Compose an essay response to ONE of the prompts below. Your resp.docx

Compose an essay response to ONE of the prompts below.
Your response should have an appropriate and interesting
introduction with a strong thesis regarding what you are trying
to prove in the essay; body paragraphs, each with a clear main
point that relates to and helps support your thesis; and a
conclusion that effectively and powerfully wraps up the essay.
You should draw upon sources in writing your response. These
include the articles, essays, stories, books, and poems we have
read for class and any additional research that you may conduct.
Provide in-text citations and a Works Cited page in MLA
format.
1. Element of Fiction Approach: Choose ONE element of fiction
to analyze and interpret throughout at least 3 of the course texts
we have read so far. In so doing, you will make an argument
that this element is key in interpreting these texts. In a
cohesive, thoughtful essay, show how your element plays a
significant role in the overall interpretation of your texts. You
should quote from (and directly cite) at least three of the fiction
texts we have read so far AND the reading from the Norton
Introduction to Literature that is about your selected element.
2. Literary Theory Approach: Choose ONE literary theory to
apply to at least 3 of the course texts we have read so far. In so
doing, you will make an argument that applying this literary
theory is key in interpreting these texts. In a cohesive,
thoughtful essay, show how your theory plays a significant role
in the overall interpretation of your texts. You should quote
from (and directly cite) at least three of the fiction texts we
have read so far AND the reading from the Norton Introduction
to Literature that is about your selected theory.
3. Empathy Approach: This approach requires that you explore
the connection between empathy and literature. You should
make an argument about what the essence of this connection is.
In a cohesive, thoughtful essay, provide a claim about what this
connection is and means. In so doing, you should quote from

(and directly cite) at least three of the fiction texts we have read
so far AND one of the articles we read during the first week of
class regarding the connection between empathy and literature.
You may use outside research for this essay. However, make
sure your voice and ideas are the clear focus. DO NOT
plagiarize. Any plagiarism—from one sentence to the whole
essay, intentional or unintentional—will result in a “0” and an
“F” for the course.
Use your journals to help you with this essay—draw upon your
previous ideas and writing here if it is helpful.
Page length: 5 full pages minimum
Pts. Possible: 150 pts.
Clarity
[10]
Does the essay use proper and varied sentence structure,
punctuation, etc.? Does it avoid grammatical errors: fragments,
run-ons, spelling mistakes, etc.?
Did the essay meet the assignment criteria in purpose and
appearance?
Correct MLA formatting? Proper citations?
Coherence/ Structure [10]

Does the essay have a strong, clear, well-structured thesis?
Does the essay employ tight, polished paragraphs in the correct
format or are ideas just thrown together? Does each body
paragraph include one main idea/topic sentence that points the
reader back to the thesis?
Does the essay contain a strong backbone/ structure? Does it
use the intro. well? The conclusion? Does every IP present a
unified argument? (Does it “flow” well?) Are there effective
transitions?
Critical Thinking [30]
How advanced is the essay’s content? Does it explore new
ideas that challenge both the writer and reader or simply
regurgitate class discussions or popular thought? Does it meet
the page length?
Does the paper make a logical connection between the thesis,
topic sentences, and examples/proof? (i.e., Does it “connect-
the-dots” between claims made in the thesis and examples for
that claim?)

Does the paper provide adequate “proof”? (Quotations or
paraphrase, research, expert opinions, statistics, examples,
details, etc?)
Comments:
Total Pts.
/50
X
=
Grade
---from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/03/05/the-
shawl-2
The Shawl
By Louise Erdrich (2001)
Among the Anishinaabeg on the road where I live, it is told how
a
woman loved a man other than her husband and went off into

the
bush and bore his child. Her name was Aanakwad, which means
cloud, and like a cloud she was changeable. She was moody and
sullen one moment, her lower lip jutting and her eyes flashing,
filled with storms. The next, she would shake her hair over her
face and blow it straight out in front of her to make her children
scream with laughter. For she also had two children by her
husband, one a yearning boy of five years and the other a
capable
daughter of nine.
When Aanakwad brought the new baby out of the trees that
autumn, the older girl was like a second mother, even waking in
the night to clean the baby and nudge it to her mother's breast.
Aanakwad slept through its cries, hardly woke. It wasn't that
she
didn't love her baby; no, it was the opposite—she loved it too
much, the way she loved its father, and not her husband. This
passion ate away at her, and her feelings were unbearable. If she
could have thrown off that wronghearted love, she would have,
but the thought of the other man, who lived across the lake, was
with her always. She became a gray sky, stared monotonously at
the walls, sometimes wept into her hands for hours at a time.
Soon, she couldn't rise to cook or keep the cabin neat, and it
was
too much for the girl, who curled up each night exhausted in her
red-and-brown plaid shawl, and slept and slept, until the
husband
had to wake her to awaken her mother, for he was afraid of his
wife's bad temper, and it was he who roused Aanakwad into
anger
by the sheer fact that he was himself and not the other.
At last, even though he loved Aanakwad, the husband had to
admit that their life together was no good anymore. And it was
he

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/03/05/the-shawl-2
https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/louise-erdrich
shawl-2
who sent for the other man's uncle. In those days, our people
lived
widely scattered, along the shores and in the islands, even out
on
the plains. There were no roads then, just trails, though we had
horses and wagons and, for the winter, sleds. When the uncle
came around to fetch Aanakwad, in his wagon fitted out with
sled
runners, it was very hard, for she and her husband had argued
right up to the last about the children, argued fiercely until the
husband had finally given in. He turned his face to the wall, and
did not move to see the daughter, whom he treasured, sit down
beside her mother, wrapped in her plaid robe in the wagon bed.
They left right away, with their bundles and sacks, not
bothering
to heat up the stones to warm their feet. The father had stopped
his ears, so he did not hear his son cry out when he suddenly
understood that he would be left behind.
As the uncle slapped the reins and the horse lurched forward,
the
boy tried to jump into the wagon, but his mother pried his hands
off the boards, crying, Gego, gego, and he fell down hard. But
there was something in him that would not let her leave. He
jumped up and, although he was wearing only light clothing, he
ran behind the wagon over the packed drifts. The horses picked
up speed. His chest was scorched with pain, and yet he pushed
himself on. He'd never run so fast, so hard and furiously, but he

was determined, and he refused to believe that the increasing
distance between him and the wagon was real. He kept going
until
his throat closed, he saw red, and in the ice of the air his lungs
shut. Then, as he fell onto the board-hard snow, he raised his
head. He watched the back of the wagon and the tiny figures of
his
mother and sister disappear, and something failed in him.
Something broke. At that moment he truly did not care if he was
alive or dead. So when he saw the gray shapes, the shadows,
bounding lightly from the trees to either side of the trail, far
ahead, he was not afraid.
The next the boy knew, his father had him wrapped in a blanket
and was carrying him home. His father's chest was broad and,
shawl-2
although he already spat the tubercular blood that would write
the
end of his story, he was still a strong man. It would take him
many
years to die. In those years, the father would tell the boy, who
had
forgotten this part entirely, that at first when he talked about the
shadows the father thought he'd been visited by manidoog. But
then, as the boy described the shapes, his father had understood
that they were not spirits. Uneasy, he had decided to take his
gun
back along the trail. He had built up the fire in the cabin, and
settled his boy near it, and gone back out into the snow. Perhaps
the story spread through our settlements because the father had

