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Strong Roots for AP® Success

Pre-AP® and AP® are trademarks owned and/or registered by the College Board,
which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.

This book takes care of just about everything. I think it is a rich resource and it will
provide a ready-made curriculum for the course. It organizes and illustrates a broad
array of texts and focuses on skills and habits of mind.

—Claudette Brassil • Mt. Ararat High School, ME

Advanced Language & Literature

For Honors and Pre-AP® English Courses

Renée H. Shea • Bowie State University (MD)
John Golden • Portland Public Schools (OR)
Lance Balla • Bellevue School District (WA)

Designed to Support and Challenge
Young Minds

Designed for High School Honors and Pre-AP®
English classes, this breakthrough textbook
is the product of decades of classroom
experience, extensive pedagogical research,
and rigorous class-testing. It blends instruction
in literary analysis, rhetoric, argument, and
synthesis with a groundbreaking thematic
anthology that weaves together fiction and
nonfiction, poetry and prose, universal themes
and global literary voices.
The result is a book that builds the skills
necessary for college readiness and success
in both AP® English courses, while drawing
students into the vibrant cultural conversations
that define the study of English.

Visit highschool.bfwpub.com/ALL
to request your copy of
Advanced Language & Literature
or email your sales representative at

[email protected]

March 2016 (©2016) • casebound • 1,088 pages
978-1-4576-5741-2

Strong Roots for AP® Success

Pre-AP® and AP® are trademarks owned and/or registered by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.

Essential Skill-Building Opening Chapters

The book begins with four opening chapters designed to introduce key literary and
rhetorical skills

Chapter 1 — Reading the World
Students explore the importance of literacy and critical thinking in English class

and the world.
Chapter 2 — Thinking about Literature
Students hone the literary analysis and close reading skills required for success

in the AP® Literature and Composition course.
Chapter 3 — Thinking about Rhetoric and Argument
Students encounter the skills of rhetorical analysis, argument analysis, and
persuasive writing central to the AP® Language and Composition course.
Chapter 4 — Thinking about Synthesis
Students learn how to use multiple sources to inform an argument, a key

concept in the AP® Language and Composition course.

Engaging Thematic Chapters

AP® is a trademark owned and/or registered by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.

The Teacher’s Edition to Advanced Language & Literature
was written with one simple purpose in mind:

teach.to help classroom teachers

Creative Teaching Tips from Experienced Teachers

We know from experience that not all students are equally prepared, even in Honors
or Pre-AP® classes. That’s why we’ve provided helpful marginal annotations to
support your teaching of students at all skill levels. This practical advice on planning,
teaching, differentiating, and scaffolding falls into four simple categories:

Close Reading: To Deepen Understanding of Language
and Style

These notes provide activities and guided prompts that lead students to
investigate word choice, sentence structure, or other elements that will
highlight the writer’s craft and its impact on the meaning of the work. Close
Reading notes provide essential differentiation opportunities for students
needing more support in close reading and high-achieving students hungry
for enrichment.

Teaching Ideas: To Encourage Scaffolding and Enrichment

These teaching ideas and classroom strategies are designed to engage
students and inspire learning and creativity. Notes include text-based
activities, projects, collaborative learning opportunities, and research
and extension prompts.

Building Context: To Develop Background Knowledge

Context can be a stumbling block for students of all ability levels.
These notes provide questions and activities to introduce students to
the cultural, historical, and geographical information that might make the
text challenging to access.

Check for Understanding: To Support Understanding of
Challenging Concepts and Passages

These brief check-ins are designed to support students’ reading and
analysis. Notes identify complex passages, concepts, and stumbling
blocks while providing ideas for guidance and remediation.

Pre-AP® is a trademark owned and/or registered by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.

Shea/Golden/Balla

Unit Planners—A Guided Pathway to Assessment

For teachers looking for a curriculum pathway designed for skill development, we
offer skill-based Unit Planners at the beginning of each Teacher’s Edition thematic
chapter. These planners take students step by step through the skill building process,
from introduction to mastery.

• Planned Formative Assessments give ample opportunity to understand
student needs.

• Reading and Writing Workshops serve as skill-building tools.
• A summative assessment prompt and rubric allow for easy assessment,

grading, and responding.

Chapter Overview—Quick Snapshot of Content and Challenges

In the Chapter Overview, you will see an introduction to the chapter with a focus on goals,
challenges, and skills.
Each Chapter Overview contains:

• An introduction to the chapter’s theme and pedagogical goals.
• A brief description of each text with an emphasis on what might make the text

challenging for your students, such as time period, sentence structure, vocabulary,
and context.
• A snapshot of the content and goals of each chapter’s Reading Workshop and
Writing Workshop.

Advanced Language & Literature Teacher’s Edition

TABLE OF CONTENTS 6. AMBITION AND RESTRAINT

1. READING THE WORLD What drives individuals to succeed? • What are the benefits and risks of
ambition? • What are some conditions that lead to rebellion against the
Thinking about Literacy status quo? • When is violence justified? • How can speeches inspire
Thinking about English Class people to act for change?
Thinking about Analysis
Thinking about Context Central Text
A Model Analysis William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth (drama)
Culminating Activity
Conversation: Risk and Reward
2. THINKING ABOUT LITERATURE 1. W.H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts (poetry)
2. William Carlos Williams, Landscape With The Fall of Icarus (poetry)
Analyzing Literature 3. Brian Aldiss, Flight 063 (poetry)
Theme in Literature 4. Jeffrey Kluger, Ambition: Why Some People are Most Likely
Literary Elements to Succeed (nonfiction)
Analyzing Literary Elements and Theme 5. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias (poetry)
Language and Style 6. William Shakespeare, from Henry VIII (drama)
Analyzing Style and Theme 7. Amy Tan, Rules of the Game (fiction)
Culminating Activity 8. Miguel Cervantes, from Don Quixote (fiction)
Conversation: Voices of Rebellion
3. THINKING ABOUT RHETORIC AND ARGUMENT 1. Martin Luther King Jr., I’ve Been to the Mountaintop (nonfiction)
2. Nelson Mandela, from An Ideal for Which I am Prepared to Die
Changing Minds, Changing the World (nonfiction)
Effective Argumentative Claims 3. Thomas Paine, from Common Sense (nonfiction)
The Rhetorical Situation of an Argument 4. Malala Yousafzai, Speech to the United Nations Youth Assembly
Rhetorical Appeals (nonfiction)
Using Evidence 5. Carrie Chapman Catt, from Women’s Suffrage Is Inevitable (nonfiction)
Pitfalls and Vulnerabilities 6. George Orwell, from Animal Farm (fiction)
Language and Style Reading Workshop—Analyzing Figurative Language
A Model Analysis Writing Workshop—Writing an Argument
Culminating Activity
7. ETHICS
4. THINKING ABOUT SYNTHESIS
How do we tell “right” from “wrong”? • Can there be a universal
Working with a Single Source understanding of what is “right” or “wrong”? • To what extent do
Working with Multiple Sources age, culture, and other factors affect our ethical decisions? • When
Entering the Conversation making ethical decisions, whose needs should be most important? The
Culminating Activity individual’s, other people’s, the larger society’s? • What causes us to
cheat? Is cheating always wrong? Who gets to define “cheating”?
5. IDENTITY AND SOCIETY
Central Text
What does “identity” mean? • How is one’s identity formed? • How do Michael Sandel, from The Case Against Perfection (nonfiction)
personal experiences affect our identity? • To what extent do institutions
emphasize conformity at the expense of individuality? Conversation: Do the Right Thing
1. Gabriel García Márquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (fiction)
Central Text 2. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Cell One (fiction)
George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant (nonfiction) 3. Nathan Englander, Free Fruit for Young Widows (fiction)
4. John Updike, A & P (fiction)
Conversation: Changes and Transformations 5. William Stafford, Traveling through the Dark (poetry)
1. Jon Krakauer, The Devils Thumb (nonfiction) 6. Wisława Szymborska, A Contribution to Statistics (poetry)
2. Caitlin Horrocks, Zolaria (fiction) 7. Annie Dillard, An American Childhood (memoir)
3. Sharon Olds, My Son The Man and The Possessive (poetry) 8. Sam Harris, from Lying (nonfiction)
4. William Shakespeare, Seven Ages of Man (drama) Conversation: The Cheating Culture
5. James Joyce, Eveline (fiction) 1. Robert Kolker, Cheating Upwards (nonfiction)
6. from Souvenir of the Carlisle Indian School (photographs) 2. Chuck Klosterman, Why We Look the Other Way (nonfiction)
Conversation: The Individual in School 3. Christopher Bergland, Cheaters Never Win (nonfiction)
1. Alexandra Robbins, from The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth (nonfiction) 4. Brad Allenby, Is Human Enhancement Cheating? (nonfiction)
2. Faith Erin Hicks, from Friends with Boys (graphic novel) 5. Mia Consalvo, Cheating is Good For You (nonfiction)
3. John Taylor Gatto, Against School (nonfiction) 6. David Callahan, from The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are
4. Horace Mann, from The Common School Journal (nonfiction) Doing Wrong to Get Ahead (nonfiction)
5. Theodore Sizer, from Horace’s School: Redesigning the American 7. The Ethics of Photo Manipulation (photographs)
High School (nonfiction) Reading Workshop—Argument by Analogy
6. Maya Angelou, from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (memoir) Writing Workshop—Writing a Synthesis Essay
Reading Workshop—Point of View in Narrative
Writing Workshop—Writing a Narrative

Shea/Golden/Balla

8. CULTURES IN CONFLICT 10. UTOPIA/DYSTOPIA

What defines “culture”? • What causes cultures to come in conflict with What makes a perfect society? • What can lead a utopia to become a
each other? • Who gets to tell the story of a conflict? • How do cultures dystopia? • How do we define “happiness”? • Will robots and artificial
respond to change and to outsiders? • What is lost and gained by intelligence help us perfect ourselves and our world, or will they make
assimilating into a new culture? humans obsolete?

Central Text Central Text
Julie Otsuka, from When the Emperor Was Divine (fiction) Jamaica Kincaid, from A Small Place (nonfiction)

Conversation: Stories of War Conversation: The Pursuit of Happiness
1. Kamila Shamsie, from The Storytellers of Empire (nonfiction) 1. Ursula LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (fiction)
2. Wilfred Owen, Dulce Et Decorum Est (poetry) 2. Kurt Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron (fiction)
3. William Shakespeare, The St. Crispin’s Day Speech (drama) 3. Nikki Giovanni, Nikki-Rosa (poetry)
4. Vu Bao, The Man Who Stained his Soul (fiction) 4. Jane Shore, Happy Family (poetry)
5. Katey Schultz, Deuce Out (fiction) 5. Pico Iyer, The Joy of Less (nonfiction)
6. Kevin Sites, from In the Hot Zone (nonfiction) 6. Chinua Achebe, Civil Peace (fiction)
7. Brian Turner, 2000 lbs. (poetry) 7. Wisława Szymborska, Utopia (poetry)
8. Karim Ben Khelifa, My Enemy, Myself (photo essay) 8. Jon Meachem, Free to Be Happy (nonfiction)
Conversation: Displacement and Assimilation
1. Jean de Crevecoeur, from Letters from an American Farmer (nonfiction) Conversation: Our Robotic Future?
2. Anna Quindlen, Quilt of a Country (nonfiction) 1. Isaac Asimov, Robot Dreams (fiction)
3. Li-Young Lee, For a New Citizen of these United States (poetry) 2. Margaret Atwood, Are Humans Necessary? (nonfiction)
4. Nola Kambanda, My New World Journey (nonfiction) 3. Kevin Kelly, from Better than Human: Why Robots Will—and Must—
5. Amit Majmudar, Dothead (poetry) Take Our Jobs (nonfiction)
6. Maira Kalman, from And the Pursuit of Happiness (graphic essay) 4. Richard Fisher, Is It OK to Torture or Murder a Robot? (nonfiction)
Reading Workshop—Analyzing Character and Theme 5. Arthur House, The Real Cyborgs (nonfiction)
Writing Workshop—Writing a Thematic Interpretation 6. Francis Fukuyama, Transhumanism (nonfiction)
7. James Barrat, from Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence,
9. (MIS)COMMUNICATION and the End of the Human Era (nonfiction)
8. Rosa Brooks, In Defense of Killer Robots (nonfiction)
What role does language play in building relationships? • What factors
lead to effective or ineffective communication between people? • How Reading Workshop—Analyzing Diction and Tone
does our language shape our identity or culture as a whole? • How can Writing Workshop—Writing a Rhetorical Analysis
language be used to enhance or undermine social or political power? •
How do changes in technology affect how we communicate and relate to GUIDE TO LANGUAGE AND MECHANICS
one another?
Part 1: Grammatical Sentences
Central Text Part 2: Effective Sentences
Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac (drama) Part 3: Word Choice
Part 4: Punctuation
Conversation: Language and Power Part 5: Mechanics
1. Frederick Douglass, from Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass (nonfiction) GUIDE TO SPEAKING AND LISTENING
2. Sandra Cisneros, No Speak English (fiction)
3. Ha Jin, Children as Enemies (fiction) Part 1: Steps to Creating a Speech
4. Mutabaruka, Dis Poem (poetry) Part 2: Informative Speeches
5. Kory Stamper, Slang for the Ages (nonfiction) Part 3: Persuasive Speeches
6. Firoozeh Dumas, Hot Dogs and Wild Geese (nonfiction) Part 4: Citing Sources in Speeches
7. Marjorie Agosin, English (poetry) Part 5: Presentation Aids
8. W.S. Merwin, Losing a Language (poetry) Part 6: Listening Effectively
Conversation: Socially Networked Part 7: Effective Group Communication
1. Clive Thompson, Brave New World of Digital Intimacy (nonfiction)
2. Sherry Turkle, from Alone Together (nonfiction) GUIDE TO MLA DOCUMENTATION STYLE
3. Tim Egan, The Hoax of Digital Life (nonfiction)
4. Sherman Alexie, Facebook Sonnet (poetry) GLOSSARY
5. Robbie Cooper, Alter Egos: Avatars and their Creators (photographs)
6. Alexis Madrigal, Why Facebook and Google’s Concept of ‘Real Names’
Is Revolutionary (nonfiction)
7. Leonard Pitts, The Anonymous Back-Stabbing of Internet
Message Boards (nonfiction)
8. Jason Harrington, Do You Like Me? Click Yes or No (fiction)
Reading Workshop—Understanding Irony
Writing Workshop—Writing a Close Literary Analysis

Advanced Language & Literature Teacher’s Edition

Your Flexible e-Book Solution

Advanced Language & Literature is available in our new edaptext e-book
format, offering the accessibility you want and the flexibility you need. The
e-book is compatible with a variety of devices—use it on a PC or Mac, an iPad
or Android tablet. All notes and assignments automatically sync to the device
upon logging in. And edaptext’s social media function makes it supremely easy
to communicate with your class, provide assignments or notes, or give quizzes.

ISBN: 978-1-319-05538-7 (Six-Year Access)

Your Complete Quizzing Solution

With nearly 1000 questions, this ExamView TestBank for Advanced Language
& Literature takes students from understanding to close rhetorical and stylistic
analysis. Our authors and editors analyzed hundreds of items from six national
assessments to target key skills.
The ExamView Test Generator lets you quickly create paper, Internet, and
LAN-based tests. Not only can you create and format a test in minutes, but
the platform is fully customizable, allowing you to enter your own questions,
edit existing questions, set time limits, incorporate multimedia, and scramble
answers and change the order of questions to prevent plagiarism. Detailed
results report feed into a gradebook.

ISBN: 978-1-319-06548-5

AP® is a trademark owned and/or registered by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product.

Shea/Golden/Balla

Teacher’s Resource Materials

Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive
ISBN 978-1-319-01244-1

Teacher’s Edition Edaptext e-Book
ISBN 978-1-319-07682-5

Additional tools for teaching with Advanced Language & Literature can be found
on the Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive, and embedded at point-of-use in the
Teacher’s Edition e-Book:

• Suggested Responses to all of the Understanding and Interpreting, and
Analyzing Language, Style, and Structure questions posed at the end of
each text. These responses are not meant to be an “answer key,” as much
as they are a roadmap for you to see whether your students are on the
right track.

• Assessment Texts for Chapters 7, 9, and 10. The summative
assessments in the Unit Planners for these chapters require outside texts,
which can be found in the Teacher’s Resource Materials.

• Classroom Strategies: These guides to common classroom strategies
describe not just how to use the strategy in class, but how to do it well
and for the right purpose.

• Vocabulary Handouts: Challenging vocabulary for each piece is identified
and formatted for handy pre-reading preparation or post-reading quizzing.

• Key Passages: These key passages for close reading are brief excerpts
from a piece, double-spaced with wide margins—perfect for annotation.

• Lexile Text Complexity Measures for each piece.
• Research Framework: This document discusses the research and ideas

that informed the development of Advanced Language & Literature.

