bilingual / Bilingüe
    • Franz Wright, Alcohol
    • Weldon Kees, For My Daughter
    • THE SPEAKER IN THE POEM
    • Natasha Trethewey, White Lies
    • Edwin Arlington Robinson, Luke Havergal
    • Anonymous, Dog Haiku
    • Langston Hughes, Theme for English B
    • Karen An-hwei Lee, Rainfall
    • William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow
    • IRONY
    • Robert Creeley, Oh No
    • W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen
    • Sharon Olds, Rite of Passage
    • Edna St. Vincent Millay, Second Fig
    • Thomas Hardy, The Workbox
    • FOR REVIEW AND FURTHER STUDY
    • William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper
    • Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta
    • Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est
    • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
    • THINKING ABOUT TONE
    • CHECKLIST: Writing About Tone
    • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON TONE
    • TERMS FOR REVIEW
12. WORDS
    • LITERAL MEANING: WHAT A POEM SAYS FIRST
    • William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say
    • DICTION
    • John Masefield, Cargoes
    • John Donne, Batter my heart, three-personed God, for You
    • THE VALUE OF A DICTIONARY
    • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Aftermath
    • J. V. Cunningham, Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead
    • Samuel Menashe, Bread
    • Carl Sandburg, Grass
    • WORD CHOICE AND WORD ORDER
    • Robert Herrick, Upon Julia’s Clothes
    • Kay Ryan, Blandeur
    • Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid
    • Julie Larios, What Bee Did
    • FOR REVIEW AND FURTHER STUDY
    • E. E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town
    • Sarah Cortez, Adam
    • Anonymous, Carnation Milk
    • Gina Valdés, English con Salsa
    • William Wordsworth, My heart leaps up when I behold
    • William Wordsworth, Mutability
    • Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky
    • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
    • THINKING ABOUT DICTION
    • CHECKLIST: Writing About Diction
    • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON WORD CHOICE
    • TERMS FOR REVIEW
13. SAYING AND SUGGESTING
    • DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION
    • William Blake, London
    • Wallace Stevens, Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock
    • Robert Frost, Fire and Ice
    • Timothy Steele, Epitaph
    • Hieu Minh Nguyen, Arranged
    • H.D., Sea Rose
    • Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tears, Idle Tears
    • Richard Wilbur, Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
    • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
    • THINKING ABOUT DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION
    • CHECKLIST: Writing About What A Poem Says And Suggests
    • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION
    • TERMS FOR REVIEW
14. IMAGERY
    • Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro
    • Taniguchi Buson, The piercing chill I feel
    • IMAGERY
    • T. S. Eliot, The winter evening settles down
    • Theodore Roethke, Root Cellar
    • Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish
    • Emily Dickinson, A Route of Evanescence
    • Jean Toomer, Reapers
    • Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty
    • ABOUT HAIKU
    • Arakida Moritake, The falling flower
    • Matsuo Basho, Heat-lightning streak
    • Matsuo Basho, In the old stone pool
    • Taniguchi Buson, On the one-ton temple bell
    • Taniguchi Buson, Moonrise on mudflats
    • Kobayashi Issa, only one guy
    • Kobayashi Issa, Cricket
    • HAIKU FROM JAPANESE INTERNMENT CAMPS
    • Suiko Matsushita, Cosmos in bloom
    • Hakuro Wada, Even the croaking of frogs
    • CONTEMPORARY HAIKU
    • Nick Virgilio, The Old Neighborhood
    • Adelle Foley, Learning to Shave
    • FOR REVIEW AND FURTHER STUDY
    • John Keats, Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art
    • William Carlos Williams, El Hombre
    • Gary Snyder, Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
    • Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Tattoo
    • Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning
    • Robert Bly, Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter
    • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
    • THINKING ABOUT IMAGERY
    • CHECKLIST: Writing About Imagery
    • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON IMAGERY
    • TERMS FOR REVIEW
15. FIGURES OF SPEECH
    • WHY SPEAK FIGURATIVELY?
    • Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Eagle
    • William Shakespeare, Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
    • Howard Moss, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?
    • METAPHOR AND SIMILE
    • Emily Dickinson, My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun
    • Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Flower in the Crannied Wall
    • William Blake, To see a world in a grain of sand
    • Sylvia Plath, Metaphors
    • N. Scott Momaday, Simile
    • Jill Alexander Essbaum, The Heart
    • Cody Walker, I’m Like
    • OTHER FIGURES OF SPEECH
    • James Stephens, The Wind
    • Robinson Jeffers, Hands
    • Dana Gioia, Money
    • Carl Sandburg, Fog
    • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
    • THINKING ABOUT METAPHORS
    • CHECKLIST: Writing About Metaphors
    • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON FIGURES OF SPEECH
    • TERMS FOR REVIEW
16. SOUND
    • SOUND AS MEANING
    • William Butler Yeats, Who Goes with Fergus?
    • Edgar Allan Poe, from Ulalume
    • William Wordsworth, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
    • ALLITERATION AND ASSONANCE
    • Frances Cornford, The Watch
    • Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The splendor falls on castle walls
    • RIME
    • Hilaire Belloc, The Hippopotamus
    • Bob Kaufman, No More Jazz at Alcatraz
    • David Barber, Aria
    • Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur
    • HOW TO READ A POEM ALOUD
    • Gerald Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall
    • Michael Stillman, In Memoriam John Coltrane
    • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
    • THINKING ABOUT A POEM’S SOUND
    • CHECKLIST: Writing About a Poem’s Sound
    • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON SOUND
    • TERMS FOR REVIEW
17. RHYTHM
    • STRESSES AND PAUSES
    • STRESS AND MEANING
    • LINE ENDINGS
    • Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool
    • Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Break, Break, Break
    • Dorothy Parker, Résumé
    • METER
    • Edith Sitwell, Mariner Man
    • A. E. Housman, When I was one-and-twenty
    • Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee
    • Walt Whitman, Beat! Beat! Drums!
    • WRITING EFFECTIVELY
    • THINKING ABOUT RHYTHM
    • CHECKLIST: Scanning a Poem
    • TOPICS FOR WRITING ON RHYTHM
    • TERMS FOR REVIEW
18. CLOSED FORM
    • THE VALUE OF FORM
    • FORMAL PATTERNS
    • Ernest Dowson, Days of wine and roses
    • John Donne, Song (“Go and catch a falling star”)
    • BALLADS
    • Anonymous, Bonny Barbara Allan
    • Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham
    • THE SONNET
    • William Shakespeare, Let me not to the marriage of true minds
    • Edna St. Vincent Millay, What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
    • Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night
    • Kim Addonizio, First Poem for You
    • R.S. Gwynn, Shakespearean Sonnet
    • Sherman Alexie, The Facebook Sonnet
    • THE EPIGRAM