to tell what he saw, again and again, in order to get rid of it.
Perhaps as with all frightful dreams, amaniso, he had to talk
about it to destroy its power—though in this case nothing could
stop the dream from being real.
The shadows' tracks were the tracks of wolves, and in those
days,
when our guns had taken all their food for furs and hides to sell,
the wolves were bold and had abandoned the old agreement
between them and the first humans. For a time, until we
understood and let the game increase, the wolves hunted us. The
father bounded forward when he saw the tracks. He could see
where the pack, desperate, had tried to slash the tendons of the
horses' legs. Next, where they'd leaped for the back of the
wagon.
He hurried on to where the trail gave out at the broad empty ice
of
the lake. There, he saw what he saw, scattered, and the ravens,
attending to the bitter small leavings of the wolves.
For a time, the boy had no understanding of what had happened.
His father kept what he knew to himself, at least that first year,
and when his son asked about his sister's torn plaid shawl, and
why it was kept in the house, his father said nothing. But he
wept
when the boy asked if his sister was cold. It was only after his
father had been weakened by the disease that he began to tell
the
story, far too often and always the same way: he told how when
the wolves closed in Aanakwad had thrown her daughter to
them.

shawl-2
When his father said those words, the boy went still. What had
his
sister felt? What had thrust through her heart? Had something
broken inside her, too, as it had in him? Even then, he knew that
this broken place inside him would not be mended, except by
some terrible means. For he kept seeing his mother put the baby
down and grip his sister around the waist. He saw Aanakwad
swing the girl lightly out over the side of the wagon. He saw the
brown shawl with its red lines flying open. He saw the shadows,
the wolves, rush together, quick and avid, as the wagon with
sled
runners disappeared into the distance—forever, for neither he
nor
his father saw Aanakwad again.
When I was little, my own father terrified us with his drinking.
This was after we lost our mother, because before that the only
time I was aware that he touched the ishkode waaboo was on an
occasional weekend when they got home late, or sometimes
during berry-picking gatherings when we went out to the bush
and camped with others. Not until she died did he start the
heavy
sort of drinking, the continuous drinking, where we were left
alone in the house for days. The kind where, when he came
home,
we'd jump out the window and hide in the woods while he
barged
around, shouting for us. We'd go back only after he had fallen
dead asleep.
There were three of us: me, the oldest at ten, and my little sister
and brother, twins, and only six years old. I was surprisingly
good

at taking care of them, I think, and because we learned to
survive
together during those drinking years we have always been close.
Their names are Doris and Raymond, and they married a brother
and sister. When we get together, which is often, for we live on
the
same road, there come times in the talking and card-playing,
and
maybe even in the light beer now and then, when we will bring
up
those days. Most people understand how it was. Our story isn't
uncommon. But for us it helps to compare our points of view.
shawl-2
How else would I know, for instance, that Raymond saw me the
first time I hid my father's belt? I pulled it from around his
waist
while he was passed out, and then I buried it in the woods. I
kept
doing it after that. Our father couldn't understand why his belt
was always stolen when he went to town drinking. He even
accused his shkwebii buddies of the theft. But I had good
reasons.
Not only was he embarrassed, afterward, to go out with his
pants
held up by rope, but he couldn't snake his belt out in anger and
snap the hooked buckle end in the air. He couldn't hit us with it.
Of course, being resourceful, he used other things. There was a
board. A willow wand. And there was himself—his hands and
fists
and boots—and things he could throw. But eventually it became

easy to evade him, and after a while we rarely suffered a bruise
or
a scratch. We had our own place in the woods, even a little
campfire for the cold nights. And we'd take money from him
every
chance we got, slip it from his shoe, where he thought it well
hidden. He became, for us, a thing to be avoided, outsmarted,
and
exploited. We survived off him as if he were a capricious and
dangerous line of work. I suppose we stopped thinking of him as
a
human being, certainly as a father.
I got my growth earlier than some boys, and, one night when I
was thirteen and Doris and Raymond and I were sitting around
wishing for something besides the oatmeal and commodity
canned milk I'd stashed so he couldn't sell them, I heard him
coming down the road. He was shouting and making noise all
the
way to the house, and Doris and Raymond looked at me and
headed for the back window. When they saw that I wasn't
coming,
they stopped. C'mon, ondaas, get with it—they tried to pull me
along. I shook them off and told them to get out quickly—I was
staying. I think I can take him now is what I said.
He was big; he hadn't yet wasted away from the alcohol. His
nose
had been pushed to one side in a fight, then slammed back to
the
other side, so now it was straight. His teeth were half gone, and
he
smelled the way he had to smell, being five days drunk. When
he

shawl-2
came in the door, he paused for a moment, his eyes red and
swollen, tiny slits. Then he saw that I was waiting for him, and
he
smiled in a bad way. My first punch surprised him. I had been
practicing on a hay-stuffed bag, then on a padded board,
toughening my fists, and I'd got so quick I flickered like fire. I
still
wasn't as strong as he was, and he had a good twenty pounds on
me. Yet I'd do some damage, I was sure of it. I'd teach him not
to
mess with me. What I didn't foresee was how the fight itself
would
get right into me.
There is something terrible about fighting your father. It came
on
suddenly, with the second blow—a frightful kind of joy. A
power
surged up from the center of me, and I danced at him, light and
giddy, full of a heady rightness. Here is the thing: I wanted to
waste him, waste him good. I wanted to smack the living shit
out
of him. Kill him, if I must. A punch for Doris, a kick for
Raymond.
And all the while I was silent, then screaming, then silent again,
in
this rage of happiness that filled me with a simultaneous despair
so that, I guess you could say, I stood apart from myself.
He came at me, crashed over a chair that was already broken,
then

threw the pieces. I grabbed one of the legs and whacked him on
the ear so that his head spun and turned back to me, bloody. I
watched myself striking him again and again. I knew what I was
doing, but not really, not in the ordinary sense. It was as if I
were
standing calm, against the wall with my arms folded, pitying us
both. I saw the boy, the chair leg, the man fold and fall, his
hands
held up in begging fashion. Then I also saw that, for a while
now,
the bigger man had not even bothered to fight back.
Suddenly, he was my father again. And when I knelt down next
to
him, I was his son. I reached for the closest rag, and picked up
this
piece of blanket that my father always kept with him for some
reason. And as I picked it up and wiped the blood off his face, I
said to him, Your nose is crooked again. He looked at me,
steady
and quizzical, as though he had never had a drink in his life,
and I
shawl-2
wiped his face again with that frayed piece of blanket. Well, it
was
a shawl, really, a kind of old-fashioned woman's blanket-shawl.
Once, maybe, it had been plaid. You could still see lines, some
red,
the background a faded brown. He watched intently as my hand
brought the rag to his face. I was pretty sure, then, that I'd