Advanced Language & Literature Teacher’s Edition

5 Identity and Society

chapter overview

Tenth grade students find themselves in a transitional year: consider the ways that society can affect their own identity,
they are no longer the wide-eyed freshmen trying to find their through forces such as school, families, friends, and other
way in high school, but they are not yet upperclassmen dream- social structures and institutions. In addition to opportunities
ing of college and life after high school. In many states, they to determine your students’ current abilities with close reading
can begin to drive, but only under close supervision; they and responding to text, there are numerous opportunities for
might want to begin working, but laws often keep them hold- you to learn more about your students’ own lives and back-
ing part-time jobs. Sophomores are itching to join the world, grounds through narrative writing prompts. For these reasons
and are beginning to think about it more than ever before, and others, when developing your schedule, this might be an
looking for their places in the world. This chapter asks them to appropriate chapter to examine near the beginning of the year.

CENTRAL TEXT

TRM   TEXT COMPLEXITY 1920s, he shot an elephant over his own objections due to a
See Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive for quantitative text strange confluence of societal and cultural forces. This can be
complexity information. a challenging text for sophomores because of the distant time
period and context, but it is also surprisingly accessible
The Central Text in this chapter is the classic essay “Shooting because of its applicability to students’ own experiences
an Elephant,” by George Orwell, in which he recounts a time facing pressures to act in ways they might rather not.
when as a British police officer serving in Southeast Asia in the

CONVERSATION – CHANGES AND TRANSFORMATIONS

The first Conversation, Changes and Transformations, is made mother who is looking at her children grow and change as
up primarily of literary pieces that might be classified as they get older. While the language Olds employs is mostly
“Coming of Age” texts: simplistic, both are dense and deceptively complex poems
that will need multiple readings for students to feel
• The Devils Thumb is a narrative by Jon Krakauer, author of comfortable being able to analyze their meaning.
Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, about a time when as a • Seven Ages of Man: this excerpt from William Shakespeare’s
young man he undertook a perilous, solo mountain climb- Twelfth Night is often reprinted as a stand-alone poem as it is
ing trip in an attempt to change his unsatisfied life. The in this conversation. In it the speaker, a character names
text, while long, is an engaging one, especially for boys or Jacques, explains the various stages of life as represented in
reluctant readers. The language and topic makes this an the aging of a man from childhood to old age. Like with all
accessible story for most sophomores. Shakespeare, students will be faced with the challenge of the
archaic and unfamiliar language, but the extended metaphor
• Zolaria, a short story by Caitlin Horrocks, is about a pair of is an easy one for students to understand, which allows most
imaginative outcast middle school girls whose friendship is sophomores to be able to decode the meaning of the
tested by peer pressures and other forces. The main plot Shakespearean language through that context.
of the story is a simple one and immediately engaging for • Eveline is a short story by James Joyce about a young girl
most students, but is a significantly challenging read due trying to decide between staying with her family in Ireland
to its time shifts and complex language. or leaving with her boyfriend to South America, and it is
easily the most challenging story in this conversation due
• My Son, The Man and The Possessive: this pair of poems
by Sharon Olds are both told through the perspective of a

5-A Advanced Language & Literature

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to the remote time period and location (early 20th century school for Native Americans, who were often forced to
Ireland), as well as the complex language choices. Most attend and to change their looks, language, and religion.
sophomore students will require extensive scaffolding to The photographs themselves will pose little difficulty for
be able to successfully analyze this story. the students, but you will need to be sure that you take the
• Photographs from the Carlisle Boarding School: is a collec- time to set the context and background for them.
tion of photographs taken in the 19th century at a boarding

CONVERSATION – THE INDIVIDUAL IN SCHOOL

The second Conversation, The Individual in School, consists of • The except from A Common School Journal by Horace
mostly nonfiction texts about the positive and negative ways Man is unquestionably the most challenging text in this
that school influences students’ identities: conversation due to the sentence length and complexity of
language that one might expect from a text written for a
• In the excerpt from The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, scholarly audience in the 18th century. Most sophomores
Alexandria Robbins explores the causes and effects of high will find this text, about the need for American public
school popularity. The topic is certainly one students will education, to be very difficult without significant scaffold-
find relevant and the first of the excerpt is written in a ing during the reading and background setting prior to
approachable, narrative style; the second half, however, reading.
requires students to read and interpret results of scientific
studies that Robbins brings into her argument. • This excerpt from Horace’s School by Ted Sizer focuses on
a visit the author made to a high school English classroom
• Friends with Boys: is an excerpt from graphic novel by ___ and what he learned about how schools treat students.
about a teenage girl’s first days in high school after being While the topic and setting of a high school classroom is
home schooled her whole life. Because of the images, one that is familiar to all students using this book, Sizer
familiarity with the topic, and accessible language, this will uses language and terminology that reflects his audience,
not be a difficult text for most sophomores, but some teachers who are interested in school reform, which many
students will need reminders to slow down and see how students will find unfamiliar and challenging.
the words and images are used together to create meaning
in a graphic novel. • In this excerpt from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by
one of America’s best known writers, Maya Angelou,
• This excerpt from Against School by John Taylor Gatto is students will read about a graduation ceremony that took
an argumentative piece by a former teacher that suggests place in the racially segregated town of Little Rock,
that we do not really need schools as they are currently Arkansas, in the 1940s. Angelou writes in an accessible
designed. While students will find the topic relevant and narrative voice that should not pose too many significant
engaging, Gatto’s language is complex for most high challenges to students, though be sure to take the time to
school students and the allusions he uses in his argument set enough context and background for the time and place
will require additional context and support. of the narrative.

LITERACY WORKSHOPS

At the end of the chapter are two workshops that incorporate • Writing Workshop – Writing a Narrative: leads students
passages from the above texts, but students who have not through the entire process of writing their own personal
read any of the texts will be able to complete them. narrative with a focus on effective narrative elements, such
as details, dialogue, blocking, and reflection.
• Reading Workshop – Point of View in Narrative: students
revisit the definitions of point of view and analyze the
effects of point of view in texts from the chapter.

Teacher’s Edition 5-B

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unit planner: writing a narrative

This chapter’s theme of identity and education is one that culminates in such an assessment. In addition to using some,
lends itself well to reflection and narrative writing, so we have though not all, of the texts in the chapter, this pathway
focused the skills assessment in this chapter on writing a suggests using or re-examining portions of Chapter Two, and
personal narrative. Below we suggest a skills development strongly recommends the use of the two Workshops found at
pathway, rough pacing, prompt, and rubric for a unit that the end of the chapter.

Purpose Tasks Time*
1 Entry Text 1-2 class periods
Read “Friends with Boys” (p. 000) with a focus on how the writer establishes
setting, character, and dialogue. 30 minutes
1-2 class periods
2 Formative Assessment Ask students to respond to Connecting Q1 (p. 000) in which students write about a
time when they had a similar experience to Maggie. 2-3 class periods

3 Establish Skills Review or work through portions of Chapter 2 to focus on how any why we tell 2 class periods
stories. Focus especially on the following: 3 class periods

• Intro (p. 000) 30 minutes
• Theme in Literature (p. 000) 2-3 class periods
• Literary Elements (p. 000) 2 class periods

4 Model Text Each of the following is an example of a narrative that students should use as a 1 class period
model with a note about its relative text complexity and questions you may want to
focus on in your class discussions.

• Approachable: Krakauer, The Devils Thumb (p. 000). Analyzing Q1-Q3.

• Medium: Angelou, from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (p. 000), Analyzing Q2

• Challenging: Horrocks, Zolaria (p. 000) Analyzing Q3 and Q5.

5 Deepen Skills Understanding the role that point of view plays in narrative writing is essential, so
work through the activities in the Reading Workshop (p. 000)

6 Focused Analysis Text Read and analyze Orwell, Shooting an Elephant (p. 000), thinking particularly about
how he uses the tools of narrative, and even the tools of storytelling and literature.
-Focus on the following questions Analyzing Q1, Q2, Q3

7 Formative Writing Ask students to complete the Composing Q7 (p.000) for Shooting an Elephant to
determine how students’ skills in narrative writing have improved and where addi-
tional supports are needed.

8 Deepen Writing Skills Writing Workshop – Writing a Narrative. This workshop includes exercises and
models for such essential narrative writing elements as dialogue, details, and
reflection

9 R eaders’ Choice Students choose two or more other pieces to read from the chapter that interest
them. These could be ones from Step #4, or other texts with a narrative focus.

10 S ummative Assessment Use the prompt and rubric on the next page to assess students’ narrative writing skills.

* based on a 50-minute class period.

5-C Advanced Language & Literature

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SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT PROMPT • Your first day at school or in a new class
• A challenge you faced with an assignment, class, or
Write a narrative about an experience that you had in school – a
positive or a negative one – that influenced some aspect of teacher
your identity. In other words, what is an event that happened in • A time you witnessed or were involved in bullying
school that has made you who you are to some degree? Your • When you were cut from, or accepted to, a team, a drama
story should focus on a single event and should have a clear
beginning, middle, and end. Additionally, your narrative should production, or other activity
include all of the elements that make an effective narrative: a • A time when you helped or were helped by a teacher, or a
clear point of view, details, dialogue, and a reflection on the
importance of this event. Possible ideas could include: peer.
• An experience you had in achieving a goal you set for
• A conflict with a teacher, a peer, a sibling, or an administra-
tor in school yourself or a challenge that you faced at school
• A way that you dealt with parent or teacher expectations

for you

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT RUBRIC

Aspects Exceeds Meets Nearly Meets Does not Meet
Task Specific:
Purpose and The response demonstrates The response uses narrative The response makes an The response makes little
Evidence sophisticated use of narra- techniques, such as attempt to use one or more attempt to use any narrative
tive techniques—such as dialogue and description, to narrative techniques, such techniques, and is mostly
Task Specific: engaging dialogue, artistic effectively communicate the as dialogue and description, ineffective at communicating
Organization pacing, and vivid descrip- events, and/or experiences but they are not always the experience of the narra-
tion—to effectively depict of the narrative. effective at communicating tive to the reader
Language and experiences, events, and/or the experience to the reader
Style characters. The plot of the narrative is
The plot of the narrative is Missing or ineffective transi- extremely difficult to follow.
The plot of the narrative is generally easy to follow. tions makes the plot of the The beginning and/or
clear and effectively handles Engages the reader with an narrative difficult to follow at conclusion might be missing
shifts in time or multiple plot effective beginning and a times. The beginning and/or or wholly ineffective
lines skillfully. Engages the conclusion that wraps up the conclusion might be formu-
reader with an extremely narrative effectively. laic and/or ineffective The response demonstrates
effective beginning and a few, if any, attempts to use
thoughtful conclusion. While there may be occa- The response demonstrates diction or syntax for effect;
sional lapses in diction or some intentional choices in the style and language are
The response demonstrates syntax, generally the diction or syntax, but there clearly inappropriate for the
a sophisticated use of language and style are effec- are places where the task or the intended
diction and syntax, which tive and appropriate for the language and style are inef- audience
creates a highly effective task and intended audience. fective or not entirely appro-
style appropriate for the task priate for the task or The response contains
and intended audience. While not entirely error-free, audience. multiple serious errors in
the response demonstrates conventions that signifi-
Conventions The response demonstrates control of grade-level The response demonstrates cantly impact readability
consistent and effective use conventions some control of conven-
of grade-level conventions. tions, but may be marred by
surface errors that begin to
impact readability

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CHECK FOR 5
UNDERSTANDING
Identity and Society
Discuss with students: How does
the mirror in the fairy tale relate to • What does “identity” mean?
identity? How do mirrors in real • How is one’s identity formed?
life relate to identity? • How do personal experiences affect our identity?
• To what extent do institutions emphasize conformity at the expense of individuality?

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?
It’s a line that most everyone has heard from childhood: the Evil Queen from Snow
White asking her magic mirror if she’s the prettiest in the kingdom. For years, the mirror
replies exactly as she hoped—“You, my queen, are fairest of all.” When, however, Snow
White begins to eclipse the queen in beauty, the magic mirror tells her so.

Think about this idea for a minute. Where does the Queen look for confirmation of her
own beauty? Not to a regular mirror that would reveal her own true reflection, but rather to
a magic mirror that doesn’t reflect her own image at all, but only compares the Queen’s
image to other people’s beauty. The Queen’s identity is not tied to her self, but to others,
whom she tries — unsuccessfully — to control.

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CLOSE READING

Invite students to read this chap-
ter opening image. What is this
image suggesting about identity?
What do the figures around her
represent?

111Photo: Eric Audras/Media Bakery. Art: Christian Mojallali.

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5 Identity and Society Look at another mirror. This one is from a poem by Sylvia Plath, a brilliant but troubled
poet who took her own life at the age of thirty-one.

Mirror / Sylvia Plath

BUILDING CONTEXT I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. 5
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
While it is not the focus of this © Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
chapter opening, you may want I am not cruel, only truthful —
to provide students with a little bit The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
of background of Sylvia Plath, as Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
a brilliant, but emotionally trou- It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
bled writer who specialized in I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
confessional poetry and who Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
committed suicide in 1963.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, 10
CHECK FOR
UNDERSTANDING Searching my reaches for what she really is.

Identifying the speaker(s) in this Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
poem can be tricky for young
readers. You might ask them: I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
Who is the speaker of the poem?
What is the effect on the “woman She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
who bends over me” of what the
speaker reveals? How does this I am important to her. She comes and goes. 15
relate to identity?
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Unlike the Evil Queen’s magic mirror, notice how the mirror in the first stanza, as well
as the lake in the second, claim that they are not cruel, but truthful, and reflect the image
of the woman faithfully. The woman reflected in this mirror may not be happy with what
she sees (“tears and an agitation of hands,” l. 14), but at least she has the truth. So, these
are two contrasting ways of trying to define one’s identity: the Evil Queen looks outward to
others, while the woman in the poem looks at herself by using a mirror that is “silver and
exact” (l. 1).

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Opening Activity Plath Mirror

One way to define identity is to ask yourself, “How do I view myself and how do others TEACHING IDEA
view me?” Explain how each of the following factors affects how you view yourself and
how you think others view you: Since this might be at or near the
beginning of the school year, this
• your gender activity can be completed and
• your age shared as part of a community-
• your race, culture, and/or religion building experience. Students
• your socioeconomic status could complete this on large
paper and display them in the
To begin considering the essential questions of this chapter, make a list of personal classroom or complete it as a
attributes or experiences that you have had that you feel make you unique—as many PowerPoint of Google Slides that
as you’d like. Then categorize each item in a chart with the following headings (feel free can be presented to the rest of
to add other categories): the class.

Physical Traits Clothing/ Interests Experiences Family/Friends
Jewelry/Etc.

Now, choose one item from your list that has been mostly affected by looking outside
of yourself (as the Evil Queen was affected by looking into her magic mirror) and one
item that has been mostly affected by looking at yourself (like the narrator in Plath’s
poem was affected). Write a paragraph that explains how the chosen items reflect your
identity and explore the inner and outer forces that have shaped that identity. Focus
especially on the role that society (including your school, city, geographical area, reli-
gion, and so on) has played in shaping your identity.

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CLOSE READING central text

What is this image suggesting Shooting an Elephant Popperfoto/Getty Images
about how identities are created?
Who and what is involved in the George Orwell
process? Do you agree or
disagree about what the artist is George Orwell, the author of several well-known novels and
suggesting about identity? Why? essays, including Animal Farm, 1984, and Down and Out in
Paris and London, was born Eric Blair in 1903 in India. The son
BUILDING CONTEXT of a British government official, Orwell went to school and lived
in England until his early twenties, when he joined the Indian
Perhaps Myanmar’s most famous Imperial Police in Burma (now known as Myanmar), a country in
person is Aung San Suu Kyi. Southeast Asia that was under British control at the time.
Democratic reformer, and a Orwell became disenchanted with imperialism and resigned
leader of the opposition against after a short period of time. He then turned to writing full-time.
Myanmar’s military dictatorship, This classic essay, published in 1936, recounts a situation Orwell
she won a Nobel Peace Prize in faced as a member of the Indian Imperial Police force.
1991 while under house arrest.
Having students research her Key cOntext The term “imperialism,” especially British imperialism, is an
could develop a collective knowl- important one to understand for this piece. From the late sixteenth century through
edge base for the class about the World War I, at the beginning of the twentieth century, England had history’s largest
country and its colonial history. empire. At various times throughout this time period, England had colonies in areas
The quotation – “you should never now known as the United States, Canada, Australia, Asia, Africa, and South America; a
let your fears prevent you from popular and true saying at the time was “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”
doing what you know is right” –
could be a free write to start things The British government in the Indian subcontinent — which includes what is now
off. Once students have read India, as well as Pakistan, Myanmar/Burma, Bangladesh, and other countries — was
“Shooting an Elephant,” then, they called the Raj, a Hindi word for “rule.” While England regularly conquered its colonies
might role play a dialogue/conver- through military strength, it ruled them by forcing its educational, judicial, economic,
sation between Orwell and Aung and governmental structures onto the colonized people with the goal of making the
San Suu Kyi. world British. But, starting with the American Revolution in the late eighteenth century,
most of the former colonies, often through war, were able to gain their independence.
BUILDING CONTEXT Burma (now Myanmar), where this piece is set, became independent from England in
1948, only about twenty years after Orwell worked there.
Orwell’s classic essay requires
quite a bit of context. While we’ve In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European
provided some in the headnote, large numbers of people — the only time in woman went through the bazaars alone some-
you might have students do my life that I have been important enough for body would probably spit betel juice over her
some additional research before this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target
diving into the essay. You could officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do
split the class into four groups of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on
and assign one topic for each
group to research: 1) British 114
imperialism in Burma (or in the
world in general) 2) the role of 05_SBHEU_5I74L1_Dch5I_N011G0-01C73.OinddN1T14E X T 27/10/15 7:22 PM
British police officers in Burma 3)
the use (and value) of elephants To get students thinking about sibling or a team captain. Write a
as work animals in Burma 4) identity and roles that they have brief narrative of the event, then
George Orwell himself, including played, you might ask students to analyze the stakes: what might
his politics, his views on writing, brainstorm or freewrite about a have happened if they had failed
and his other works (including time when they were challenged to exert their authority or what
Animal Farm and 1984). Then, to strictly enforce expectations as happened because they did not
have each group present their an authority figure, perhaps in the act according to expectations?
findings to the rest of the class. role of a babysitter, an older

TRM VOCABULARY

A list of challenging words from
this reading can be found in the
Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive.

114 Advanced Language & Literature

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Burma Provincial Police © Roger Beadon/Orwell Archive, Special Collections, University College London Orwell Shooting an Elephant
Training School, Mandalay, 1923.
Eric Blair (George Orwell)
standing third from left.

How does this photograph of
Orwell as a young man
illustrate the separation he
likely felt from the Burmese
natives?

the football field and the referee (another had been flogged with bamboos — all these CLOSE READING
Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt.
with hideous laughter. This happened more But I could get nothing into perspective. I was Students might feel comfortable
than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces young and ill-educated and I had had to think (or at least familiar) with Orwell’s
of young men that met me everywhere, the out my problems in the utter silence that is self-professed hatred of the
insults hooted after me when I was at a safe imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did British Empire, but coming to
distance, got badly on my nerves. The young not even know that the British Empire is dying, terms with his attitude toward
Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There still less did I know that it is a great deal better Burmese. Descriptions like “the
were several thousands of them in the town and than the younger empires that are going to evil-spirited little beasts” (par. 2)
none of them seemed to have anything to do supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck with “sneering yellow faces”
except stand on street corners and jeer at between my hatred of the empire I served and (par. 1) and others of the Burmese
Europeans. my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who will likely raise some eyebrows.
tried to make my job impossible. With one part Working in groups or pairs,
All this was perplexing and upsetting. For of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an students might start listing out
at that time I had already made up my mind that unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped such unsettling references as the
imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner down, in saecula saeculorum1 upon the will of basis for a discussion of whether
I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. prostrate peoples; with another part I thought the narrator Orwell is himself
Theoretically — and secretly, of course — I was that the greatest joy in the world would be to racist – or the extent to which
all for the Burmese and all against their oppres- drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. such rhetoric reflects his fear and
sors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I Feelings like these are the normal by-products of discomfort with the unfamiliar.
hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you
clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of can catch him off duty. CHECK FOR
Empire at close quarters. The wretched prison- UNDERSTANDING
ers huddling in the stinking cages of the lock- 1in saecula saeclorum: Latin for “a century of centuries,” a figurative
ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term way of saying “forever” or “for eternity” —Eds. Because one of the complexities
convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who of the text is understanding how
cceennttrrAAll tteexxtt trapped, and thus powerless, the
115 young Orwell feels, paragraph 2
is a good place to ask a question
about whom he dislikes or disap-
proves of more – the ruler, the
ruled, or himself – and why.

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Reading aloud this first para- “uninterpretive” way possible,
graph or two might be the most individual students might read
effective way to launch students with different interpretations or
into understanding the complex- tones: self-mocking, defensive,
ity of Orwell’s attitude toward the angry. Such role plays can lead to
British, Burmese, and himself. an understanding of the
After a teacher-reading in the conflicted self that is at the heart
most objective and of this text.

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5 Identity and Society Elephants in colonial Burma were NGS Image Collection/ The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY
largely industrial animals,
primarily used in the lumber
industry. Their drivers were called
“mahouts.”

What evidence from paragraph
6 supports the idea that
shooting a working elephant in
Burma was a significant event.

CLOSE READING One day something happened which in a chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person
roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny who could manage it when it was in that state,
Paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 are an incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong
ideal place to point out the than I had had before of the real nature of direction and was now twelve hours’ journey
elements of fiction at work in this imperialism — the real motives for which away, and in the morning the elephant had
narrative, particularly plot. How despotic governments act. Early one morning the suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese
does Orwell develop conflict and sub-inspector at a police station the other end of population had no weapons and were quite
tension in order to draw his read- the town rang me up on the phone and said that helpless against it. It had already destroyed some-
ers into the drama as he experi- an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I body’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some
enced it? please come and do something about it? I did not fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met
know what I could do, but I wanted to see what the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver
TEACHING IDEA was happening and I got on to a pony and started jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the
out. I took my rifle, an old .44 Winchester and van over and inflicted violences upon it.
Many of the study questions at much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought
the end of the piece focus on the noise might be useful in terrorem.2 Various The Burmese sub-inspector and some
Orwell’s tone: Understanding Burmans stopped me on the way and told me Indian constables were waiting for me in the
questions 2 and 3; Analyzing about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, quarter where the elephant had been seen. It
questions 1, 2, 3 and 5. After a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid
students have completed them “must.”3 It had been chained up, as tame bamboo huts, thatched with palm-leaf, winding
and explored Orwell’s tone in elephants always are when their attack of “must” all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a
several different sections of the is due, but on the previous night it had broken its cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the
narrative, students could orga- rains. We began questioning the people as to
nize their conclusions in a chart. 2in terrorem: A legal term meaning “to scare a person into complying where the elephant had gone and, as usual,
Some quotations might reveal an with terms.” —Eds. failed to get any definite information. That is
attitude in several of the 3must: A temporary condition occurring in male elephants; their invariably the case in the East; a story always
categories. testosterone level increases dramatically and they can become sounds clear enough at a distance, but the
violent and unpredictable. —Eds. nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer
Afterwards, they could discuss
whether or not Orwell’s tone 116
changes over the course of the
essay. They could also draw nQw0u5iut_mhoSHtbpaEe_at5irro7a4n1g,_rcah5p_0h110-01s7Re3l.heidengedcicdtytotioi(1roi1minc6naoa, lfgesdtectrer.yat),at-il, Attitude Attitude Attitude toward 27/10/15 7:22 PM
conclusions about Orwell’s style: toward toward British
what strategies are most promi- Burmese elephant Attitude
nent in the essay? If students toward self Imperialism
need more support in tackling
this tone activity, you might give
students a limited word bank of
tone words to use when complet-
ing the activities. You will find a
bank of tone words on p. 000 in
the student text, which might be
a good place to start.

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it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a Orwell Shooting an Elephant
elephant had gone in one direction, some said few hundred yards away. As I started forward
that he had gone in another, some professed not practically the whole population of the quarter CHECK FOR
even to have heard of any elephant. I had almost flocked out of the houses and followed me. UNDERSTANDING
made up my mind that the whole story was a They had seen the rifle and were all shouting
pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. With so much detail in this
away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of “Go They had not shown much interest in the sequence from the time Orwell is
away, child! Go away this instant!” and an old elephant when he was merely ravaging their summoned until he decides to
woman with a switch in her hand came round homes, but it was different now that he was shoot the elephant, it might be
the corner of a hut, violently shooing away a going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it useful to ask students why he
crowd of naked children. Some more women would be to an English crowd; besides they was summoned in the first place.
followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I What exactly is his job? Could he
evidently there was something that the children had no intention of shooting the elephant — I have chosen not to go? What
ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if does the narrator mean when he
saw a man’s dead body sprawling in the mud. He necessary — and it is always unnerving to have says he “knew with perfect
was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie,4 almost a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, certainty” that he should not
naked, and he could not have been dead many looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoot the elephant?
minutes. The people said that the elephant had shoulder and an ever-growing army of people
come suddenly upon him round the corner of jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you
the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on got away from the huts, there was a metalled
his back and ground him into the earth. This was road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy
the rainy season and the ground was soft, and fields a thousand yards across, not yet
his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a ploughed but soggy from the first rains and
couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was
with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to standing eight yards from the road, his left side
one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes towards us. He took not the slightest notice of
wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an the crowd’s approach. He was tearing up
expression of unendurable agony. (Never tell bunches of grass, beating them against his
me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. knees to clean them and stuffing them into
Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) his mouth.
The friction of the great beast’s foot had stripped
the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the
rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I
orderly to a friend’s house nearby to borrow an ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to
elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, shoot a working elephant — it is comparable to
not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw destroying a huge and costly piece of
me if it smelt the elephant. machinery — and obviously one ought not to do
5 The orderly came back in a few minutes it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that
with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked
some Burmans had arrived and told us that the no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then
and I think now that his attack of “must” was
4Dravidian coolie: Dravidians are an ethnic group from Southern already passing off; in which case he would
India. “Coolie” is a term that was used in Orwell’s time for laborers merely wander harmlessly about until the
of Asian descent; it is now considered derogatory. —Eds. mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I
did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided
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central text

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CLOSE READING 5 Identity and Society that I would watch him for a little while to make know his own mind and do definite things. To
sure that he did not turn savage again, and then come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thou-
This paragraph and the one go home. sand people marching at my heels, and then to
following are filled with images of trail feebly away, having done nothing — no, that
the theatre – parted curtains, But at that moment I glanced round at the was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me.
actors, mask, puppet. Exploring crowd that had followed me. It was an immense And my whole life, every white man’s life in the
these metaphors individually is a crowd, two thousand at the least and growing East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.
good exercise in style analysis, every minute. It blocked the road for a long
but to understand how they work distance on either side. I looked at the sea of But I did not want to shoot the elephant.
collectively, you might ask yellow faces above the garish clothes — faces all I watched him beating his bunch of grass against
students who Orwell’s audience happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly
is. If he is “seemingly the lead that the elephant was going to be shot. They air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it
actor,” what part is he playing? were watching me as they would watch a would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was
conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not not squeamish about killing animals, but I had
CLOSE READING like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I never shot an elephant and never wanted to.
was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large
Paragraph 7 is the pivot point of I realized that I should have to shoot the animal.) Besides, there was the beast’s owner to
the text, with Orwell standing out elephant after all. The people expected it of me be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at
and telling us what it all means, and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thou- least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be
“it” being a whole lot more than sand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And worth the value of his tusks, five pounds,
what happened in Burma. This is it was at this moment, as I stood there with the possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to
a goo opportunity for smaller, rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollow- some experienced-looking Burmans who had
more probing, conversations. ness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in been there when we arrived, and asked them
Have students pair up and the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, how the elephant had been behaving. They all
decide, “Do you believe him?” standing in front of the unarmed native crowd — said the same thing: he took no notice of you if
When Orwell writes, “A sahib has seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in you left him alone, but he might charge if you
got to act like a sahib,” does he reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to went too close to him.
make you stop and reflect or turn and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I
away? To what extent do you feel perceived in this moment that when the white It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to
empathy for him? man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five
destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he
TEACHING IDEA dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib.5 charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of
For it is the condition of his rule that he shall me, it would be safe to leave him until the
In this section, Orwell writes the spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” mahout came back. But also I knew that I was
most often quoted line of the text: and so in every crisis he has got to do what the going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with
“He wears a mask, and his face “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which
grows to fit it.” Have students his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the one would sink at every step. If the elephant
draw or find an image that elephant. I had committed myself to doing it charged and I missed him, I should have about
captures the dual (or confused or when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act as much chance as a toad under a steam roller.
forfeited) identity that Orwell like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to But even then I was not thinking particularly of
describes here. my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces
5sahib: While in Arabic the term means “friend,” during the British behind. For at that moment, with the crowd
Raj the term was used as a form of address to a person of authority watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary
similar to how we might use “Mister” to a person of authority sense, as I would have been if I had been alone.
today. —Eds. A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of
“natives”; and so, in general, he isn’t frightened.

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seeing connections Orwell Shooting an Elephant

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-131443

Teddy Roosevelt was arguably the most aggressive imperialist in American history, TEACHING IDEA
annexing numerous ports and territories, including the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba,
Panama, Alaska, and Hawaii, during his time in office as either president or vice presi- Orwell carefully considers his
dent. Roosevelt was also an avid big-game hunter; he shot eleven elephants during a decision to shoot the elephant,
one-year-long hunting trip in Africa just after his presidency. weighing the decision from many
different angles. In groups, have
Based on what you already know or can quickly learn through research about Teddy students find all of the factors the
Roosevelt’s expansionist policies and love of hunting, consider what ideas may link his impe- narrator weighs as he considers
rialism and his love of hunting. How could they be related? How do those ideas help you his course of action. Using direct
understand more about “Shooting an Elephant”? quotations, students should then
categorize those factors as legal,
The sole thought in my mind was that if magazine and lay down on the road to get a materialistic, political, moral (or
anything went wrong those two thousand better aim. ethical) and personal. Then
Burmans would see me pursued, caught, tram- 10 The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, analyze how the speaker priori-
pled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre tizes them during the crisis.
that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable Finally, analyze how he currently
was quite probable that some of them would throats. They were going to have their bit of fun (e.g., in the present tense at the
laugh. That would never do. There was only one after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing end of the story) might reconsider
alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that that balance.

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5 Identity and Society in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut Orwell Archive, UCL Library Special Collections and Estate of Vernon Richards
an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-
CLOSE READING hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was Orwell with a Burmese dah.
sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear- In what ways does this photo capture the
Interpretations abound of the hole; actually I aimed several inches in front of cultural conflict in this essay?
elephant as symbol, including this, thinking the brain would be further
that he symbolizes Orwell’s forward. long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side
conscience, Burma under imperi- painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide
alist rule, even the British Empire When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the open — I could see far down into caverns of pale
itself. Engaging students in such bang or feel the kick — one never does when a pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die,
discussion might also offset (or shot goes home — but I heard the devilish roar of but his breathing did not weaken. Finally I fired
justify) the grisly details of the glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, my two remaining shots into the spot where I
slow and agonizing death of this in too short a time, one would have thought, thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled
“great beast.” even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die.
terrible change had come over the elephant. He His body did not even jerk when the shots hit
neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body him, the tortured breathing continued without a
had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great
shrunken, immensely old, as though the agony, but in some world remote from me where
frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him not even a bullet could damage him further. I felt
without knocking him down. At last, after what that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise.
seemed a long time — it might have been five It seemed dreadful to see the great beast lying
seconds, I dare say — he sagged flabbily to his there, powerless to move and yet powerless to
knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous
senility seemed to have settled upon him. One
could have imagined him thousands of years
old. I fired again into the same spot. At the
second shot he did not collapse but climbed
with desperate slowness to his feet and stood
weakly upright, with legs sagging and head
drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot
that did for him. You could see the agony of it
jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant
of strength from his legs. But in falling he
seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs
collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower
upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk
reaching skywards like a tree. He trumpeted, for
the first and only time. And then down he came,
his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed
to shake the ground even where I lay.

I got up. The Burmans were already racing
past me across the mud. It was obvious that the
elephant would never rise again, but he was not
dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with

120

C H E C K F O R05_SHE_5741_ch5_0110-0173.indd 120 29/10/15 3:00 PM
UNDERSTANDING

The description of the elephant
is so powerful that this is a good
place to ask which Orwell
prevails – Eric Blair the young
officer, or George Orwell the
reflective essayist. This section
also prepares, then, for the older
Orwell to prevail in the last para-
graph (i.e, “Afterwards”).

120 Advanced Language & Literature

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die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I Orwell Shooting an Elephant
back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has
into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to TRM SUGGESTED
to make no impression. The tortured gasps control it. Among the Europeans opinion was RESPONSES
continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock. divided. The older men said I was right, the
younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot Suggested responses to the
In the end I could not stand it any longer an elephant for killing a coolie, because an questions for this reading can be
and went away. I heard later that it took him half elephant was worth more than any damn found on the Teacher’s Resource
an hour to die. Burmans were bringing dahs6 Coringhee7 coolie. And afterwards I was very Flash Drive.
and baskets even before I left, and I was told glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me
they had stripped his body almost to the bones legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient
by the afternoon. pretext for shooting the elephant. I often
wondered whether any of the others grasped
Afterwards, of course, there were endless that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.
discussions about the shooting of the elephant.
The owner was furious, but he was only an 7Coringhee: a Southern Indian ethnicity. —Eds.

6dah: Burmese knife, often long enough to be considered
a sword. —Eds.