clocked
him too hard, that he'd really lost it now. Gently, though, he
clasped one hand around my wrist. With the other hand he took
the shawl. He crumpled it and held it to the middle of his
forehead. It was as if he were praying, as if he were having
thoughts he wanted to collect in that piece of cloth. For a while
he
lay like that, and I, crouched over, let him be, hardly breathing.
Something told me to sit there, still. And then at last he said to
me, in the sober new voice I would hear from then on, Did you
know I had a sister once?
There was a time when the government moved everybody off
the
farthest reaches of the reservation, onto roads, into towns, into
housing. It looked good at first, and then it all went sour.
Shortly
afterward, it seemed that anyone who was someone was either
drunk, killed, near suicide, or had just dusted himself. None of
the
old sort were left, it seemed—the old kind of people, the Gete-
anishinaabeg, who are kind beyond kindness and would do
anything for others. It was during that time that my mother died
and my father hurt us, as I have said.
Now, gradually, that term of despair has lifted somewhat and
yielded up its survivors. But we still have sorrows that are
passed
to us from early generations, sorrows to handle in addition to
our
own, and cruelties lodged where we cannot forget them. We
have
the need to forget. We are always walking on oblivion's edge.
Some get away, like my brother and sister, married now and
living

quietly down the road. And me, to some degree, though I prefer
to
live alone. And even my father, who recently found a woman.
Once, when he brought up the old days, and we went over the
story again, I told him at last the two things I had been
thinking.
shawl-2
First, I told him that keeping his sister's shawl was wrong,
because
we never keep the clothing of the dead. Now's the time to burn
it, I
said. Send it off to cloak her spirit. And he agreed.
The other thing I said to him was in the form of a question.
Have
you ever considered, I asked him, given how tenderhearted your
sister was, and how brave, that she looked at the whole
situation?
She saw that the wolves were only hungry. She knew that their
need was only need. She knew that you were back there, alone
in
the snow. She understood that the baby she loved would not live
without a mother, and that only the uncle knew the way. She
saw
clearly that one person on the wagon had to be offered up, or
they
all would die. And in that moment of knowledge, don't you
think,
being who she was, of the old sort of Anishinaabeg, who thinks
of

the good of the people first, she jumped, my father, n'dede,
brother to that little girl? Don't you think she lifted her shawl
and
flew? ♦
The Lottery--Shirley Jackson
"The Lottery" (1948)
by Shirley Jackson
The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh
warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers
were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. The
people of the village began to gather in
the square, between the post office and the bank, around ten
o'clock; in some towns there were so many
people that the lottery took two days and had to be started on
June 2th. but in this village, where there
were only about three hundred people, the whole lottery took
less than two hours, so it could begin at ten
o'clock in the morning and still be through in time to allow the
villagers to get home for noon dinner.
The children assembled first, of course. School was recently
over for the summer, and the feeling of
liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather
together quietly for a while before they broke
into boisterous play. and their talk was still of the classroom

and the teacher, of books and reprimands.
Bobby Martin had already stuffed his pockets full of stones, and
the other boys soon followed his
example, selecting the smoothest and roundest stones; Bobby
and Harry Jones and Dickie Delacroix-- the
villagers pronounced this name "Dellacroy"--eventually made a
great pile of stones in one corner of the
square and guarded it against the raids of the other boys. The
girls stood aside, talking among themselves,
looking over their shoulders at rolled in the dust or clung to the
hands of their older brothers or sisters.
Soon the men began to gather. surveying their own children,
speaking of planting and rain, tractors and
taxes. They stood together, away from the pile of stones in the
corner, and their jokes were quiet and they
smiled rather than laughed. The women, wearing faded house
dresses and sweaters, came shortly after
their menfolk. They greeted one another and exchanged bits of
gossip as they went to join their husbands.
Soon the women, standing by their husbands, began to call to
their children, and the children came
reluctantly, having to be called four or five times. Bobby Martin
ducked under his mother's grasping hand
and ran, laughing, back to the pile of stones. His father spoke
up sharply, and Bobby came quickly and
took his place between his father and his oldest brother.
The lottery was conducted--as were the square dances, the teen
club, the Halloween program--by Mr.
Summers. who had time and energy to devote to civic activities.
He was a round-faced, jovial man and he
ran the coal business, and people were sorry for him. because he
had no children and his wife was a
scold. When he arrived in the square, carrying the black wooden
box, there was a murmur of

conversation among the villagers, and he waved and called.
"Little late today, folks." The postmaster, Mr.
Graves, followed him, carrying a three- legged stool, and the
stool was put in the center of the square and
Mr. Summers set the black box down on it. The villagers kept
their distance, leaving a space between
themselves and the stool. and when Mr. Summers said, "Some
of you fellows want to give me a hand?"
there was a hesitation before two men. Mr. Martin and his
oldest son, Baxter. came forward to hold the
box steady on the stool while Mr. Summers stirred up the papers
inside it.
The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long
ago, and the black box now resting on the
stool had been put into use even before Old Man Warner, the
oldest man in town, was born. Mr.
Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new
box, but no one liked to upset even as
much tradition as was represented by the black box. There was a
story that the present box had been
made with some pieces of the box that had preceded it, the one
that had been constructed when the first
people settled down to make a village here. Every year, after the
lottery, Mr. Summers began talking
again about a new box, but every year the subject was allowed
to fade off without anything's being done.
file:///Users/carolynsigler/Desktop/lotry.html (1 of 8)1/23/2005
7:58:04 AM
The black box grew shabbier each year: by now it was no longer

completely black but splintered badly
along one side to show the original wood color, and in some
places faded or stained.
Mr. Martin and his oldest son, Baxter, held the black box
securely on the stool until Mr. Summers had
stirred the papers thoroughly with his hand. Because so much of
the ritual had been forgotten or
discarded, Mr. Summers had been successful in having slips of
paper substituted for the chips of wood
that had been used for generations. Chips of wood, Mr.
Summers had argued. had been all very well
when the village was tiny, but now that the population was more
than three hundred and likely to keep on
growing, it was necessary to use something that would fit more
easily into he black box. The night before
the lottery, Mr. Summers and Mr. Graves made up the slips of
paper and put them in the box, and it was
then taken to the safe of Mr. Summers' coal company and locked
up until Mr. Summers was ready to take
it to the square next morning. The rest of the year, the box was
put way, sometimes one place, sometimes
another; it had spent one year in Mr. Graves's barn and another
year underfoot in the post office. and
sometimes it was set on a shelf in the Martin grocery and left
there.
There was a great deal of fussing to be done before Mr.
Summers declared the lottery open. There were
the lists to make up--of heads of families. heads of households
in each family. members of each
household in each family. There was the proper swearing-in of
Mr. Summers by the postmaster, as the
official of the lottery; at one time, some people remembered,
there had been a recital of some sort,
performed by the official of the lottery, a perfunctory. tuneless

chant that had been rattled off duly each
year; some people believed that the official of the lottery used
to stand just so when he said or sang it,
others believed that he was supposed to walk among the people,
but years and years ago this p3rt of the
ritual had been allowed to lapse. There had been, also, a ritual
salute, which the official of the lottery had
had to use in addressing each person who came up to draw from
the box, but this also had changed with
time, until now it was felt necessary only for the official to
speak to each person approaching. Mr.
Summers was very good at all this; in his clean white shirt and
blue jeans. with one hand resting
carelessly on the black box. he seemed very proper and
important as he talked interminably to Mr. Graves
and the Martins.
Just as Mr. Summers finally left off talking and turned to the
assembled villagers, Mrs. Hutchinson came
hurriedly along the path to the square, her sweater thrown over
her shoulders, and slid into place in the
back of the crowd. "Clean forgot what day it was," she said to
Mrs. Delacroix, who stood next to her, and
they both laughed softly. "Thought my old man was out back
stacking wood," Mrs. Hutchinson went on.
"and then I looked out the window and the kids was gone, and
then I remembered it was the twenty-
seventh and came a-running." She dried her hands on her apron,
and Mrs. Delacroix said, "You're in time,
though. They're still talking away up there."
Mrs. Hutchinson craned her neck to see through the crowd and
found her husband and children standing
near the front. She tapped Mrs. Delacroix on the arm as a
farewell and began to make her way through
the crowd. The people separated good-humoredly to let her