Understanding and interpreting the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was CLOSE READING –
only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the UNDERSTANDING Q2
1 George Orwell was stationed in Burma and left the will of those yellow faces behind.”
police force soon after his time there. What specific b. “I perceived in this moment that when the white This progression is tricky
evidence from the text can you find that might suggest man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he because in the opening, Orwell
why he left the police force? destroys.” sounds almost arrogant. He
c. “He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the begins by making the dramatic
2 Identify the speaker’s attitude toward the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the con- statement that he was “hated by
inhabitants of Burma at the following three places dition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying large numbers of people,” but
in the text: to impress the ‘natives,’ and so in every crisis he then he proceeds to denigrate
has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him. He those people. In this opening
a. the first paragraph wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” paragraph, Orwell clearly estab-
b. the paragraphs just before he shoots the elephant d. “The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, lishes an I (or us)/them dichotomy.
every white man’s life in the East, was one long By paragraphs 9 and 10, he
(pars. 9–10) struggle not to be laughed at.” acknowledges his own weak-
c. the last paragraph nesses, particularly his sense that
4 While this essay is specifically about a time when he has to “perform” as a superior.
Then, explain his overall feelings toward the Burmese. Orwell shot an elephant, it continues to be widely He refers to the “watchful yellow
read and studied in classes because it has meaning faces” and what a “white man”
3 In paragraph 3, the speaker says that this incident and application beyond 1920s Burma. What is the must and must not do. So he has
gave him “a better glimpse than I had had before central idea that Orwell is presenting in this essay fallen into or accepted his role. In
of the real nature of imperialism—the real motives for about identity? Use direct evidence from the text to paragraph 10, the “curtain go{es]
which despotic governments act.” Look back at the support your response. up” – and he performs as he
following statements from paragraph 7 and explain believes he is expected to in
what each statement reveals about the speaker’s view order to maintain his superior
of the nature of imperialism: position because – above all – he
must not be laughed at by the
a. “Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing natives: “That would never do”
in front of the unarmed native crowd—seemingly (paragraph 9). By the final para-
graph, Orwell the narrator retreats
central text 121 into what was “legally . . . the right
thing,” so there is arrogance – or
05_SHE_5741_ch5_0110-0173.indd 121 TEACHING IDEA – UNDERSTANDING Q4 27/10/15 7:22 PM bravado – but tempered with a
sense of doubt. And, in the last
This question asks students to evidence, you might identify sentence, he admits that he did
think more abstractly; that is, to specific lines or passages, and not take action out of any princi-
leave Orwell and Burma behind then ask students to build scenar- ple or moral belief, but “solely to
and to consider the larger issues. ios around them. For instance, in avoid looking a fool.”
Students might brainstorm ideas question 3, the first quote might be
and then, working in groups, flesh discussed in terms of white police
out the way that identity depends officers in a largely African
upon or is at least influenced by the American community. (How contro-
opinion of others in specific situa- versial such a focus is will depend,
tions. To tie the exercise to of course, upon your community.)

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CHECK FOR 5 Identity and Society Analyzing Language, Style, and Structure
UNDERSTANDING –
ANALYZING Q2 1 Reread the second paragraph of the piece, where closely at the underlined words and the synonyms that
the speaker provides some of his feelings about follow in parentheses. Discuss how changing Orwell’s
Ask students to work in groups to imperialism. Identify the contrasting and often word choice to one of the words in parentheses would
color code the essay to signal the contradictory choices of words as he describes the affect the meaning of the sentences containing these
younger and older Orwell. Then Burmese and the British. What do the contradictions words and the passage as a whole.
compare results. (Use an online reveal about the speaker’s attitude toward imperialism?
version that can be shown on Afterwards, of course, there were endless
screen and compared with other 2 This essay is told as a narrative with the speaker (interminable/incessant) discussions about the
versions of the analysis.) looking back on a significant event in his life. How shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious,
does the older Orwell view his younger self, and what but he was only an Indian and could do nothing.
CHECK FOR specific language choices reflect this tone? Besides, legally (justly/legitimately) I had done the
UNDERSTANDING – right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed
ANALYZING Q3 3 Reread paragraph 11, where the speaker first (executed/put down/slaughtered), like a mad dog,
shoots the elephant. What are some of the words if its owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans
Such a dramatic paragraph! and phrases that are used to humanize the elephant’s opinion was divided. The older men said I was
Students might be given specific death and how do these details help to illustrate right, the younger men said it was a damn shame
dimensions to focus on, such as Orwell’s point about imperialism? to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because
verbs, adjective, similes, and then an elephant was worth more than any damn
discuss how each element 4 You are reading this piece in a textbook almost Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad
contributes to the effect of eighty years after it was originally published. Who (cheerful/content/pleased) that the coolie had been
humanizing the elephant’s death, do you think was Orwell’s intended audience in 1936, killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a
in fact, giving it a kind of epic and what do you think he was trying to communicate sufficient (ample/acceptable) pretext (alibi/excuse/
importance. Once students have to them? How successful do you think he might have pretense) for shooting the elephant. I often
identified a string of verbs, for been in communicating his message? Why? wondered whether any of the others grasped that I
instance, you might ask them to had done it solely to avoid looking a fool (buffoon/
arrange these into a poem or a 5 Below is the last paragraph of the essay with some idiot/bonehead).
visual image and consider the words underlined. Reread this paragraph, looking
effect.
Topics for Composing • The first letter should be from the point of view of
TEACHING IDEA – the elephant’s owner, trying to convince the district
ANALYZING Q5 1 Exposition administrator of Burma to compensate you for the
Many of the reasons that the speaker gives for loss of your elephant. Imagine that upon receiving
This is an invitation to role play or shooting the elephant are implied rather than directly this letter, the district administrator demands an
at least read aloud. Ask a student stated. In an essay, identify and explain the most explanation from Orwell.
to read and substitute the first significant reasons for the shooting, and conclude with
choice in each case; then another an evaluation of which one was likely the primary • The second letter should be written as if you were
reads using the second choice, motivation. Orwell responding to the district administrator. Be
another the third. (If there are only sure to explain why the shooting of the elephant
two choices, just repeat.) Discuss 2 Exposition was justified, and address the points contained
the different impact of such How aware is the speaker of his own role in the within the letter from the elephant’s owner. Your
changes. worst elements of colonialism? Write an essay in which letters should be limited only to the events pre-
you respond to that question by drawing solely on the sented in the piece, but you should use whatever
TEACHING IDEA evidence that Orwell presents within the text. persuasive techniques you think would be useful in
convincing your audience.
As another extension activity, 3 Argument
working in groups students might At the end of the piece, Orwell writes, “The owner
develop a brief video juxtaposing was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do
the ideas/words of Orwell in nothing.” Write two letters about this situation:
“Shooting an Elephant” with
those of Aung San Suu Kyi in her 122
Nobel Peace Prize speech. Their
juxtaposition should make an 05_TSHEE_A57C41_Hch5I_N011G0-01I73D.inEdd A122– C O M P O S I N G Q 3 23/11/15 5:40 PM
argument about ways in which
the two share similar beliefs and After students have written both sides in a court and let a jury of
depart from one another’s beliefs. letters, divide them into groups to students determine if and why
choose the most provocative or the owner should or should not
creative (though not necessarily be compensated and what that
the “best”) letter from each view- compensation might be.
point. Present them as opposing

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4 Research something that someone expected you to do). What Orwell Shooting an Elephant TEACHING IDEA
How can psychological principles help us caused you to wear the mask? Did your face “grow to
understand the factors that may have contributed to fit it,” as the speaker of “Shooting an Elephant” Students might view the docu-
Orwell’s decision to shoot the elephant, even though suggests, or were you able to take the mask off and mentary 21st Century
he did not want to? Research a relevant become yourself again? Concentration Camps by
psychological study or psychological perspective, Nicholas Kristoff, part of the New
explain the experiment and its findings to your 7 Multimodal York Times’ Op Docs series
readers, and then describe how the findings help Make a short film—or draw a storyboard of (available online). It focuses on
explain the psychological factors at work in “Shooting scenes—in which you reenact paragraph 7 from the treatment of the Rohingya, a
an Elephant.” You might begin by looking into the “Shooting an Elephant.” Then, write a brief explanation Muslim minority in Myanmar
Stanford Prison Experiment (Philip Zimbardo), the about why you chose to film or draw it the way you did. today. Worth discussing as an
Asch Conformity Experiments (Solomon Asch), the How did the music, camera angles, lighting, acting argument in and of itself, the
Good Samaritan Study (John Darley and C. Daniel choices, and so on that you used relate to the specific documentary also generates
Batson), the Milgram Experiment (Stanley Milgram), words that Orwell used? discussion of the legacy of
or the Bystander Effect (John Darley and Bibb colonialism.
Latané). Feel free to uncover additional studies that 8 Discussion or performance
interest you. Hold a mock trial to debate the speaker’s actions.
There should be a prosecutor who is trying to convict
5 Research the speaker of property damage, a defense attorney
While the speaker in Orwell’s piece regularly uses who is trying to justify the speaker’s actions, a judge,
the word “imperialism” to describe the British activities and a jury to determine guilt or innocence. Be sure that
in Burma because it refers to the expansion of an all of the evidence you consider comes directly from
“empire,” another related and more general term is the text itself and any relevant research you conduct on
“colonialism,” which applies to any country’s the time period and location.
conquering and exploiting the resources of another
country. Research present-day Myanmar, or another 9 Creative
country that was colonized, and identify the effects George Orwell is not a hero in this piece. He
colonialism had. doesn’t take a principled stand and refuse to shoot the
elephant, nor does he rebel against an imperial system
6 Narrative that he seems to disapprove of and yet participates in.
At the moment the speaker decides to shoot the Write a new ending for the essay in which Orwell
elephant, he states, “[I]t is the condition of his rule that decides not to shoot the elephant. Continue to use the
[the white man] shall spend his life in trying to impress first person narration, try to mimic Orwell’s style as
the ‘natives,’ and so in every crisis he has got to do closely as possible, and include the reasoning behind
what the ‘natives’ expect of him. He wears a mask, and his decision. Be sure to consider how the last
his face grows to fit it” (par. 7). Write a story about a paragraph would change significantly as a result of this
time when you had to wear a metaphorical mask (do different decision. Include a reflection that explains
what changed and why.

central text 123

05_SHE_5741_ch5_0110-0173.indd 123 TEACHING IDEA 27/10/15 7:22 PM

Another multimodal activity idea: community or a larger global
In this essay, Orwell reflects on canvas? Develop a multimodal
how an individual and his beliefs argument about a current conflict
can get lost in a larger machine, involving institutionalized author-
in his case the British Empire. ity vs. individual conscience.
What insights can we glean about Combine images and sound that
issues of authority in our contem- are contemporary with words
porary world, either local from Orwell’s essay.

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TEACHING IDEA conversation

Ask students to bring in a picture chAngeS And trAnSfOrmAtiOnS
of themselves from five to ten
years ago. We want some This chapter is about identity and the fact that identities change. You are probably not
distance, but we also want them exactly the same as you were in elementary school. You might not even be exactly the
to have a functional memory of same as you were last month. Why do our identities change? What factors lead to those
the scene in the photo. They changes? Certain aspects of our identities may change frequently, like hairstyles, clothes,
should select the photo carefully. and interests, perhaps as a result of growing older, moving to a new town, or getting a
It should be a photo of an event different group of friends.
with a story. Students should pair
up, with Student A trying to tell Other aspects of identity, such as race, gender, and ethnicity, are seemingly more
the story of what is going on in fixed, although society’s and one’s own perception of these aspects certainly do change.
the Student B’s photograph, Remember that in the United States, women were not allowed to vote as recently as 1920,
pointing out what they believe the and racial segregation was legal in schools until 1954. So in some of these cases, identi-
key details are. Student A then ties can change due to new laws, historical events, and social trends.
explains what Student B got right
and wrong. Then the students David Bowie, a pop singer who began his career in the late 1960s and made a habit of
switch roles. You might want to changing his identity with almost every album he released, wrote a song in 1971 called
model this process with a photo “Changes.” Take a look at a portion of the lyrics on the next page:
of your own first, having the class
as a whole trying to tell its story. Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
After the pair and share, students Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
should write a reflection: how did Denis O’Regan/Getty Images
you feel today when you looked
back at the photo? Do you
remember how you felt at the
time of the photo? How different
is your life today from your life in
the photo? Finally, ask the
students to write about the event
in the photo, as well as a reflec-
tion back on the photo and its
story from their current perspec-
tive. Close the activity by asking
them to explain how this activity
relates to the topics of identity
and transformation.

Bowie in ’68 Bowie in the early ’70s Bowie in ’83

In the photos of David Bowie at various times in his career, what portions of his identity
change, and what seems to remain constant? What do you think Bowie means in the lyric,
“But I’ve never caught a glimpse / Of how the others must see the faker”?

124

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This is a conversation of texts have read (examples will include • Have students write a brief
that focus on the forces that Romeo and Juliet, Hunger narrative about a time they
affect people to change, many of Games, Speak, Catcher in the faced a difficult choice or deci-
which could best be described by Rye, The Fault in our Stars, etc.) sion, gained or lost an import-
the phrase “Coming of Age.” To and identify the attributes of the ant friend, or had a conflict
introduce students to this idea, genre. What defines a “Coming with a parent or teacher.
consider the following: of Age” story? How and why
do the characters change or
• Hold a class discussion of transform?
“Coming of Age” texts students

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So I turned myself to face me Krakauer The Devils Thumb BUILDING CONTEXT
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker John Storey/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images Consider playing students a portion
I’m much too fast to take that test of a David Bowie video or two to
give them a sense of his voice and
While the speaker in the Bowie song seems to embrace the changes that are a performance style. Ask students to
natural part of life, the protagonists in this Conversation of texts are not necessarily as name another, more recent pop star
accepting of the changes they face. Among others, you will read about a young man who has changed his or her look
who leaves all his material goods behind to live in the wilds of Alaska, a young woman and style as regularly as Bowie.
who considers leaving her native Ireland to travel to South America, and a middle
school student who faces the challenge of keeping an old friend while making new TEACHING IDEA
ones. At the end of this section, you will have an opportunity to enter this Conversation
on Changes and Transformations, identifying similarities and differences among the You might begin this section of
various texts and adding your own voice to the discussion of how identities change the book by having a class
and transform. discussion centered on these
questions: What are the positives
textS and negatives associated with
Jon Krakauer / The Devils Thumb (nonfiction) “change”? Why does it make us
Caitlin Horrocks / Zolaria (fiction) nervous? Is change inevitable?
Sharon Olds / My Son the Man and The Possessive (poetry)
William Shakespeare / The Seven Ages of Man (poetry/drama) BUILDING CONTEXT
James Joyce / Eveline (fiction)
from Souvenir of the Carlisle Indian School (photographs) Students who do not have experi-
ence with mountaineering will likely
The Devils Thumb benefit from some direct vocabu-
lary instruction. Split the class into
Jon Krakauer three teams. Team 1 researches
climbing equipment, Team 2
researches climbing techniques,
and Team 3 researches terrain
terms. Have each team develop
explanantions (using visuals if
necessary) of the following terms:

Writer Jon Krakauer (b. 1954) has been a risk taker and Equipment
adventurer most of his life. The author of the highly acclaimed crampons
account of a disastrous attempt to climb Mount Everest, Into spikes of chrome molybdenom
Thin Air, Krakauer spent much of his own youth climbing various Tyrolean cap
mountains around the world, the accounts of which were crevasse polls
collected in Eiger Dreams: Ventures among Men and Mountains, ice axe
from which this narrative is taken. Krakauer is also the author bivouac sack
of Into the Wild, the true story of the life and death of Chris Early Winter’s Omnipo Tent
McCandless, a young man who tried to live on his own in the rainfly
backcountry of Alaska, and died as a result. Rather than simply celebrating
the accomplishments of adventurers, Krakauer examines the risks and contradictions Techniques tension traverse
of trying to find yourself by going toe-to-toe with nature, concluding in Into the Wild pitoncraft nordwand
that “mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.” bolt placement technical climb
boot axe belay
shoulder stand

chAngeS And trAnSfOrmAtiOnS cOnverSAtiOn 125 Terrain glacial plateau
frost feathers crevasse
diorite Rime
bivouac site Frosted Slabs
verglas
ice cap

T R M VO C A B U L A R Y05_SHE_5741_ch5_0110-0173.indd 125 BUILDING CONTEXT B U I L D I N G C2O7/10N/15T7E:23XPTM similarities students note about
Krakauer’s work, and/or show
A list of challenging words from Sir Edmund Hillary, who was A number of your students may clips from the music videos for
this reading can be found in the among the first to summit Everest, have already read one or more of the film version of Into the Wild,
Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive. remarked, “It is not the mountain Krakauer’s books, especially Into which present ideas of societal
we conquer, but ourselves.” Ask Thin Air, about a climbing disas- dissatisfaction similar to this
students what might he mean? ter on Mount Everest, and Into narrative.
Why would a person need to go to the Wild, about a young man who
a mountain to conquer his or her died in the Alaskan wilderness.
self? Why, for that matter, would You may want to discuss what
one need to conquer the self? How
is that a mountain would help with
this task? Can you think of alterna-
tive paths?

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5 Identity and Society By the time I reached the interstate I was rude sensation of the Pontiac bucking violently
having trouble keeping my eyes open. I’d along the dirt shoulder at seventy miles per
CLOSE READING been okay on the twisting two-lane blacktop hour. By all rights, the car should have sailed off
between Fort Collins and Laramie, but when the into the rabbitbrush and rolled. The rear wheels
Read the first five paragraphs to Pontiac eased onto the smooth, unswerving fishtailed wildly six or seven times, but I eventu-
your student in quick succession, pavement of I-80, the soporific hiss of the tires ally managed to guide the unruly machine back
asking them to pay attention to began to gnaw at my wakefulness like ants in a onto the pavement without so much as blowing
any references to sleeping and dead tree. a tire, and let it coast gradually to a stop. I loos-
waking. How many did they ened my death grip on the wheel, took several
notice? They can’t answer why That afternoon, after nine hours of humping deep breaths to quiet the pounding in my chest,
the narrative starts here yet, but 2 X 10s and pounding recalcitrant nails, I’d told then slipped the shifter back into drive and
they might be able to make my boss I was quitting: “No, not in a couple of continued down the highway.
predictions about how sleep and weeks, Steve; right now was more like what I had 5 Pulling over to sleep would have been the
waking may be important to the in mind.” It took me three more hours to clear sensible thing to do, but I was on my way to
story: the character tries to my tools and other belongings out of the rust- Alaska to change my life, and patience was a
achieve an awakening. stained construction trailer that had served as concept well beyond my twenty-three-year-
my home in Boulder. I loaded everything into old ken.
the car, drove up Pearl Street to Tom’s Tavern,
and downed a ceremonial beer. Then I was Sixteen months earlier I’d graduated from
gone. college with little distinction and even less in the
way of marketable skills. In the interim an off-
At 1 a.m., thirty miles east of Rawlins, the again, on-again four-year relationship — the first
strain of the day caught up to me. The euphoria serious romance of my life — had come to a
that had flowed so freely in the wake of my quick messy, long-overdue end; nearly a year later, my
escape gave way to overpowering fatigue; love life was still zip. To support myself I worked
suddenly I felt tired to the bone. The highway on a house-framing crew, grunting under crip-
stretched straight and empty to the horizon and pling loads of plywood, counting the minutes
beyond. Outside the car the night air was cold, until the next coffee break, scratching in vain at
and the stark Wyoming plains glowed in the the sawdust stuck in perpetuum to the sweat on
moonlight like Rousseau’s painting of the sleep- the back of my neck. Somehow, blighting the
ing gypsy. I wanted very badly just then to be Colorado landscape with condominiums and
that gypsy, conked out on my back beneath the tract houses for three-fifty an hour wasn’t the
stars. I shut my eyes — just for a second, but it sort of career I’d dreamed of as a boy.
was a second of bliss. It seemed to revive me, if
only briefly. The Pontiac, a sturdy behemoth Late one evening I was mulling all this over
from the Eisenhower years, floated down the on a barstool at Tom’s, picking unhappily at my
road on its long-gone shocks like a raft on an existential scabs, when an idea came to me, a
ocean swell. The lights of an oil rig twinkled scheme for righting what was wrong in my life.
reassuringly in the distance. I closed my eyes a It was wonderfully uncomplicated, and the more
second time, and kept them closed a few I thought about it, the better the plan sounded.
moments longer. The sensation was sweeter By the bottom of the pitcher its merits seemed
than sex. unassailable. The plan consisted, in its entirety,
of climbing a mountain in Alaska called the
A few minutes later I let my eyelids fall again. Devils Thumb.
I’m not sure how long I nodded off this time — it
might have been for five seconds, it might have The Devils Thumb is a prong of exfoliated
been for thirty — but when I awoke it was to the diorite that presents an imposing profile from any

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126 Advanced Language & Literature

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Henri Rousseau, The Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/ Krakauer The Devils Thumb
Sleeping Gypsy, oil on Art Resource, NY
canvas, 1897.

Why do you think
Krakauer refers to this
particular painting in
his narrative?

point of the compass, but especially so from the 10 Dr. Edwards regarded climbing as a “psycho- TEACHING IDEA
north: its great north wall, which had never been neurotic tendency” rather than sport; he
climbed, rises sheer and clean for six thousand climbed not for fun but to find refuge from the As a retrospective narrative, this
vertical feet from the glacier at its base. Twice the inner torment that characterized his existence. story has the enriching quality of
height of Yosemite’s El Capitan, the north face of I remember, that spring of 1977, being especially having a speaker with two
the Thumb is one of the biggest granitic walls on taken by a passage from an Edwards short story distinct identities: the older narra-
the continent; it may well be one of the biggest in titled “Letter From a Man”: tor telling us the story and the
the world. I would go to Alaska, ski across the younger character living it. If your
Stikine Icecap to the Devils Thumb, and make the So, as you would imagine, I grew up exuber- students have read the Central
first ascent of its notorious nordwand. It seemed, ant in body but with a nervy, craving mind: Text, “Shooting An Elephant,”
midway through the second pitcher, like a It was wanting something more, something you can point to this similarity.
particularly good idea to do all of this solo. tangible. It sought for reality intensely, Invite your students to make a
always if it were not there . . . chart with three columns. In the
Writing these words more than a dozen years first, list events where the narra-
later, it’s no longer entirely clear just how I But you see at once what I do. I climb. tor faces a challenge or setback,
thought soloing the Devils Thumb would trans- in the next column they would
form my life. It had something to do with the fact To one enamored of this sort of prose, the discuss what the event reveals
that climbing was the first and only thing I’d ever Thumb beckoned like a beacon. My belief in the about the older narrator, and in
been good at. My reasoning, such as it was, was plan became unshakeable. I was dimly aware the final column they would
fueled by the scattershot passions of youth, and a that I might be getting in over my head, but if discuss what it reveals about the
literary diet overly rich in the works of Nietzsche, I could somehow get to the top of the Devils younger character. Model the
Kerouac, and John Menlove Edwards — the latter Thumb, I was convinced, everything that process first by reading aloud the
a deeply troubled writer/psychiatrist who, before followed would turn out all right. And thus did first page and completing the first
putting an end to his life with a cyanide capsule I push the accelerator a little closer to the floor entry together. Read a little
in 1958, had been one of the preeminent British and, buoyed by the jolt of adrenaline that further on and have students do
rock climbers of the day. followed the Pontiac’s brush with destruction, the next entry in pairs. Once you
speed west into the night. are confident that they under-
stand the process, release them
changes and transformations conversation 127 to independent work on this chart
for remainder of the story.

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As adults, it is easy for us to see distinction and value. Do this by connect to those feelings and
the self-esteem issues that drive building on the line, “climbing share them, they may be able to
Krakauer’s quest. Our students was the first and only thing that see more of the personal struggle
may not be able to identify these I’d ever been good at.” Ask, of the character. Bring it back to
issues. Make sure that they are “What was the first thing you real- the story with, “How do these
picking up on how the older ized you were good at? How did memories help us understand
Krakauer feels about the need of you feel? Why?” This may feel why he would quit his job to
the younger self to earn like a digression, but if they can climb a mountain?”

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TEACHING IDEA 5 Identity and Society ... some unclimbed alpine wall, all I had to do was
You can’t actually get very close to the Devils get myself to the foot of the mountain and start
Check that students understand Thumb by car. The peak stands in the swinging my ice axes.
the idiom “throw in the towel” Boundary Ranges on the Alaska–British
and give students an object like Columbia border, not far from the fishing Petersburg sits on an island, the Devils
the proverbial “towel” from village of Petersburg, a place accessible only by Thumb rises from the mainland. To get myself to
boxing—a small white piece of boat or plane. There is regular jet service to the foot of the Thumb it was first necessary to
paper will work great here. Have Petersburg, but the sum of my liquid assets cross twenty-five miles of salt water. For most of
them write “I Quit” on side of the amounted to the Pontiac and two hundred a day I walked the docks, trying without success
sheet. After Krakauer faces his dollars in cash, not even enough for one-way to hire a boat to ferry me across Frederick
first set back, introduce this airfare, so l took the car as far as Gig Harbor, Sound. Then I bumped into Bart and Benjamin.
activity: “If at any time in the Washington, then hitched a ride on a north-
story, you think—were I in his bound seine boat that was short on crew. Five Bart and Benjamin were ponytailed constit-
shoes here, I would turn back— days out, when the Ocean Queen pulled into uents of a Woodstock Nation tree-planting
then it is time to ‘throw in the Petersburg to take on fuel and water, I jumped collective called the Hodads. We struck up a
towel.’ Write the paragraph ship, shouldered my backpack, and walked conversation. I mentioned that I, too, had once
number and why you would turn down the dock in a steady Alaskan rain. worked as a tree planter. The Hodads allowed
back now if you were in his that they had chartered a floatplane to fly them
shoes.” Back in Boulder, without exception, every to their camp on the mainland the next morn-
person with whom I’d shared my plans about ing. “It’s your lucky day, kid,” Bart told me. “For
At appropriate intervals, check to the Thumb had been blunt and to the point: I’d twenty bucks you can ride over with us. Get you
collect “towels” from people who been smoking too much pot, they said; it was a to your [. . .] mountain in style.” On May 3, a day
would have turned back. Hear monumentally bad idea. I was grossly over- and a half after arriving in Petersburg, I stepped
about when and why as time estimating my abilities as a climber, I’d never be off the Hodads’ Cessna, waded onto the tidal
permits. Consider having them able to hack a month completely by myself, I flats at the head of Thomas Bay, and began the
crumple and throw in their sheet would fall into a crevasse and die. long trudge inland.
when they give up. This could be
a way for people to signify that The residents of Petersburg reacted The Devils Thumb pokes up out of the Stikine
they have something to share. It differently. Being Alaskans, they were accus- Icecap, an immense, labyrinthine network of
will be interesting to see who tomed to people with screwball ideas; a sizeable glaciers that hugs the crest of the Alaskan
believes they would go all the percentage of the state’s population, after all, panhandle like an octopus, with myriad tenta-
way and who most certainly was sitting on half-baked schemes to mine cles that snake down, down to the sea from the
would not risk their life in this uranium in the Brooks Range, or sell icebergs to craggy uplands along the Canadian frontier. In
moment. You could have a the Japanese, or market mail-order moose drop- putting ashore at Thomas Bay I was gambling
Socratic seminar on risk taking pings. Most of the Alaskans I met, if they reacted that one of these frozen arms, the Baird Glacier,
following this reading: how at all, simply asked how much money there was would lead me safely to the bottom of the
should we manage risk in our in climbing a mountain like the Devils Thumb. Thumb, thirty miles distant.
lives? How have we seen people 15 In any case, one of the appealing things
in our lives successfully and about climbing the Thumb — and one of the An hour of gravel beach led to the tortured
unsuccessfully manage risk? appealing things about the sport of mountain blue tongue of the Baird. A logger in Petersburg
climbing in general — was that it didn’t matter a had suggested I keep an eye out for grizzlies
rat’s ass what anyone else thought. Getting the along this stretch of shore. “Them bears over
scheme off the ground didn’t hinge on winning there is just waking up this time of year,” he
the approval of some personnel director, admis- smiled. “Tend to be kinda cantankerous after not
sions committee, licensing board, or panel of eatin’ all winter. But you keep your gun handy,
stern-faced judges; if I felt like taking a shot at you shouldn’t have no problem.” Problem was, I
didn’t have a gun. As it turned out, my only
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encounter with hostile wildlife involved a flock tower in a tired, giddy daze. It was far and away Krakauer The Devils Thumb
of gulls who dive-bombed my head with the most technical ascent ever done in Alaska,
Hitchcockian fury. Between the avian assault an important milestone in the history of
and my ursine anxiety, it was with no small American mountaineering.
amount of relief that I turned my back to the
beach, donned crampons, and scrambled up In the ensuing decades three other teams
onto the glacier’s broad, lifeless snout. also made it to the top of the Thumb, but all
20 After three or four miles I came to the snow- steered clear of the big north face. Reading
line, where I exchanged crampons for skis. accounts of these expeditions, I had wondered
Putting the boards on my feet cut fifteen pounds why none of them had approached the peak by
from the awful load on my back and made the what appeared, from the map at least, to be the
going much faster besides. But now that the ice easiest and most logical route, the Baird. I
was covered with snow, many of the glacier’s wondered a little less after coming across an
crevasses were hidden, making solitary travel article by Beckey in which the distinguished
extremely dangerous. mountaineer cautioned, “Long, steep icefalls
block the route from the Baird Glacier to the
In Seattle, anticipating this hazard, I’d icecap near Devils Thumb,” but after studying
stopped at a hardware store and purchased a aerial photographs I decided that Beckey was
pair of stout aluminum curtain rods, each ten mistaken, that the icefalls weren’t so big or so
feet long. Upon reaching the snowline, I lashed bad. The Baird, I was certain, really was the best
the rods together at right angles, then strapped way to reach the mountain.
the arrangement to the hip belt on my backpack
so the poles extended horizontally over the snow. For two days I slogged steadily up the glacier
Staggering slowly up the glacier with my over- without incident, congratulating myself for
loaded backpack, bearing the queer tin cross, I discovering such a clever path to the Thumb. On
felt like some kind of strange Penitente. Were I to the third day, I arrived beneath the Stikine
break through the veneer of snow over a hidden Icecap proper, where the long arm of the Baird
crevasse, though, the curtain rods would — I joins the main body of ice. Here, the glacier
hoped mightily — span the slot and keep me spills abruptly over the edge of a high plateau,
from dropping into the chilly bowels or the Baird. dropping seaward through the gap between two
peaks in a phantasmagoria of shattered ice.
The first climbers to venture onto the Stikine Seeing the icefall in the flesh left a different
Icecap were Bestor Robinson and Fritz Wiessner, impression than the photos had. As I stared at
the legendary German-American alpinist, who the tumult from a mile away, for the first time
spent a stormy month in the Boundary Ranges since leaving Colorado the thought crossed my
in 1937 but failed to reach any major summits. mind that maybe this Devils Thumb trip wasn’t
Wiessner returned in 1946 with Donald Brown the best idea I’d ever had.
and Fred Beckey to attempt the Devils Thumb, 25 The icefall was a maze of crevasses and
the nastiest looking peak in the Stikine. On that teetering seracs1. From afar it brought to mind a
trip Fritz mangled a knee during a fall on the bad train wreck, as if scores of ghostly white
hike in and limped home in disgust, but Beckey boxcars had derailed at the lip of the icecap and
went back that same summer with Bob Craig tumbled down the slope willy-nilly. The closer I
and Cliff Schmidtke. On August 25, after several got, the more unpleasant it looked. My ten-foot
aborted tries and some exceedingly hairy climb-
ing on the peak’s east ridge, Beckey and 1seracs: Large columns of ice, usually found in the cracks of glaciers,
company sat on the Thumb’s wafer-thin summit and prone to toppling over, making it especially dangerous for
climbers. —Eds.

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In paragraphs 21-27, we can section, ask them if they feel like
discuss how Krakauer prepared/ Krakauer was ready for the
did not prepare for the climb. climb? Would the younger and
Make sure at the start of this older Krakauer answer that ques-
section that they understand tion differently at this point in the
what Krakauer is doing with the story?
curtain rods. At the end of this

Teacher’s Edition 129

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5 Identity and Society curtain rods seemed a poor defense against mind for about fifteen years — since April 12,
crevasses that were forty feet across and two 1962, to be exact. The occasion was my eighth
hundred fifty feet deep. Before I could finish birthday. When it came time to open birthday
figuring out a course through the icefall, the presents, my parents announced that they were
wind came up and snow began to slant hard out offering me a choice of gifts: According to my
of the clouds, stinging my face and reducing visi- wishes, they would either escort me to the new
bility to almost nothing. Seattle World’s Fair to ride the Monorail and see
the Space Needle, or give me an introductory
In my impetuosity, I decided to carry on taste of mountain climbing by taking me up the
anyway. For the better part of the day I groped third highest peak in Oregon, a long-dormant
blindly through the labyrinth in the whiteout, volcano called the South Sister that, on clear
retracing my steps from one dead end to days, was visible from my bedroom window. It
another. Time after time I’d think I’d found a way was a tough call. I thought the matter over at
out, only to wind up in a deep blue cul de sac, or length, then settled on the climb.
stranded atop a detached pillar of ice. My efforts 30 To prepare me for the rigors of the ascent, my
were lent a sense of urgency by the noises father handed over a copy of Mountaineering:
emanating underfoot. A madrigal of cracks and The Freedom of the Hills, the leading how-to
sharp reports — the sort of protests a large fir manual of the day, a thick tome that weighed
limb makes when it’s slowly bent to the breaking only slightly less than a bowling ball.
point — served as a reminder that it is the nature Thenceforth I spent most of my waking hours
of glaciers to move, the habit of seracs to topple. poring over its pages, memorizing the intricacies
of pitoncraft and bolt placement, the shoulder
As much as I feared being flattened by a wall stand and the tension traverse. None of which, as
of collapsing ice, I was even more afraid of fall- it happened, was of any use on my inaugural
ing into a crevasse, a fear that intensified when I ascent, for the South Sister turned out to be a
put a foot through a snow bridge over a slot so decidedly less than extreme climb that
deep I couldn’t see the bottom of it. A little later demanded nothing more in the way of technical
I broke through another bridge to my waist; the skill than energetic walking, and was in fact
poles kept me out of the hundred-foot hole, but ascended by hundreds of farmers, house pets,
after I extricated myself I was bent double with and small children every summer.
dry heaves thinking about what it would be like
to be lying in a pile at the bottom of the crevasse, Which is not to suggest that my parents and
waiting for death to come, with nobody even I conquered the mighty volcano: From the pages
aware of how or where I’d met my end. and pages of perilous situations depicted in
Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills, I had
Night had nearly fallen by the time I concluded that climbing was a life-and-death
emerged from the top of the serac slope onto matter, always. Halfway up the South Sister I
the empty, wind-scoured expanse of the high suddenly remembered this. In the middle of a
glacial plateau. In shock and chilled to the core, twenty-degree snow slope that would be impos-
I skied far enough past the icefall to put its sible to fall from if you tried, I decided that I was
rumblings out of earshot, pitched the tent, in mortal jeopardy and burst into tears, bringing
crawled into my sleeping bag, and shivered the ascent to a halt.
myself to a fitful sleep.
Perversely, after the South Sister debacle my
Although my plan to climb the Devils Thumb interest in climbing only intensified. I resumed
wasn’t fully hatched until the spring of 1977, the my obsessive studies of Mountaineering. There
mountain had been lurking in the recesses of my