through: two or three people said. in voices
just loud enough to be heard across the crowd, "Here comes
your, Missus, Hutchinson," and "Bill, she
made it after all." Mrs. Hutchinson reached her husband, and
Mr. Summers, who had been waiting, said
cheerfully. "Thought we were going to have to get on without
you, Tessie." Mrs. Hutchinson said.
grinning, "Wouldn't have me leave m'dishes in the sink, now,
would you. Joe?," and soft laughter ran
through the crowd as the people stirred back into position after
Mrs. Hutchinson's arrival.
"Well, now." Mr. Summers said soberly, "guess we better get
started, get this over with, so's we can go
back to work. Anybody ain't here?"
7:58:04 AM
"Dunbar." several people said. "Dunbar. Dunbar."
Mr. Summers consulted his list. "Clyde Dunbar." he said.
"That's right. He's broke his leg, hasn't he?
Who's drawing for him?"
"Me. I guess," a woman said. and Mr. Summers turned to look
at her. "Wife draws for her husband." Mr.
Summers said. "Don't you have a grown boy to do it for you,
Janey?" Although Mr. Summers and
everyone else in the village knew the answer perfectly well, it
was the business of the official of the
lottery to ask such questions formally. Mr. Summers waited

with an expression of polite interest while
Mrs. Dunbar answered.
"Horace's not but sixteen vet." Mrs. Dunbar said regretfully.
"Guess I gotta fill in for the old man this
year."
"Right." Sr. Summers said. He made a note on the list he was
holding. Then he asked, "Watson boy
drawing this year?"
A tall boy in the crowd raised his hand. "Here," he said. "I'm
drawing for my mother and me." He blinked
his eyes nervously and ducked his head as several voices in the
crowd said thin#s like "Good fellow,
lack." and "Glad to see your mother's got a man to do it."
"Well," Mr. Summers said, "guess that's everyone. Old Man
Warner make it?"
"Here," a voice said. and Mr. Summers nodded.
A sudden hush fell on the crowd as Mr. Summers cleared his
throat and looked at the list. "All ready?" he
called. "Now, I'll read the names--heads of families first--and
the men come up and take a paper out of
the box. Keep the paper folded in your hand without looking at
it until everyone has had a turn.
Everything clear?"
The people had done it so many times that they only half
listened to the directions: most of them were
quiet. wetting their lips. not looking around. Then Mr. Summers
raised one hand high and said, "Adams."
A man disengaged himself from the crowd and came forward.
"Hi. Steve." Mr. Summers said. and Mr.

Adams said. "Hi. Joe." They grinned at one another humorlessly
and nervously. Then Mr. Adams reached
into the black box and took out a folded paper. He held it firmly
by one corner as he turned and went
hastily back to his place in the crowd. where he stood a little
apart from his family. not looking down at
his hand.
"Allen." Mr. Summers said. "Anderson.... Bentham."
"Seems like there's no time at all between lotteries any more."
Mrs. Delacroix said to Mrs. Graves in the
back row.
"Seems like we got through with the last one only last week."
"Time sure goes fast.-- Mrs. Graves said.
7:58:04 AM
"Clark.... Delacroix"
"There goes my old man." Mrs. Delacroix said. She held her
breath while her husband went forward.
"Dunbar," Mr. Summers said, and Mrs. Dunbar went steadily to
the box while one of the women said.
"Go on. Janey," and another said, "There she goes."
"We're next." Mrs. Graves said. She watched while Mr. Graves
came around from the side of the box,

greeted Mr. Summers gravely and selected a slip of paper from
the box. By now, all through the crowd
there were men holding the small folded papers in their large
hand. turning them over and over nervously
Mrs. Dunbar and her two sons stood together, Mrs. Dunbar
holding the slip of paper.
"Harburt.... Hutchinson."
"Get up there, Bill," Mrs. Hutchinson said. and the people near
her laughed.
"Jones."
"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood
next to him, "that over in the north
village they're talking of giving up the lottery."
Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said.
"Listening to the young folks, nothing's good
enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go
back to living in caves, nobody work any
more, live hat way for a while. Used to be a saying about
'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing
you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns.
There's always been a lottery," he added
petulantly. "Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there
joking with everybody."
"Some places have already quit lotteries." Mrs. Adams said.
"Nothing but trouble in that," Old Man Warner said stoutly.
"Pack of young fools."
"Martin." And Bobby Martin watched his father go forward.
"Overdyke.... Percy."

"I wish they'd hurry," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son. "I wish
they'd hurry."
"They're almost through," her son said.
"You get ready to run tell Dad," Mrs. Dunbar said.
Mr. Summers called his own name and then stepped forward
precisely and selected a slip from the box.
Then he called, "Warner."
"Seventy-seventh year I been in the lottery," Old Man Warner
said as he went through the crowd.
"Seventy-seventh time."
7:58:04 AM
"Watson" The tall boy came awkwardly through the crowd.
Someone said, "Don't be nervous, Jack," and
Mr. Summers said, "Take your time, son."
"Zanini."
After that, there was a long pause, a breathless pause, until Mr.
Summers. holding his slip of paper in the
air, said, "All right, fellows." For a minute, no one moved, and
then all the slips of paper were opened.
Suddenly, all the women began to speak at once, saving. "Who
is it?," "Who's got it?," "Is it the
Dunbars?," "Is it the Watsons?" Then the voices began to say,

"It's Hutchinson. It's Bill," "Bill
Hutchinson's got it."
"Go tell your father," Mrs. Dunbar said to her older son.
People began to look around to see the Hutchinsons. Bill
Hutchinson was standing quiet, staring down at
the paper in his hand. Suddenly. Tessie Hutchinson shouted to
Mr. Summers. "You didn't give him time
enough to take any paper he wanted. I saw you. It wasn't fair!"
"Be a good sport, Tessie." Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs.
Graves said, "All of us took the same chance."
"Shut up, Tessie," Bill Hutchinson said.
"Well, everyone," Mr. Summers said, "that was done pretty fast,
and now we've got to be hurrying a little
more to get done in time." He consulted his next list. "Bill," he
said, "you draw for the Hutchinson
family. You got any other households in the Hutchinsons?"
"There's Don and Eva," Mrs. Hutchinson yelled. "Make them
take their chance!"
"Daughters draw with their husbands' families, Tessie," Mr.
Summers said gently. "You know that as
well as anyone else."
"It wasn't fair," Tessie said.
"I guess not, Joe." Bill Hutchinson said regretfully. "My
daughter draws with her husband's family; that's
only fair. And I've got no other family except the kids."
"Then, as far as drawing for families is concerned, it's you," Mr.