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was something about the scariness of the activi- Krakauer The Devils Thumb
ties portrayed in those pages that just wouldn’t
leave me alone. In addition to the scores of line John Scurlock
drawings — most of them cartoons of a little man
in a jaunty Tyrolean cap — employed to illustrate A view of the still-unclimbed northwest face of the
arcana like the boot-axe belay and the Bilgeri Devils Thumb. Krakauer ascended from the left side,
rescue, the book contained sixteen black-and- the eastern ascent. The sharp, slightly shorter peak
white plates of notable peaks in the Pacific just to the right of the Devils Thumb is called the Cat
Northwest and Alaska. All the photographs were Ear Spire.
striking, but the one on page 147 was much, How does the language Krakauer uses to
much more than that: it made my skin crawl. An describe this mountain compare with this
aerial photo by glaciologist Maynard Miller, it picture of it?
showed a singularly sinister tower of ice-
plastered black rock. There wasn’t a place on fifty dollars — the last of my cash — to have six
the entire mountain that looked safe or secure; cardboard cartons of supplies dropped from an
I couldn’t imagine anyone climbing it. At the airplane when I reached the foot of the Thumb.
bottom of the page the mountain was identified I showed the pilot exactly where, on his map, I
as the Devils Thumb. intended to be, and told him to give me three
days to get there; he promised to fly over and
From the first time I saw it, the picture — a make the drop as soon thereafter as the weather
portrait of the Thumb’s north wall — held an permitted.
almost pornographic fascination for me. On 35 On May 6 I set up a base camp on the Icecap
hundreds — no, make that thousands — of just northeast of the Thumb and waited for the
occasions over the decade and a half that airdrop. For the next four days it snowed, nixing
followed I took my copy of Mountaineering any chance for a flight. Too terrified of crevasses
down from the shelf, opened it to page 147, and
quietly stared. How would it feel, I wondered
over and over, to be on that thumbnail-thin
summit ridge, worrying over the storm clouds
building on the horizon, hunched against the
wind and dunning cold , contemplating the
horrible drop on either side? How could
anyone keep it together? Would I, if I found
myself high on the north wall, clinging to that
frozen rock, even attempt to keep it together?
Or would I simply decide to surrender to the
inevitable straight away, and jump?

I had planned on spending between three
weeks and a month on the Stikine Icecap. Not
relishing the prospect of carrying a four-week
load of food, heavy winter camping gear, and a
small mountain of climbing hardware all the
way up the Baird on my back, before leaving
Petersburg I paid a bush pilot a hundred and

changes and transformations conversation 131

C L O S E05_SHE_5741_ch5_0110-0173.indd 131 R E A D I N G some troubling notions. How does 27/10/15 7:23 PM
Krakauer use retrospective voice in
In paragraph 33, Krakauer summa- this paragraph? How does the Can your students find connec-
rizes the history of his fixation with series of questions help us under- tions between these questions
the Devils Thumb. The summary is stand the draw of the mountain and Jack London’s remark, “I
followed with a string of dangerous and the character of the younger would rather be ashes than dust.
questions. This would be an exam- Krakauer? I would rather that my spark
ple of retrospective musing from should burn out in a brilliant blaze
the time of the narrative (belonging than be stifled by dry rot.”
to the younger self). It presents

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5 Identity and Society to wander far from camp, I occasionally went deck — and never saw my tent in the flat evening
out for a short ski to kill time, but mostly I lay light. My waving and screaming were to no avail;
silently in the tent — the ceiling was too low to sit from that altitude l was indistinguishable from a
upright — with my thoughts, fighting a rising pile of rocks. For the next hour he circled the
chorus of doubts. icecap, scanning its barren contours without
success. But the pilot, to his credit, appreciated
As the days passed, I grew increasingly the gravity of my predicament and didn’t give
anxious. I had no radio, nor any other means of up. Frantic, I tied my sleeping bag to the end of
communicating with the outside world. It had one of the crevasse poles and waved it for all I
been many years since anyone had visited this was worth. When the plane banked sharply and
part of the Stikine Icecap, and many more would began to fly straight at me, I felt tears of joy well
likely pass before anyone did so again. I was in my eyes.
nearly out of stove fuel, and down to a single
chunk of cheese, my last package of ramen The pilot buzzed my tent three times in
noodles, and half a box of Cocoa Puffs. This, I quick succession, dropping two boxes on each
figured, could sustain me for three or four more pass, then the airplane disappeared over a ridge
days if need be, but then what would I do? It and I was alone. As silence again settled over
would only take two days to ski back down the the glacier I felt abandoned, vulnerable, lost.
Baird to Thomas Bay, but then a week or more I realized that I was sobbing. Embarrassed,
might easily pass before a fisherman happened I halted the blubbering by screaming obsceni-
by who could give me a lift back to Petersburg ties until I grew hoarse.
(the Hodads with whom I’d ridden over were 40 I awoke early on May 11 to clear skies and
camped fifteen miles down the impassable, the relatively warm temperature of twenty
headland-studded coast, and could be reached degrees Fahrenheit. Startled by the good
only by boat or plane). weather, mentally unprepared to commence the
actual climb, I hurriedly packed up a rucksack
When I went to bed on the evening of May nonetheless, and began skiing toward the base
10 it was still snowing and blowing hard. I was of the Thumb. Two previous Alaskan expedi-
going back and forth on whether to head for the tions had taught me that, ready or not, you
coast in the morning or stick it out on the icecap, simply can’t afford to waste a day of perfect
gambling that the pilot would show before I weather if you expect to get up anything.
starved or died of thirst, when, just for a
moment, I heard a faint whine, like a mosquito. I A small hanging glacier extends out from the
tore open the tent door. Most of the clouds had lip of the icecap, leading up and across the north
lifted, but there was no airplane in sight. The face of the Thumb like a catwalk. My plan was to
whine returned, louder this time. Then I saw it: a follow this catwalk to a prominent rock prow in
tiny red-and-white speck, high in the western the center of the wall, and thereby execute an
sky, droning my way. end run around the ugly, avalanche-swept lower
half of the face.
A few minutes later the plane passed directly
overhead. The pilot, however, was unaccus- The catwalk turned out to be a series of
tomed to glacier flying and he’d badly misjudged fifty-degree ice fields blanketed with knee-deep
the scale of the terrain. Worried about winding powder snow and riddled with crevasses. The
up too low and getting nailed by unexpected depth of the snow made the going slow and
turbulence, he flew a good thousand feet above exhausting; by the time I front-pointed up
me — believing all the while he was just off the the overhanging wall of the uppermost

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bergschrund,2 some three or four hours after you’re hyperaware of the abyss pulling at your Krakauer The Devils Thumb
leaving camp, I was whipped. And I hadn’t even back. You constantly feel its call, its immense
gotten to the “real” climbing yet. That would hunger. To resist takes a tremendous conscious
begin immediately above, where the hanging effort; you don’t dare let your guard down for an
glacier gave way to vertical rock. instant. The siren song of the void puts you on
edge, it makes your movements tentative,
The rock, exhibiting a dearth of holds and clumsy, herky-jerky. But as the climb goes on,
coated with six inches of crumbly rime, did not you grow accustomed to the exposure, you get
look promising, but just left of the main prow used to rubbing shoulders with doom, you come
was an inside corner — what climbers call an to believe in the reliability of your hands and
open book — glazed with frozen melt water. feet and head. You learn to trust your
This ribbon of ice led straight up for two or self-control.
three hundred feet, and if the ice proved
substantial enough to support the picks of my By and by, your attention becomes so
ice axes, the line might go. I hacked out a small intensely focused that you no longer notice the
platform in the snow slope, the last flat ground raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of
I expected to feel underfoot for some time, and maintaining nonstop concentration. A trance-
stopped to eat a candy bar and collect my like state settles over your efforts, the climb
thoughts. Fifteen minutes later I shouldered my becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like
pack and inched over to the bottom of the minutes. The accrued guilt and clutter of day-to-
corner. Gingerly, I swung my right axe into the day existence — the lapses of conscience, the
two-inch-thick ice. It was solid, plastic — a little unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust
thinner than I would have liked but otherwise under the couch, the festering familial sores, the
perfect. I was on my way. inescapable prison of your genes — all of it is
temporarily forgotten, crowded from your
The climbing was steep and spectacular, so thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose,
exposed it made my head spin. Beneath my boot and by the seriousness of the task at hand.
soles, the wall fell away for three thousand feet
to the dirty, avalanche-scarred cirque of the At such moments, something like happiness
Witches Cauldron Glacier. Above, the prow actually stirs in your chest, but it isn’t the sort of
soared with authority toward the summit ridge, emotion you want to lean on very hard. In solo
a vertical half-mile above. Each time I planted climbing, the whole enterprise is held together
one of my ice axes, that distance shrank by with little more than chutzpa, not the most reli-
another twenty inches. able adhesive. Late in the day on the north face
45 The higher I climbed, the more comfortable of the Thumb, I felt the glue disintegrate with a
I became. All that held me to the mountainside, single swing of an ice axe.
all that held me to the world, were six thin spikes
of chrome-molybdenum stuck half an inch into I’d gained nearly seven hundred feet of alti-
a smear of frozen water, yet I began to feel invin- tude since stepping off the hanging glacier, all of
cible, weightless, like those lizards that live on it on crampon front-points and the picks of my
the ceilings of cheap Mexican hotels. Early on a axes. The ribbon of frozen melt water had ended
difficult climb, especially a difficult solo climb, three hundred feet up, and was followed by a
crumbly armor of frost feathers. Though just
2 bergschrund: German. Literally, “mountain crevice.” A large barely substantial enough to support body
horizontal crack in a slope, especially one caused by the lower part weight, the rime was plastered over the rock to a
of an ice sheet sliding away from the upper part. —Eds. thickness of two or three feet, so I kept plugging

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CLOSE READING 5 Identity and Society upward. The wall, however, had been growing paper (through no fault of its own) benefited
imperceptibly steeper, and as it did so the frost greatly — but in that tent, under those circum-
This suspenseful moment makes feathers became thinner. I’d fallen into a slow, stances, Didion’s necrotic take on the world hit a
a great place to look carefully at hypnotic rhythm — swing, swing; kick, kick; little too close to home.
how a writer varies sentence swing, swing; kick, kick — when my left ice axe
length and structure to achieve slammed into a slab of diorite a few inches Near the end of Common Prayer, one of
an effect. Ask them to describe beneath the rime. Didion’s characters says to another, “You don’t
what he is doing and how it get any real points for staying here, Charlotte.”
works. I tried left, then right, but kept striking rock. Charlotte replies, “I can’t seem to tell what you
The frost feathers holding me up, it became do get real points for, so I guess I’ll stick around
apparent, were maybe five inches thick and had here for awhile.”
the structural integrity of stale cornbread. Below
was thirty-seven hundred feet of air, and I was When I ran out of things to read, I was
balanced atop a house of cards. Waves of panic reduced to studying the ripstop pattern woven
rose in my throat. My eyesight blurred, I began into the tent ceiling. This I did for hours on end,
to hyperventilate, my calves started to vibrate. I flat on my back, while engaging in an extended
shuffled a few feet farther to the right, hoping to and very heated self-debate: Should I leave for
find thicker ice, but managed only to bend an ice the coast as soon as the weather broke, or stay
axe on the rock. put long enough to make another attempt on the
50 Awkwardly, stiff with fear, I started working mountain? In truth, my little escapade on the
my way back down. The rime gradually thick- north face had left me badly shaken, and I didn’t
ened, and after descending about eighty feet I want to go up on the Thumb again at all. On the
got back on reasonably solid ground. I stopped other hand, the thought of returning to Boulder
for a long time to let my nerves settle, then in defeat — of parking the Pontiac behind the
leaned back from my tools and stared up at the trailer, buckling on my tool belt, and going back
face above, searching for a hint of solid ice, for to the same brain-dead drill I’d so triumphantly
some variation in the underlying rock strata, for walked away from just a month before — that
anything that would allow passage over the wasn’t very appealing, either. Most of all, I
frosted slabs. I looked until my neck ached, but couldn’t stomach the thought of having to
nothing appeared. The climb was over. The only endure the smug expressions of condolence
place to go was down. from all the chumps and nimrods who were
certain I’d fail right from the get-go.
Heavy snow and incessant winds kept me inside
the tent for most of the next three days. The By the third afternoon of the storm I couldn’t
hours passed slowly. In the attempt to hurry stand it any longer: the lumps of frozen snow
them along I chain-smoked for as long as my poking me in the back, the clammy nylon walls
supply of cigarettes held out, and read. I’d made brushing against my face, the incredible smell
a number of bad decisions on the trip, there was drifting up from the depths of my sleeping bag. I
no getting around it, and one of them concerned pawed through the mess at my feet until I
the reading matter I’d chosen to pack along: located a small green stuff sack, in which there
three back issues of The Village Voice, and Joan was a metal film can containing the makings of
Didion’s latest novel, A Book of Common Prayer. what I’d hoped would be a sort of victory cigar.
The Voice was amusing enough — there on the I’d intended to save it for my return from the
icecap, the subject matter took on an edge, a summit, but what the hey, it wasn’t looking like
certain sense of the absurd, from which the I’d be visiting the top any time soon. I poured
most of the can’s contents into a leaf of cigarette
paper, rolled it into a crooked, sorry looking

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joint, and promptly smoked it down to the made up: the moment the storm was over, I was Krakauer The Devils Thumb
roach. breaking camp and booking for Thomas Bay.
55 The reefer, of course, only made the tent
seem even more cramped, more suffocating, Twenty-four hours later, I was huddled inside a
more impossible to bear. It also made me terri- bivouac sack under the lip of the bergschrund on
bly hungry. I decided a little oatmeal would put the Thumb’s north face. The weather was as bad
things right. Making it, however, was a long, as I’d seen it. It was snowing hard, probably an
ridiculously involved process: a potful of snow inch every hour. Spindrift avalanches hissed
had to be gathered outside in the tempest, the down from the wall above and washed over me
stove assembled and lit, the oatmeal and sugar like surf, completely burying the sack every
located, the remnants of yesterday’s dinner twenty minutes.
scraped from my bowl. I’d gotten the stove going
and was melting the snow when I smelled some- The day had begun well enough. When I
thing burning. A thorough check of the stove emerged from the tent, clouds still clung to the
and its environs revealed nothing. Mystified, I ridge tops but the wind was down and the icecap
was ready to chalk it up to my chemically was speckled with sunbreaks. A patch of
enhanced imagination when I heard something sunlight, almost blinding in its brilliance, slid
crackle directly behind me. lazily over the camp. I put down a foam sleeping
mat and sprawled on the glacier in my long
I whirled around in time to see a bag of johns. Wallowing in the radiant heat, I felt the
garbage, into which I’d tossed the match I’d used gratitude of a prisoner whose sentence has just
to light the stove, flare up into a conflagration. been commuted.
Beating on the fire with my hands, I had it out in 60 As I lay there, a narrow chimney that curved
a few seconds, but not before a large section of up the east half of the Thumb’s north face, well to
the tent’s inner wall vaporized before my eyes. the left of the route I’d tried before the storm,
The tent’s built-in rainfly escaped the flames, so caught my eye. I twisted a telephoto lens onto my
the shelter was still more or less weatherproof; camera. Through it I could make out a smear of
now, however, it was approximately thirty shiny grey ice — solid, trustworthy, hard-frozen
degrees cooler inside. My left palm began to ice — plastered to the back of the cleft. The
sting. Examining it, I noticed the pink welt of a alignment of the chimney made it impossible to
burn. What troubled me most, though, was that discern if the ice continued in an unbroken line
the tent wasn’t even mine — I’d borrowed the from top to bottom. If it did, the chimney might
shelter from my father. An expensive Early well provide passage over the rime-covered slabs
Winters Omnipo Tent, it had been brand new that had foiled my first attempt. Lying there in the
before my trip — the hang-tags were still sun, I began to think about how much I’d hate
attached — and had been loaned reluctantly. For myself a month hence if I threw in the towel after
several minutes I sat dumbstruck, staring at the a single try, if I scrapped the whole expedition on
wreckage of the shelter’s once-graceful form account of a little bad weather. Within the hour
amid the acrid scent of singed hair and melted I had assembled my gear and was skiing toward
nylon. You had to hand it to me, I thought: I had the base of the wall.
a real knack for living up to the old man’s worst
expectations. The ice in the chimney did in fact prove to
be continuous, but it was very, very thin — just a
The fire sent me into a funk that no drug gossamer film of verglas. Additionally, the cleft
known to man could have alleviated. By the time was a natural funnel for any debris that
I’d finished cooking the oatmeal my mind was happened to slough off the wall; as I scratched

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5 Identity and Society my way up the chimney I was hosed by a contin- had gotten inside my parka and soaked my
uous stream of powder snow, ice chips, and shirt. If only I had a cigarette, I thought, a single
TEACHING IDEA small stones. One hundred twenty feet up the cigarette, l could summon the strength of char-
groove the last remnants of my composure acter to put a good face on this [messed]-up
While this memoir has moments flaked away like old plaster, and I turned around. situation, on the whole [messed]-up trip. “If we
of candid self-reflection, it still had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if
remains a little reserved. There Instead of descending all the way to base we had some eggs.” I remembered my friend
are places where we are told of a camp, I decided to spend the night in the Nate uttering that line in a similar storm, two
conflict inside of the character, ’schrund beneath the chimney, on the off years before, high on another Alaskan peak, the
but the specifics of the conflict chance that my head would be more together Mooses Tooth. It had struck me as hilarious at
are not entirely fleshed out. For the next morning. The fair skies that had the time; I’d actually laughed out loud.
example, Krakhauer writes, “But ushered in the day, however, turned out to be Recalling the line now, it no longer seemed
mostly I lay silently in the tent [ . . . ] but a momentary lull in a five-day gale. By funny. I pulled the bivvy sack tighter around my
with my thoughts, fighting a rising midafternoon the storm was back in all its glory, shoulders. The wind ripped at my back. Beyond
chorus of doubts” and “I cradled and my bivouac site became a less than pleasant shame, I cradled my head in my arms and
my head in my arms and place to hang around. The ledge on which I embarked on an orgy of self-pity.
embarked on an orgy of self-pity.” couched was continually swept by small spin-
Invite students to write interior drift avalanches. Five times my bivvy sack — a 65 I knew that people sometimes died climbing
monologues that give voice to thin nylon envelope, shaped exactly like a mountains. But at the age of twenty-three
these negative thoughts. What Baggies brand sandwich bag, only bigger — was personal mortality — the idea of my own
are his doubts? Why does he pity burried up to the level of the breathing slit. After death — was still largely outside my conceptual
himself? Beyond helping them digging myself out the fifth time, I decided I’d grasp; it was as abstract a notion as non-Euclidian
imagine the character, this can be had enough. I threw all my gear in my pack and geometry or marriage. When I decamped from
an opportunity for strong writers made a break for base camp. Boulder in April, 1977, my head swimming with
to attempt to imitate Krakauer’s visions of glory and redemption on the Devils
voice. The descent was terrifying. Between the Thumb, it didn’t occur to me that I might be
clouds, the ground blizzard, and the flat, fading bound by the same cause-effect relationships
light, I couldn’t tell snow from sky, nor whether that governed the actions of others. I’d never
a slope went up or down. I worried, with ample heard of hubris. Because I wanted to climb the
reason, that I might step blindly off the top of a mountain so badly, because l had thought about
serac and end up at the bottom of the Witches the Thumb so intensely for so long, it seemed
Cauldron, a half-mile below. When I finally beyond the realm of possibility that some minor
arrived on the frozen plain of the icecap, I found obstacle like the weather or crevasses or rime-
that my tracks had long since drifted over. I covered rock might ultimately thwart my will.
didn’t have a clue how to locate the tent on the At sunset the wind died and the ceiling lifted
featureless glacial plateau. I skied in circles for a hundred fifty feet off the glacier, enabling me
an hour or so, hoping I’d get lucky and stumble to locate base camp. I made it back to the tent
across camp, until I put a foot into a small intact, but it was no longer possible to ignore the
crevasse and realized I was acting like an fact that the Thumb had made hash of my plans.
idiot — that I should hunker down right where I was forced to acknowledge that volition alone,
I was and wait out the storm. however powerful, was not going to get me up
the north wall. I saw, finally, that nothing was.
I dug a shallow hole, wrapped myself in the There still existed an opportunity for salvag-
bivvy bag, and sat on my pack in the swirling ing the expedition, however. A week earlier I’d
snow. Drifts piled up around me. My feet
became numb. A damp chill crept down my
chest from the base of my neck, where spindrift

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A view of the eastern route up Krakauer The Devils Thumb
the Devils Thumb, the route
that Krakauer ultimately took.

Comparing this to the north
face of the mountain, would
you ultimately call Krakauer’s
trip a success or a failure?

Matthias Breiter/Getty Images

skied over to the southeast side of the mountain I imagined people watching the Red Sox on the
to take a look at the route Fred Beckey had tube, eating fried chicken in brightly lit kitchens,
pioneered in 1946 — the route by which I’d drinking beer, making love. When I lay down to
intended to descend the peak after climbing the sleep I was overcome by a soul-wrenching lone-
north wall. During that reconnaissance I’d liness. I’d never felt so alone, ever.
noticed an obvious unclimbed line to the left of
the Beckey route — a patchy network of ice That night I had troubled dreams, of cops
angling across the southeast face — that struck and vampires and a gangland-style execution. I
me as a relatively easy way to achieve the heard someone whisper, “He’s in there. As soon
summit. At the time, I’d considered this route as he comes out, waste him.” I sat bolt upright
unworthy of my attentions. Now, on the rebound and opened my eyes. The sun was about to rise.
from my calamitous entanglement with the The entire sky was scarlet. It was still clear, but
nordwand, I was prepared to lower my sights. wisps of high cirrus were streaming in from the
southwest, and a dark line was visible just above
On the afternoon of May 15, when the bliz- the horizon. I pulled on my boots and hurriedly
zard finally petered out, I returned to the south- strapped on my crampons. Five minutes after
east face and climbed to the top of a slender waking up, I was front-pointing away from the
ridge that abutted the upper peak like a flying bivouac.
buttress on a gothic cathedral. I decided to 70 I carried no rope, no tent or bivouac gear, no
spend the night there, on the airy, knife-edged hardware save my ice axes. My plan was to go
ridge crest, sixteen hundred feet below the ultralight and ultrafast, to hit the summit and
summit. The evening sky was cold and cloud- make it back down before the weather turned.
less. I could see all the way to tidewater and Pushing myself, continually out of breath, I scur-
beyond. At dusk I watched, transfixed, as the ried up and to the left across small snowfields
house lights of Petersburg blinked on in the linked by narrow runnels of verglas and short
west. The closest thing I’d had to human contact rock bands. The climbing was almost fun — the
since the airdrop, the distant lights set off a flood rock was covered with large, in-cut holds, and
of emotion that caught me completely off guard. the ice, though thin, never got steep enough to

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5 Identity and Society seeing connections

In 1993, Krakauer wrote an article for Outside Nietzsche, mistook passion for insight, and func-

magazine about Chris McCandless, a twenty-four- tioned according to an obscure gap-ridden logic.

year old who made headlines when he tried to live I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix

off the land by himself in the backcountry of Alaska all that was wrong with my life. In the end it

and died in the attempt. Many people suggested changed almost nothing, of course. I came to

that the young man was suicidal. Krakauer’s article appreciate, however, that mountains make poor

was later expanded into the book Into the Wild, receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale.

which was then made into a movie of the same As a young man, I was unlike Chris

name directed by Sean Penn. In the original McCandless in many important respects—

Outside magazine article, Krakauer draws a most notably I lacked his intellect and his altru-

connection between McCandless and himself and istic leanings—but I suspect we had a similar

reflects on the similarities and differences in their intensity, a similar heedlessness, a similar

motivations for going to Alaska, saying, agitation of the soul.

In 1977, when I was 23—a year younger than The fact that I survived my Alaskan adven-
McCandless at the time of his death—I [. . .] set off ture and McCandless did not survive his was
alone into the backcountry to attempt an ascent largely a matter of chance; had I died on the
of a malevolent stone digit called the Devils Stikine Icecap in 1977 people would have been
Thumb. [. . .] By choice I had no radio, no way of quick to say of me, as they now say of him, that
summoning help, no safety net of any kind. I had a death wish. Fifteen years after the event,
I now recognize that I suffered from hubris,
When I decided to go to Alaska that April, I perhaps, and a monstrous innocence, certainly,
was an angst-ridden youth who read too much but I wasn’t suicidal.

Read the excerpt below from the screenplay of Into the Wild, and comment

on whether McCandless and Krakauer do in fact share a similar “agitation of the

soul.” Compare Krakauer’s motivations with those ascribed to McCandless in

the following scene from the movie, in which he talks about his trip to Alaska

with his friend Wayne Westberg.

chris Just out there. Big mountains, rivers, sky.
I’m thinking about going to Alaska. Game. Just be out there in it. In the wild.

wayne wayne
Alaska, Alaska? Or city Alaska? The city Alaska
does have markets. In the wild.

chris chris
(with a drunken, excited energy) Yeah. Maybe write a book about my travels.
No, Alaska, Alaska. I want to be all the way out About getting out of this sick society.
there. On my own. No map. No watch. No axe.

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wayne wayne Krakauer The Devils Thumb
(coughing) Who “people” we talking about?
Society, right.
chris
chris You know, parents and hypocrites. Politicians
Because you know what I don’t understand? I and [jerks].
don’t understand why, why people are so bad
to each other, so often. It just doesn’t make any
sense to me. Judgment. Control. All that.

A frame from the movie Into the Wild showing Chris McCandless leaving the road
behind and entering the Alaskan wilderness.

How is this setting and situation similar to that of Krakauer in Alaska? What effect is created
by the overhead point of view of this shot?

A frame from the movie Into the Wild showing Chris McCandless burning his wallet and 139
heading out into the Arizona desert. In the movie, Chris’s sister comments: “Chris began
to see ‘careers’ as a diseased invention of the twentieth century and to resent money
and the useless priority people made of it in their lives.”
Do you think a young Krakauer would have agreed with this sentiment?

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CLOSE READING 5 Identity and Society feel extreme — but I was anxious about the The insubstantial frost feathers ensured that
bands of clouds racing in from the Pacific, cover- those last twenty feet remained hard, scary,
The description of the summit in ing the sky. onerous. But then, suddenly, there was no place
paragraph 74 deserves careful higher to go. It wasn’t possible, I couldn’t believe
attention. There is significant In what seemed like no time (I didn’t have a it. I felt my cracked lips stretch into a huge, pain-
build to what is ultimately only a watch on the trip) I was on the distinctive final ful grin. I was on top of the Devils Thumb.
brief paragraph at the peak. Ask ice field. By now the sky was completely over-
your students to read the para- cast. It looked easier to keep angling to the left, Fittingly, the summit was a surreal, malevo-
graph again carefully. Guide them but quicker to go straight for the top. Paranoid lent place, an improbably slender fan of rock
to discover how style impacts about being caught by a storm high on the peak and rime no wider than a filing cabinet. It did
content here with careful ques- without any kind of shelter, I opted for the not encourage loitering. As I straddled the high-
tioning: What feelings are evoked direct route. The ice steepened, then steepened est point, the north face fell away beneath my
by this paragraph? Is this a some more, and as it did so it grew thin. I left boot for six thousand feet; beneath my right
moment of great triumph? Make swung my left ice axe and struck rock. I aimed boot the south face dropped off for twenty-five
sure, whatever they conclude, for another spot, and once again it glanced off hundred. I took some pictures to prove I’d been
that they support it with observa- unyielding diorite with a dull, sickening clank. there, and spent a few minutes trying to
tions about diction and syntax. And again, and again: It was a reprise of my straighten a bent pick. Then I stood up, carefully
Give space for their questions first attempt on the north face. Looking turned around, and headed for home.
about this (anti)climactic moment. between my legs, I stole a glance at the glacier,
more than two thousand feet below. My stom- 75 Five days later I was camped in the rain beside
ach churned. I felt my poise slipping way like the sea, marveling at the sight of moss, willows,
smoke in the wind. mosquitoes. Two days after that, a small skiff
motored into Thomas Bay and pulled up on the
Forty-five feet above the wall eased back beach not far from my tent. The man driving the
onto the sloping summit shoulder. Forty-five boat introduced himself as Jim Freeman, a
more feet, half the distance between third base timber faller from Petersburg. It was his day off,
and home plate, and the mountain would be he said, and he’d made the trip to show his
mine. I clung stiffly to my axes, unmoving, para- family the glacier, and to look for bears. He
lyzed with fear and indecision. I looked down at asked me if I’d “been huntin’, or what?”
the dizzying drop to the glacier again, then up, “No,” I replied sheepishly. “Actually, I just
then scraped away the film of ice above my climbed the Devils Thumb. I’ve been over here
head. I hooked the pick of my left axe on a twenty days.”
nickel-thin lip of rock, and weighted it. It held. Freeman kept fiddling with a cleat on the
I pulled my right axe from the ice, reached up, boat, and didn’t say anything for a while. Then
and twisted the pick into a crooked half-inch he looked at me real hard and spat, “You
crack until it jammed. Barely breathing now, wouldn’t be givin’ me double talk now, wouldja,
I moved my feet up, scrabbling my crampon friend?” Taken aback, I stammered out a denial.
points across the verglas. Reaching as high as I Freeman, it was obvious, didn’t believe me for a
could with my left arm, I swung the axe gently at minute. Nor did he seem wild about my snarled
the shiny, opaque surface, not knowing what I’d shoulder-length hair or the way I smelled.
hit beneath it. The pick went in with a hearten- When I asked if he could give me a lift back to
ing THUNK! A few minutes later I was standing town, however, he offered a grudging, “I don’t
on a broad, rounded ledge. The summit proper, see why not.”
a series of slender fins sprouting a grotesque The water was choppy, and the ride across
meringue of atmospheric ice, stood twenty feet Frederick Sound took two hours. The more we
directly above.

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Taking the western route, Krakauer The Devils Thumb
climber Mikey Schaefer
ascends the Cat Ear Spire on
his way to the top of the
Devils Thumb.

How does this image
change your perspective
of Krakauer’s ascent?

Colin Haley

talked, the more Freeman warmed up. He still step-van. There, surrounded by the sweet scent of CLOSE READING
didn’t believe I’d climbed the Thumb, but by the old motor oil, I lay down on the floorboards next
time he steered the skiff into Wrangell Narrows to a gutted transmission and passed out. [Paragraphs 79-81] Oftentimes
he pretended to. When we got off the boat, he 80 It is easy, when you are young, to believe our interpretation of a story is
insisted on buying me a cheeseburger. That that what you desire is no less than what you determined by how we perceive
night he even let me sleep in a derelict step-van deserve, to assume that if you want something the writer’s tone. How do diction,
parked in his backyard. badly enough it is your God-given right to have syntax, allusion, and/or imagery
it. Less than a month after sitting on the summit help you understand the tone of
I lay down in the rear of the old truck for a of the Thumb I was back in Boulder, nailing up this closing segment? How does
while but couldn’t sleep, so I got up and walked to siding on the Spruce Street Townhouses, the your decision about tone shape
a bar called Kito’s Kave. The euphoria, the over- same condos I’d been framing when I left for your interpretation of the
whelming sense of relief, that had initially accom- Alaska. I got a raise, to four dollars an hour, and message at the end of this story?
panied my return to Petersburg faded, and an at the end of the summer moved out of the job- Do you feel that the older and
unexpected melancholy took its place. The site trailer to a studio apartment on West Pearl, younger Krakauer would agree
people I chatted with in Kito’s didn’t seem to but little else in my life seemed to change. about the degree of success and
doubt that I’d been to the top of the Thumb, they Somehow, it didn’t add up to the glorious trans- failure of this adventure?
just didn’t much care. As the night wore on the formation I’d imagined in April.
place emptied except for me and an Indian at a
back table. I drank alone, putting quarters in the Climbing the Devils Thumb, however, had
jukebox, playing the same five songs over and nudged me a little further away from the obdu-
over, until the barmaid yelled angrily, “Hey! Give rate innocence of childhood. It taught me
it a [. . .] rest, kid! If I hear ‘Fifty Ways to Lose Your something about what mountains can and can’t
Lover’ one more time, I’m gonna be the one who do, about the limits of dreams. I didn’t recog-
loses it.” I mumbled an apology, quickly headed nize that at the time, of course, but I’m grateful
for the door, and lurched back to Freeman’s for it now.

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TRM SUGGESTED 5 Identity and Society Understanding and interpreting it in the book he received when he was eight? How
RESPONSES does this role influence his later decisions?
1 Much of Krakauer’s motivation to successfully
Suggested responses to the climb the mountain seems to come from his need 7 Reread paragraph 46. What effect does the
questions for this reading can be to impress others. Locate at least two places in the text physical act of climbing have on Krakauer?
found on the Teacher’s Resource where this appears to be true and explain how those
Flash Drive. passages illustrate this aspect of Krakauer. 8 What is the connection that the reader is expected
to draw between Krakauer and the character in the
TEACHING IDEA – 2 There are several places in the narrative in which Joan Didion novel (par. 52)?
UNDERSTANDING Q3 Krakauer demonstrates an appalling lack of
This question could be done as a planning or forethought, and there are others where he 9 In terms of Krakauer’s own personal development,
short persuasive speech. does successfully make plans. Identify examples of there is probably no other passage from the
both and explain which trait is more prevalent in the narrative that is as important as his statement, “At the
TEACHING IDEA – narrative. time, I’d considered this route unworthy of my
UNDERSTANDING Q4 attentions. Now . . . I was prepared to lower my sights”
This question could be drawn like 3 Make an argumentative claim about Krakauer’s (par. 67). In what way does this revelation signal a
an adventure map with important decision-making and reasoning skills. Then, significant change in Krakauer?
moments labeled and given support that claim with direct evidence from the text.
quotes as well as symbolic 10 To what extent is Krakauer satisfied or
illustration. 4 Trace the numerous setbacks Krakauer faces in disappointed with his climb? What evidence
trying to scale the Devils Thumb. Select one from the text supports your position?
TEACHING IDEA – setback, and explain what his response to that setback
ANALYZING Q3 reveals about his character. 11 Krakauer writes at the end that climbing the
This question could work as a Devils Thumb taught him “something about
small group discussion task with 5 What purpose does the history lesson about the what mountains can and can’t do, about the limits of
a written product. previous climbs and attempts on the Devils Thumb dreams” (par. 81). What is this “something” that he
(pars. 22 and 23) serve in the narrative? Why does learned?
Krakauer include it?