Summers said in explanation, "and as far
as drawing for households is concerned, that's you, too. Right?"
"Right," Bill Hutchinson said.
"How many kids, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked formally.
"Three," Bill Hutchinson said.
"There's Bill, Jr., and Nancy, and little Dave. And Tessie and
me."
7:58:04 AM
"All right, then," Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you got their
tickets back?"
Mr. Graves nodded and held up the slips of paper. "Put them in
the box, then," Mr. Summers directed.
"Take Bill's and put it in."
"I think we ought to start over," Mrs. Hutchinson said, as
quietly as she could. "I tell you it wasn't fair.
You didn't give him time enough to choose. Everybody saw
that."
Mr. Graves had selected the five slips and put them in the box.
and he dropped all the papers but those
onto the ground. where the breeze caught them and lifted them
off.

"Listen, everybody," Mrs. Hutchinson was saying to the people
around her.
"Ready, Bill?" Mr. Summers asked. and Bill Hutchinson, with
one quick glance around at his wife and
children. nodded.
"Remember," Mr. Summers said. "take the slips and keep them
folded until each person has taken one.
Harry, you help little Dave." Mr. Graves took the hand of the
little boy, who came willingly with him up
to the box. "Take a paper out of the box, Davy." Mr. Summers
said. Davy put his hand into the box and
laughed. "Take just one paper." Mr. Summers said. "Harry, you
hold it for him." Mr. Graves took the
child's hand and removed the folded paper from the tight fist
and held it while little Dave stood next to
him and looked up at him wonderingly.
"Nancy next," Mr. Summers said. Nancy was twelve, and her
school friends breathed heavily as she went
forward switching her skirt, and took a slip daintily from the
box "Bill, Jr.," Mr. Summers said, and Billy,
his face red and his feet overlarge, near knocked the box over as
he got a paper out. "Tessie," Mr.
Summers said. She hesitated for a minute, looking around
defiantly. and then set her lips and went up to
the box. She snatched a paper out and held it behind her.
"Bill," Mr. Summers said, and Bill Hutchinson reached into the
box and felt around, bringing his hand
out at last with the slip of paper in it.
The crowd was quiet. A girl whispered, "I hope it's not Nancy,"
and the sound of the whisper reached the
edges of the crowd.

"It's not the way it used to be." Old Man Warner said clearly.
"People ain't the way they used to be."
"All right," Mr. Summers said. "Open the papers. Harry, you
open little Dave's."
Mr. Graves opened the slip of paper and there was a general
sigh through the crowd as he held it up and
everyone could see that it was blank. Nancy and Bill. Jr..
opened theirs at the same time. and both
beamed and laughed. turning around to the crowd and holding
their slips of paper above their heads.
"Tessie," Mr. Summers said. There was a pause, and then Mr.
Summers looked at Bill Hutchinson, and
Bill unfolded his paper and showed it. It was blank.
7:58:04 AM
"It's Tessie," Mr. Summers said, and his voice was hushed.
"Show us her paper. Bill."
Bill Hutchinson went over to his wife and forced the slip of
paper out of her hand. It had a black spot on
it, the black spot Mr. Summers had made the night before with
the heavy pencil in the coal company
office. Bill Hutchinson held it up, and there was a stir in the
crowd.
"All right, folks." Mr. Summers said. "Let's finish quickly."

Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the
original black box, they still remembered to
use stones. The pile of stones the boys had made earlier was
ready; there were stones on the ground with
the blowing scraps of paper that had come out of the box
Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to
pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. "Come
on," she said. "Hurry up."
Mr. Dunbar had small stones in both hands, and she said.
gasping for breath. "I can't run at all. You'll
have to go ahead and I'll catch up with you."
The children had stones already. And someone gave little Davy
Hutchinson few pebbles.
Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now,
and she held her hands out desperately as
the villagers moved in on her. "It isn't fair," she said. A stone
hit her on the side of the head. Old Man
Warner was saying, "Come on, come on, everyone." Steve
Adams was in the front of the crowd of
villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.
"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then
they were upon her.
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Discussion Questions:
1. Were you surprised by the ending of the story? If not, at what
point did you know what was going to happen? How does
Jackson start to foreshadow the ending in paragraphs 2 and 3?
Conversely, how does Jackson lull us into thinking that this is
just an ordinary story with an ordinary town?

2. Where does the story take place? In what way does the
setting affect the story? Does it make you more or less likely to
anticipate the ending?
3. In what ways are the characters differentiated from one
another? Looking back at the story, can you see why Tessie
Hutchinson is singled out as the "winner"?
4. What are some examples of irony in this story? For example,
why might the title, "The Lottery," or the opening description
in paragraph one, be considered ironic?
5. Jackson gives interesting names to a number of her
characters. Explain the possible allusions, irony or symbolism
of some
of these:
● Delacroix
● Graves
● Summers
● Bentham
● Hutchinson
7:58:04 AM
● Warner
● Martin
7. Take a close look at Jackson's description of the black
wooden box (paragraph 5) and of the black spot on the fatal slip
of

paper (paragraph 72). What do these objects suggest to you?
Why is the black box described as "battered"? Are there any
other
symbols in the story?
8. What do you understand to be the writer's own attitude
toward the lottery and the stoning? Exactly what in the story
makes
her attitude clear to us?
9. This story satirizes a number of social issues, including the
reluctance of people to reject outdated traditions, ideas, rules,
laws, and practices. What kinds of traditions, practices, laws,
etc. might "The Lottery" represent?
10. This story was published in 1948, just after World War II.
What other cultural or historical events, attitudes, institutions,
or
rituals might Jackson be satirizing in this story?
7:58:04 AM
Local DiskThe Lottery--Shirley Jackson
The Red Convertible
LOUISE ERDRICH
I was the first one to drive a convertible on my reservation.
And of course it was red, a red Olds. I owned that car along
with my brother Henry Junior. We owned it together until
his boots filled with water on a windy night and he bought
out my share. Now Henry owns the whole car, and his
younger brother Lyman (that's myself), Lyman walks every-
where he goes.

How did I earn enough money to buy my share in the first
place? My one talent was I could always make money. I had a
touch for it, unusual in a Chippewa. From the first I was dif-
ferent that way, and everyone recognized it. I was the only
kid they let in the American Legion Hall to shine shoes, for
example, and one Christmas I sold spiritual bouquets for the
mission door to door. The nuns let me keep a percentage.
Once I started, it seemed the more money I made the easier
the money came. Everyone encouraged it. When I was fifteen
I got a job washing dishes at the Joliet Cafe, and that was
where my first big break happened.
It wasn't long before I was promoted to busing tables, and
then the short-order cook quit and I was hired to take her
place. No sooner than you know it I was managing the Joliet.
The rest is history. I went on managing. I soon became part
owner, and of course there was no stopping me then. It
wasn't long before the whole thing was mine.
After I'd owned the Joliet for one year, it blew over in the
worst tornado ever seen around here. The whole operation
104 I GROWING UP ETHNIC IN AMERICA
was smashed to bits. A total loss. The fryalator was up in a
tree, the grill torn in half like it was paper. I was only sixteen.
I had it all in my mother's name, and I lost it quick, but be-
fore I lost it I had every one of my relatives, and their rela-
tives, to dinner, and I also bought that red Olds I mentioned,
along with Henry.
The first time we saw it! I'll tell you when we first saw it. We
had gotten a ride up to Winnipeg, and both of us had money.