6 What role has the Devils Thumb played in
Krakauer’s imagination since he started looking at

Analyzing language, Structure, and Style

1 What is the effect that Krakauer achieves by 4 In paragraphs 13 and 14, Krakauer constructs a
starting his narrative with his drive up to Alaska? contrast between Coloradans and Alaskans in their
attitudes toward his plans to climb the Devils Thumb.
2 Krakauer includes two flashbacks in his narrative— What is the purpose of this contrast?
in paragraphs 6–7 and then paragraphs 29–33.
Analyze those two structural choices, examining why 5 Reread paragraph 18, paying attention to the
each flashback is placed where it is, and what effect it imagery Krakauer uses. How does it help illustrate
has on the reader’s knowledge about and impressions the conflict Krakauer is facing?
of Krakauer.
6 Reread the following lines from the essay
3 It is clear that Krakauer is writing this narrative as and explain what the word choice reveals about
an older man looking back on an event that Krakauer:
happened to him when he was younger (“Writing these
words more than a dozen years later. . . .” [par. 9]). How a. “I’d never heard of hubris” (par. 65).
would you describe the tone Krakauer takes toward his b. “and the mountain would be mine” (par. 72)
younger self? What specific words or phrases c. “my head swimming with visions of glory and
communicate this tone? How does this tone help
Krakauer to create a theme of the narrative? redemption” (par. 65)

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ANALYZING Q6
142
This one could be turned into a
small poster with an image for the
underlined word and a web
around the word as well. The web
would have connotative and
denotative meanings for the
word. At the bottom of the poster,
students would write an explana-
tion of what the word choice
reveals about Krakauer.

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connecting, Arguing, and extending this process, and connect one of these instances to Krakauer The Devils Thumb TEACHING IDEA –
another example from outside the text, perhaps even CONNECTING Q2
1 In the last paragraph, Krakauer says that this from your own life.
experience moved him “a little further away from This prompt could be presented
the obdurate innocence of childhood.” The word 5 In paragraph 65, Krakauer admits, “I knew that like a social media or “Buzzfeed
“obdurate” means “stubborn,” and it often has a people sometimes died climbing mountains. But at List.” For example, a worked
negative connotation. Tell a story about a time when the age of twenty-three personal mortality — the idea of could be titled: 10 Signs You Are
you, perhaps unwillingly, had to give up some of the my own death — was still largely out of my conceptual Too Concerned With How Others
innocence of your own childhood. In what ways was grasp. . . .” Here, Krakauer addresses a significant See You. Then it would have ten
your childhood innocence “obdurate” like Krakauer’s? concern that has been the subject of a lot of research: headings that are claims that
adolescents often take part in risky behaviors that can prove the contention in the title.
2 You may recall reading about the Evil Queen from lead to injury and death because of a number of Each claim, aka list item, would
the Snow White story at the beginning of this factors. Research one or more factors — including brain have an accompanying image,
chapter, and about the two different ways that people development — that can lead adolescents to be meme or GIF and a subtitle with a
define their identities: as they see themselves, and as unconcerned about “personal mortality” and apply that quote from the text.
others see them. In this narrative, does Krakauer seem factor to Krakauer’s actions in this narrative.
more concerned about how other people view him and
his climb or how he views himself? Use direct evidence 6 Look over these famous lines from Ralph Waldo
from the text to support your argument. Emerson, an American writer who popularized
what was called the Transcendentalist Movement
3 There are many places where Krakauer faces during the middle of the nineteenth century.
serious peril in his climb. Should he have stopped Transcendentalists believed in the beauty of nature, the
or gone forward? What evidence from the text, and power of the individual, and the importance of
your own reasoning, can you use to support your freedom. Based upon your reading of his narrative,
argument? explain why Krakauer might agree or disagree with
each and describe your own thoughts about the lines.
4 Krakauer writes, “Because I wanted to climb
the mountain so badly, because I had thought a. “Do not be too timid and squeamish about your
about the Thumb so intensely for so long, it seemed actions. All life is an experiment. The more experi-
beyond the realm of possibility that some minor ments you make the better.”
obstacle like the weather or crevasses or rime-covered
rock might ultimately thwart my will” (par. 65). In other b. “There is a time in every man’s education when
words, because he thought about it so much, his he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance;
success should automatically happen. This is an that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself
example of what is often referred to as “magical for better for worse as his portion.”
thinking,” belief that thinking about something can
make it happen. A common example of magical c. “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron
thinking is when viewers of a sporting event think they string. Accept the place the divine providence has
can influence the outcome of the game by what they found for you, the society of your contemporaries,
wear or the foods they eat during a game. Research the connection of events. Great men have always
the topic of magical thinking, identify and explain other done so.”
instances in the narrative where Krakauer engages in
d. “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”

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CONNECTING Q4 CONNECTING Q6

This prompt could be presented This one could be made into a
to the class using powerpoint. smaller activity by assigning it to
a group and giving each student
one of the famous lines.

Teacher’s Edition 143

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BUILDING CONTEXT 5 Identity and Society Zolaria Courtesy Caitlin Horrocks

To ground their reading in their Caitlin Horrocks
own experiences, students might
freewrite briefly on one of the Caitlin Horrocks (b. 1980) is an assistant professor of writing
following prompts: at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan.
Her first story collection, This Is Not Your City, from which
• Write about a time in grade this story is taken, was published to widespread acclaim in
school when you embarrassed 2011. This story is about two friends who invent a magical
yourself in front of your peers world called Zolaria, a place that becomes more difficult to
or when you did something sustain as they get older.
you now regret. What moti-
vated your actions then, and It is July and we are a miraculous age. We have both of us twenty-four, an age my family will say
what do you realize now that been sprung from our backyards, from the is too young and I will be proud years later of
you did not understand then? neighborhood park, from the invisible borders proving them wrong.
that rationed all our other summers. We are old
• Describe one of your childhood enough to have earned a larger country, and That summer we pick blackberries in the
acts of imagination: did you young enough to make it larger still. The woods Miller woods and take them to Hanna’s house
have an imaginary friend, a between Miller and Arborview become haunted. where her mother rinses them in a plastic colan-
favorite stuffed animal or other Basilisks patrol the Dairy Queen. We are so der. Hanna’s parents still live together and their
toy, a fort or playhouse that beset by dangers we make ourselves rulers over house feels friendlier than mine. When Mr.
was its own world? What roles them, and by July we are the princesses of an Khoury visited our fifth-grade class our teacher
did it play in your life? When undiscovered kingdom. We make maps with introduced him as a man there to talk about his
did you stop playing with it? colored pencils. Here be Dragons, I write across “troubled homeland.” He was a man from some-
Why? the square of Wellington Park, at the end of our where else, a troubled country people left and
street. Here be Brothers, Hanna writes across her then called home, a country defined only by its
• Describe a TV show, a movie, a own backyard, and we avoid them both. We are perpetual unhappiness. Mr. Khoury told us that
game, or a band / musician too old for these games, too big for this much we were lucky, lucky boys and lucky girls, lucky
that you continue to like even imagination, but we are so unpopular that American children, and Hanna rolled her eyes,
though you are “too old” for it. summer that there is no one to care. We have embarrassed. Mr. Khoury has a Lebanese flag on
What place does it hold in your finished the fifth grade alive and we consider the wall of his study and I think it must be a
life, and why do you think you that an accomplishment. We have earned kinder sort of country that puts a tree on its flag.
have not “outgrown” it and this summer. This is one of many things I do not understand
why? that summer.
The neighborhood has been emptying of
• Describe a best friend from children. There are bigger houses being built The gas station at the comer of Miller and
your childhood that you have past Wagner, past the edge of the western edge Maple closes and there is a sign in the windows
lost touch with: why did that of town. The houses here, one story, one bath- announcing upcoming construction, Project
happen? room, have become a place to live after children Managers Ogan/Veen. We don’t know that the
or a place to move away from when they come. construction will never happen, that nothing
TRM VOCABULARY This year Hanna-Khoury-eight-houses-down will ever be built there, because the gasoline has
and I are best friends, a thing I haven’t had leached into the earth 100, 200, 300 feet down,
A list of challenging words from before and won’t have again until I’m married, some impossible depth that no one will own up
this reading can be found in the to and that can’t be cleaned. That summer we
Teacher’s Resource Flash Drive.

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Have students reread the first two twenty-four. Cue students to pay
paragraphs, and look closely for attention to the number of times
the language choices that estab- Horrocks references other time
lish the narrator and Hanna as periods.
both highly imaginative and close
friends. Take note, also, of the
very first reference to a different
time period, when the narrator is

144 Advanced Language & Literature

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ride our bikes around and around the empty gas Chinese what I am only beginning to under- Horrocks Zolaria TEACHING IDEA
station and look in all the windows. Hanna says stand myself, that the way in which he loves me You may want to consider
Ogan/Veen looks like the name of a monster, is not quite the way I wish he would. sketching out a map of the land
and from then on he haunts our summer in a of Zolaria as you read – or ask a
friendly sort of way, a goblin who lives in an In fifth grade Hanna and I doomed ourselves. student artist in your class to do
empty Shell station and wanders the neighbor- On the second day of school we took out our so. There are important locations
hood at sundown. If we are lucky, he will folders, our pencil cases, organized our desks, in their imaginary world that play
encounter only the children who have spent the and Hanna had space dolphins and I had pink significant roles in the story; the
past year tormenting us, and he will grind their unicorns. Two years ago all the girls had school map could hang in the classroom
bones for bread. supplies like this, and I don’t understand why for reference as students need.
5 “Ogan Veen, Ogan Veen, they have abandoned the things they loved.
Hanna and I were startled but not stupid, and if TEACHING IDEA
His farts all smell like gasoline, no one had noticed us that day we would both One of the most challenging
His stomach’s full of children’s spleens, have begged our mothers to take us to K-Mart aspects of this story is its struc-
Ogan Veen, Ogan Veen,” we sing. There are that night and exchange them. But it was too ture, how the plot jumps between
other verses but this one’s my favorite because late. We were the girls with the wrong school present day and flashbacks. To
I’ve come up with “spleen” all by myself. Hanna supplies, and everything we did after that, even help students make sense of
doesn’t know what it means and I’m not so clear the things that were just like everyone else, were structure and analyze its effect,
either, but it rhymes and my mother’s said it’s a the wrong things to do. I will never tell Hanna you might have them create two
part of someone that can be eaten. that space dolphins aren’t really as bad as pink timelines for the story: the real-
“If you’re a cannibal, I guess,” she said, and I unicorns, and that she wasn’t really doomed time chronology of events and
said perfect. until I made her my friend. the story’s non-chronological
10 On one of my dad’s weekends, I ask him to sequence (different groups could
take us to Dolph Park, too far to bike to. The The Little and Big Sister Lakes are the eastern do different timelines). Discuss, in
hiking path circles two lakes, Little Sister Lake edge of what we name Zolaria that summer, particular, where in each timeline
and Big Sister Lake, and since I am an only child simply for the sound of it, the exotic “Z” and the the incident with the wig (the
and Hanna has two brothers, we decide to split trailing vowels like a movie star’s name. The turning point) occurs: how does
the lakes between us. We fight over who gets northwestern border is the Barton Dam. It takes the story’s sequence frame that
which. We are the same age and nearly the same us most of the summer to get there, sneaking event differently from the way a
size, although Hanna’s arms and legs are gangly closer and closer, up Newport Road and chronological presentation
and seem destined for great height. In seventh through the grounds of what will be our junior would? The group activity with
grade, the year Hanna will slip a note between high school. One day there is a door propped juxtaposition, noted below, also
the vents of my locker that reads “I Hate You” open by the tennis courts and we decide to addresses these ideas. These
over and over, filling an entire notebook page, I explore. There is a sticker beside the door: No timelines will be helpful in
will be 5'2" and as tall as I will ever grow. My Shirt, No Shoes, No Service. I am barefoot and answering Analyzing Q3.
father is 6'1" and will call me “Midget.” When I we are so timid this sticker foils our plan until
briefly register with an online dating site after Hanna takes off her left shoe and gives it to me.
college I will call myself “petite.” Hanna will Now we are within the law, and follow a chlo-
never grow tall, either, and because we can’t rine smell as far as the locker rooms, the laby-
know these things, we ask my father to flip a coin rinth of showers, the locked door to the pool.
over Big Sister Lake. I can see him peek and We hear footsteps and run, directionless, past
scuttle the coin when I call heads, a move too the library, the main office, the Cafetorium, past
quick for Hanna to notice. She cedes the lake to the music room where I’ll play flute for three
me, accepts the smaller for her kingdom, and I shrill years. Hanna will have quit band by then;
try to tell my father that night over carryout

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5 Identity and Society Hanna has only so much energy, her mother unwrap presents we will see one of the Khoury
will tell mine on the phone, and doesn’t want to boys outside walking their dog. My mother will
CLOSE READING waste it on the trombone. We run past the glass call me into the kitchen to tell me I am young.
trophy cases in the foyer and finally we find the “You’re young,” she’ll say. “You’re still so young.”
At this point, students are getting open door, the patch of blue sky and red and 15 “Not that young,” I will tell her.
used to the shifts back and forth green tennis courts. In the homestretch Hanna’s
in time, but they probably still feel shoe flies off my foot and she yells, “Forget it! “Yes, that young. You barely know each
somewhat jarring. Reread the end Don’t stop!” but I go back and we make it out other.”
of paragraph 10 when the girls anyway.
look at the river and reread the “I know him.”
entirety of the section when the The next day we bike through the junior high “You don’t know yourself,” she’ll say. “That’s
narrator discusses her engage- parking lot and across the freeway overpass just what I worry about. How can you get married
ment with her mother. Ask north, where we yank our arms up and down when you don’t know yourself yet?”
students why this time shift is until three trucks have honked their horns. We “I know myself plenty,” I’ll say. “I think I
placed right here? How does it take our bikes into the nature preserve and ride know all I want to.”
relate to the girls during the them until the hills get so steep they rattle our
summer? You will want to plan on teeth. We ride bikes like girls, throw like girls, we 20 One night in July, Hanna and I have a sleepover
returning to this exchange once know it, and there is no one around that summer and dream almost the same dream, in which
students finish the story. “I think I to make us ashamed. We walk our bikes through Ogan Veen is chasing us, gnashing his long,
know all I want to,” is clear the forest, the sound of the freeway to our right stinking teeth. Zolaria is not his to haunt, so we
foreshadowing. and a creek to our left, a symmetrical hum. build traps in the woods, stretch fishing line
Eventually there is a fence and a gate and a dirt between trees, scatter tacks in the dirt and make
road that leads to the Barton Dam. We ride to piles of throwing-rocks in places with good
the huge gray wall of it, the rush of water at the cover. In my backyard is a half-dug decorative
base, the scum scudding across the surface of fishpond, a project my father started and
the river like soap suds. There is a dead animal abandoned, and we lattice the top with long
floating at the base of the dam, bloated and sticks, camouflage it with leaves and cut grass.
spongy and colorless. Its fur is breaking off in Every day I wait for Hanna to come up the street
hanks, drifting in the patches of foam. It is a so we can check it together. I do not want to face
cloudy day and we are alone on the river path. A our quarry alone. We bow branches, harp them
man comes out of the pump station at the top of with yarn, notch twigs and practice our archery.
the dam and walks out along the wall. He leans We strip the leaves from long tendrils of weeping
against the safety railing and shades his eyes willow and crack the whips in the air. We run
with a hand and looks down at us. We know we shouting through the woods brandishing foam
are in the borderlands, where our kingdom swords from a Nerf fencing set. We are girded
meets a stranger’s, where Ogan Veen wanders in for battle, but the enemy will not show himself.
daylight, and where we should not linger. We catch nothing, but we have made ourselves
afraid. It seems unfair, that a kingdom we
Thirteen years later, Cal and I will announce our invented should have its own mysteries, its
engagement on Christmas morning over crum- unvanquishable foes. By September, we are
pled wrapping paper and freshly squeezed almost eager for school to begin. We are tired
orange juice. It will be the coldest morning of of checking a dry fishpond for ogres every
any year of my life so far, the paper’s lead head- morning. But as princesses of Zolaria, we
line the temperature, 26 below, but as we cannot say such a thing out loud. We have
certain duties to our kingdom, to our adoring

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146 Advanced Language & Literature

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