Don't ask me why, because we never mentioned a car or any-
thing, we just had all our money. Mine was cash, a big
bankroll from the Joliet's insurance. Henry had two checks—
a week's extra pay for being laid off, and his regular check
from the Jewel Bearing Plant.
We were walking down Portage anyway, seeing the sights,
when we saw it. There it was, parked, large as life. Really as
if it was alive. I thought of the word repose, because the car
wasn't simply stopped, parked, or whatever. That car
reposed, calm and gleaming, a FOR SALE sign in its left front
window. Then, before we had thought it over at all, the car
belonged to us and our pockets were empty. We had just
enough money for gas back home.
We went places in that car, me and Henry. We took off
driving all one whole summer. We started off toward the Lit-
tle Knife River and Mandaree in Fort Berthold and then we
found ourselves down in Wakpala somehow, and then sud-
denly we were over in Montana on the Rocky Boy, and yet
the summer was not even half over. Some people hang on to
details when they travel, but we didn't let them bother us and
just lived our everyday lives here to there.
I do remember this one place with willows. I remember I
lay under those trees and it was comfortable. So comfortable.
The branches bent down all around me like a tent or a stable.
CROSSING 105
And quiet, it was quiet, even though there was a; powwow
close enough so I could see it going on. The air was not too
still, not too windy either. When the dust rises up and hangs
in the air around the dancers like that, I feel good. Henry was

asleep with his arms thrown wide. Later on, he woke up and
we started driving again. We were somewhere in Montana,
or maybe on the Blood Reserve—it could have been any-
where. Anyway it was where we met the girl.
All her hair was in buns around her ears, that's the first thing
I noticed about her. She was posed alongside the road with
her arm out, so we stopped. That girl was short, so short her
lumber shirt looked comical on her, like a nightgown. She
had jeans on and fancy moccasins and she carried a little suit-
case.
"Hop on in," says Henry. So she climbs in between us.
"We'll take you home," I says. "Where do you live?"
"Chicken," she says.
"Where the hell's that?" I ask her.
"Alaska."
"Okay," says Henry, and we drive.
We got up there and never wanted to leave. The sun
doesn't truly set there in summer, and the night is more a soft
dusk. You might doze off, sometimes, but before you know it
you're up again, like an animal in nature. You never feel like
you have to sleep hard or put away the world. And things
would grow up there. One day just dirt or moss, the next day
flowers and long grass. The girl's name was Susy. Her family
really took to us. They fed us and put us up. We had our own
tent to live in by their house, and the kids would be in and
out of there all day and night. They couldn't get over me and
Henry being brothers, we looked so different. We told them
we knew we had the same mother, anyway.
: 106 I GROWING UP ETHNIC IN AMERICA

One night Susy came in to visit us. We sat around in the
tent talking of this and that. The season was changing. It was
getting darker by that time, and the cold was even getting
just a little mean. I told her it was time for us to go. She stood
up on a chair.
"You never seen my hair," Susy said.
That was true. She was standing on a chair, but still, when
she unclipped her buns the hair reached all the way to the
ground. Our eyes opened. You couldn't tell how much hair
she had when it was rolled up so neatly. Then my brother
Henry did something funny. He went up to the chair and
said, "Jump on my shoulders." So she did that, and her hair
reached down past his waist, and he started twirling, this way
and that, so her hair was flung out from side to side.
"I always wondered what it was like to have long pretty
hair," Henry says. Well we laughed. It was a funny sight, the
way he did it. The next morning we got up and took leave of
those people.
On to greener pastures, as they say. It was down through
Spokane and across Idaho then Montana and very soon we
were racing the weather right along under the Canadian bor-
der through Columbus, Des Lacs, and then we were in Bot-
tineau County and soon home. We'd made most of the trip,
that summer, without putting up the car hood at all. We got
home just in time, it turned out, for the army to remember
Henry had signed up to join it.
I don't wonder that the army was so glad to get my brother
that they turned him into a Marine. He was built like a brick
outhouse anyway. We liked to tease him that they really
wanted him for his Indian nose. He had a nose big and sharp
as a hatchet, like the nose on Red Tomahawk, the Indian

who killed Sitting Bull, whose profile is on signs all along the
CROSSING I 107
North Dakota highways. Henry went off to training camp,
came home once during Christmas, then the next thing you
know we got an overseas letter from him. It was 1970, and he
said he was stationed up in the northern hill country. Where-
abouts I did not know. He wasn't such a hot letter writer, and
only got off two before the enemy caught him. I could never
keep it straight, which direction those good Vietnam soldiers
were from.
I wrote him back several times, even though I didn't know
if those letters would get through. I kept him informed all
about the car. Most of the time I had it up on blocks in .the
yard or half taken apart, because that long trip did a hard job
on it under the hood.
I always had good luck with numbers, and never worried
about the draft myself. I never even had to think about what
my number was. But Henry was never lucky in the same way
as me. It was at least three years before Henry came home. By
then I guess the whole war was solved in the government's
mind, but for him it would keep on going. In those years I'd
put his car into almost perfect shape. I always thought of it as
his car while he was gone, even though when he left he said,
"Now it's yours," and threw me his key.
"Thanks for the extra key," I'd said. "I'll put it up in your
drawer just in case I need it." He laughed.
When he came home, though, Henry was very different, and
I'll say this: the change was no good. You could hardly expect

him to change for the better, I know. But he was quiet, so
quiet, and never comfortable sitting still anywhere but al-
ways up and moving around. I thought back to times we'd
sat still for whole afternoons, never moving a muscle, just
shifting our weight along the ground, talking to whoever sat
with us, watching things. He'd always had a joke, then, too,
and now you couldn't get him to laugh, or when he did it was
more the sound of a man choking, a sound that stopped up
the throats of other people around him. They got to leaving
him alone most of the time, and I didn’t blame them. It was a
fact: Henry was jumpy and mean.
I'd bought a color TV set for my mom and the rest of us
while Henry was away. Money still came very easy. I was
sorry I'd ever fought it though, because of Henry. I was also
sorry I'd bought color, because with black-and-white the pic-
tures seem older and farther away. But what are you going to
do? He sat in front of it, watching it, and that was the only
time he was completely still. But it was the kind of stillness
that you see in a rabbit when it freezes and before it will bolt.
He was not easy. He sat in his chair gripping the armrests
with all his might, as if the chair itself was moving at a high
speed and if he let go at all he would rocket forward and
maybe crash right through the set.
Once I was in the room watching TV with Henry and I
heard his teeth click at something. I looked over, and he'd
bitten through his lip. Blood was going down his chin. I tell
you right then I wanted to smash that tube to pieces. I went
over to it but Henry must have known what I was up to. He
rushed from his chair and shoved me out of the way, against

the wall. I told myself he didn't know what he was doing.
My mom came in, turned the set off real quiet, and told us
she had made something for supper. So we went and sat
down. There was still blood going down Henry's chin, but he
didn't notice it and no one said anything even though every
time he took a bite of his bread his blood fell onto it until he
was eating his own blood mixed in with the food.
While Henry was not around we talked about what was go-
ing to happen to him. There were no Indian doctors on the
CROSSING 109
reservation, and my mom couldn't come around to trusting
the old man, Moses Pillager, because he courted her long ago
and was jealous of her husbands. He might take revenge
through her son. We were afraid that if we brought Henry to
a regular hospital they would keep him.
"They don't "fix them in those places," Mom said; "they just
give them drugs."
"We wouldn't get him there in the first place," I agreed,
"so let's just forget about it."
Then I thought about the car.
Henry had not even looked at the car since he'd gotten
home, though like I said, it was in tip-top condition and
ready to drive. I thought the car might bring the old Henry
back somehow. So I bided my time and waited for my chance
to interest him in the vehicle.

One night Henry was off somewhere. I took myself a
hammer. I went out to that car and I did a number on its un-
derside. Whacked it up. Bent the tail pipe double. Ripped the
muffler loose. By the time I was done with the car it looked
worse than any typical Indian car that has been driven all its
life on reservation roads, which they always say are like gov-
ernment promises—full of holes. It just about hurt me, I'll
tell you that! I threw dirt in the carburetor and I ripped all
the electric tape off the seats. I made it look just as beat up as
I could. Then I sat back and waited for Henry to find it.
Still, it took him over a month. That was all right, because
it was just getting warm enough; not melting, but warm
enough to work outside.
"Lyman," he says, walking in one day, "that red car looks
like shit."
"Well it's old," I says. "You got to expect that."
"No way!" says Henry. "That car's a classic! But you went
and ran the piss right put of it, Lyman, and you know it don't
deserve that. I kept that car in A-one shape. You don't re-
member. You're too young. But when I left, that car was
running like a watch. Now I don't even know if I can get it
to start again, let alone get it anywhere near its old con-
dition."
"Well you try," I said, like I was getting mad, "but I say it's
a piece of junk."

Then I walked out before he could realize I knew he'd
strung together more than six words at once.
After that I thought he'd freeze himself to death working on
that car. He was out there all day, and at night he rigged up a
little lamp, ran a cord out the window, and had himself some
light to see by while he worked. He was better than he had
been before, but that's still not saying much. It was easier for
him to do the things the rest of us did. He ate more slowly
and didn't jump up and down during the meal to get this or
that or look out the window. I put my hand in the back of the
TV set, I admit, and fiddled around with it good, so that it
was almost impossible now to get a clear picture. He didn't
look at it very often anyway. He was always out with that car
or going off to get parts for it. By the time it was really melt-
ing outside, he had it fixed.
I had been feeling down in the dumps about Henry
around this time. We had always been together before.
Henry and Lyman. But he was such a loner now that I didn't
know how to take it. So I jumped at the chance one day
when Henry seemed friendly. It's not that he smiled or any-
thing. He just said, "Let's take that old shitbox for a spin."
Just the way he said it made me think he could be coming
around.
We went out to the car. It was spring. The sun was shining
very bright. My only sister, Bonita, who was just eleven years
old, came out and made us stand together for a picture.
CROSSING 11
Henry leaned his elbow on the red car's windshield, and he
took his other arm and put it over my shoulder, very care-

fully, as though it was heavy for him to lift and he didn't
want to bring the weight down all at once. "Smile," Bonita
said, and he did.
That picture. I never look at it anymore. A few months ago, I
don't know why, I got his picture out and tacked it on the
wall. I felt good about Henry at the time, close to him. I felt
good having his picture on the wall, until one night when I
was looking at television. I was a little drunk and stoned. I
looked up at the wall and Henry was staring at me. I don't
know what it was, but his smile had changed, or maybe it
was gone. All I know is I couldn't stay in the same room with
that picture. I was shaking. I got up, closed the door, and
went into the kitchen. A little later my friend Ray came over
and we both went back into that room. We put the picture in
a brown bag, folded the bag over and over tightly, then put it
way back in a closet.
I still see that picture now, as if it tugs at me, whenever I
pass that closet door. The picture is very clear in my mind. It
was so sunny that day Henry had to squint against the glare.
Or maybe the camera Bonita held flashed like a mirror,
blinding him, before she snapped the picture. My face is right
out in the sun, big and round. But he might have drawn
back, because the shadows on his face are deep as holes.
There are two shadows curved like little hooks around the
ends of his smile, as if to frame it and try to keep it there—
that one, first smile that looked like it might have hurt his
face. He has his field jacket on and the worn-in clothes he'd
come back in and kept wearing ever since. After Bonita took
the picture, she went into the house and we got into the car.
There was a full cooler in the trunk. We started off, east, to-

ward Pembina and the Red River because Henry said he
wanted to see the high water.
The trip over there was beautiful. When everything starts
changing, drying up, clearing off, you feel like your whole
life is starting. Henry felt it, too. The top was down and the
car hummed like a top. He'd really put it back in shape, even
the tape on the seats was very carefully put down and glued
back in layers. It's not that he smiled again or even joked, but
his face looked to me as if it was clear, more peaceful. It
looked as though he wasn't thinking of anything in particular
except the bare fields and windbreaks and houses we were
passing.
The river was high and full of winter trash when we got
there. The sun was still out, but it was colder by the river.
There-were still little clumps of dirty snow here and there on
the banks. The water hadn't gone over the banks yet, but it
would, you could tell. It was just at its limit, hard swollen,
glossy like an old gray scar. We made ourselves a fire, and we
sat down and watched the current go. As I watched it I felt
something squeezing inside me and tightening and trying to
let go all at the same time. I knew I was not just feeling it my-
self; I knew I was feeling what Henry was going through at
that moment. Except that I couldn't stand it, the closing and
opening. I jumped to my feet. I took Henry by the shoulders,
and I started shaking him. "Wake up," I says, "wake up,
wake up, wake up!" I didn't know what had come over me. I
sat down beside him again.
His face was totally white and hard. Then it broke, like
stones break all of a sudden when water boils up inside them.
"I know it," he says. "I know it. I can't help it. It's no use."
We start talking. He said he knew what I'd done with the

car. It was obvious it had been whacked out of shape and not
just neglected. He said he wanted to give the car to me for
CROSSING I 113
good now, it was no use. He said he'd fixed it just to give it
back and I should take it.
"No way," I says, "I don't want it."
"That's okay," he says, "you take it."
"I don't want it, though," I says back to him, and then to
emphasize, just to emphasize, you understand, I touch his
shoulder. He slaps my hand off.
"Take that car," he says.
"No," I say. "Make me," I say, and then he grabs my jacket
and rips the arm loose. That jacket is a class act, suede with
tags and zippers. I push Henry backwards, off the log. He
jumps up and bowls me over. We go down in a clinch and
come up swinging hard, for all we're worth, with our fists.
He socks my jaw so hard I feel like it swings loose. Then. I'm at
his rib cage and. land a good one under his chin so his head
snaps back. He's dazzled. He looks at me and I look at him
and then his eyes are full of tears and blood and at first I
think he's crying. But no, he's laughing. "Ha! Ha!" he says.
"Ha! Ha! Take good care of it."
"Okay," I says. "Okay, no problem; Ha! Ha!"
I can't help it, and I start laughing, too. My face feels fat
and strange, and after a while I get a beer from the cooler in
the trunk, and when I hand it to Henry he takes his shirt and
wipes my germs off. "Hoof-and-mouth disease," he says. For
some reason this cracks me up, and so we're really laughing

for a while, and then we drink all the rest of the beers one by
one and throw them in the river and see how far, how fast,
the current takes them before they fill up and sink.
"You want to go on back?" I ask after a while. "Maybe we
could snag a couple nice Kashpaw girls."
He says nothing. But I can tell his mood is turning again.
"They're all crazy, the girls up here, every damn one of
them."
"You're crazy too," I say, to jolly him up. "Crazy Lamartine
boys!"
114 GROWING UP ETHNIC IN AMERICA
He looks as though he will take this wrong at first. His
face twists, then clears, and he jumps up on his feet. "That's
right!" he says. "Crazier 'n hell. Crazy Indians!"
I think it's the old Henry again. He throws off his jacket
and starts springing his legs up from the knees like a fancy
dancer. He's down doing something between a grass dance
and a bunny hop, no kind of dance I ever saw before, but nei-
ther has anyone else on all this green growing earth. He's
wild. He wants to pitch whoopee! He's up and at me and all
over. All this time I'm laughing so hard, so hard my belly is
getting tied up in a knot.
"Got to cool me off!" he shouts all of a sudden. Then he
runs over to the river and jumps in.

There's boards and other things in the current. It's so high.
No sound comes from the river after the splash he makes, so
I run right over. I look around. It's getting dark. I see he's
halfway across the water already, and I know he didn't swim
there but the current took him. It's far. I hear his voice,
though, very clearly across it.
"My boots are filling," he says.
He says this in a normal voice, like he just noticed and he
doesn't know what to think of it. Then he's gone. A branch
comes by. Another branch. And I go in.
By the time I get out of the river, off the snag I pulled myself
onto, the sun is down. I walk back to the car, turn on the high
beams, and drive it up the bank. I put it in first gear and then
I take my foot off the clutch. I get out, close the door, and
watch it plow softly into the water. The headlights reach in as
they go down, searching, still lighted even after the water
swirls over the back end. I wait. The wires short out. It is all
finally dark. And then there is only the water, the sound of it
going and running and going and running and running.
1
SHERMAN ALEXIE
INDIAN EDUCATION
Sherman Alexie, the son of a Coeur d’Alene Indian father and a
Spokane Indian Mother, was born in 1966 and

grew up on the Spokane Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington,
home to some 1,100 Spokane tribal members.
A precocious child who endured much teasing from his fellow
classmates on the reservation and who realized as
a teenager that his educational opportunities there were
extremely limited, Alexie made the unusual decision to
attend high school off the reservation in nearby Reardon. While
in college, he began publishing poetry; within a
year of graduation, his first collection, The Business of Fancy
dancing (1992), appeared. This was followed by
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a short
story collection, and the novels Reservation
Blues (1995) and Indian Killer (1996), all of which have
garnered numerous awards and honors. Alexie also
wrote the screenplay for the highly acclaimed film Smoke
Signals.
First Grade
My hair was too short and my U.S. Government glasses were
horn-rimmed, ugly, and all that first
winter in school, the other Indian boys chased me from one
corner of the playground to the other. They
pushed me down, buried me in the snow until I couldn’t breathe,
thought I’d never breathe again.
They stole my glasses and threw them over my head, around my

outstretched hands, just beyond my
reach, until someone tripped me and sent me falling again,
facedown in the snow.
I was always falling down; my Indian name was Junior Falls
Down. Sometimes it was Bloody Nose or
Steal-His-Lunch. Once it was Cries-Like-a-White-Boy, even
though none of us had seen a white boy cry.
Then it was Friday morning recess and Frenchy SiJohn threw
snowballs at me while the rest of
the Indian boys tortured some other top-yogh-yaught kid,
another weakling. But Frenchy was confident
enough to torment me all by himself, and most days I would
have let him.
But the little warrior in me roared to life that day and knocked
Frenchy to the ground, held his
head against the snow, and punched him so hard the my
knuckles and the snow make symmetrical bruises
on his face. He almost looked like he was wearing war paint.
But he wasn’t the warrior. I was. And I chanted It’s a good day
to die, it’s a good day to die, all the
2 Sherman Alexie: Indian Education
way down to the principle’s office.

Second Grade
Betty Towle, missionary teacher, redheaded and so ugly that no
one ever had a puppy crush on
her, made me stay in for recess fourteen days straight.
“Tell me you’re sorry,” she said.
“Sorry for what?” I asked.
“Everything,” she said and made me stand straight for fifteen
minutes, eagle-armed with
books in each hand. One was a math book; the other was
English. But all I learned was that gravity
can be painful.
For Halloween I drew a picture of her riding a broom with a
scrawny cat on the back. She said
that her God would never forgive me for that.
Once, she gave the class a spelling test but set me aside and
gave me a test designed for junior
high students. When I spelled all the words right, she crumpled
up the paper and made me eat it.
“You’ll learn respect,” she said.
She sent a letter home with me that told my parents to either cut
my braids or keep me home

from class. My parents came in the next day and dragged their
braids across Betty Towle’s desk.
“Indians, indians, indians.” She said it without capitalization.
She called me “indian, indi-
an, indian.”
And I said, Yes I am, I am Indian. Indian, I am.
Third Grade
My traditional Native American art career began and ended with
my very first portrait: Stick
Indian Taking a Piss in My Backyard.
As I circulated the original print around the classroom, Mrs.
Schluter intercepted and confis-
cated my art.
Censorship, I might cry now. Freedom of expression, I would
write in editorials to the tribal
newspaper.
In the third grade, though, I stood alone in the corner, faced the
wall, and waited for the pun-
ishment to end.
I’m still waiting.
Fourth Grade

“You should be a doctor when you grow up,” Mr. Schluter told
me, even though his wife, the
3Sherman Alexie: Indian Education
third grade teacher, thought I was crazy beyond my years. My
eyes always looked like I had just hit-
and-run someone.
“Guilty,” she said. “You always look guilty.”
“Why should I be a doctor?” I asked Mr. Schluter.
“So you can come back and help the tribe. So you can heal
people.”
That was the year my father drank a gallon of vodka a day and
the same year that my mother
started two hundred quilts but never finished any. They sat in
separate, dark places in our HUD house
and wept savagely.
I ran home after school, heard their Indian tears, and looked in
the mirror. Doctor Victor, I
called myself, invented and education, talked to my reflection.
Doctor Victor to the emergency room.
Fifth Grade
I picked up a basketball for the first time and made my first

shot. No. I missed my first shot,
missed the basket completely, and the ball landed in the dirt and
sawdust, sat there just like I had sat
there only minutes before.
But it felt good, that ball in my hands, all those possibilities and
angles. It was mathematics,
geometry. It was beautiful.
At that same moment, my cousin Steven Ford sniffed rubber
cement from a paper bag and
leaned back on the merry-go-round. His ears rang, his mouth
was dry, and everyone seemed so
far away.
But it felt good, that buzz in his head, all those colors and
noises. It was chemistry, biology. It
was beautiful.
Oh, do you remember those sweet, almost innocent choices that
the Indian boys were forced
to make?
Sixth Grade
Randy, the new Indian kid from the white town of Springdale,
got into a fight an hour after he
first walked into the reservation school.

Stevie Flett called him out, called him a squaw man, called him
a pussy, and called him a punk.
Randy and Stevie, and the rest of the Indian boys, walked out
into the playground.
“Throw the first punch,” Stevie said as they squared off.
“No,” Randy said.
“Throw the first punch,” Stevie said again.
“No,” Randy said again.
“Throw the first punch!” Stevie said for the third time, and
Randy reared back and pitched a
knuckle fastball that broke Stevie’s nose.
We all stood there in silence, in awe.
That was Randy, my soon-to-be first and best friend, who taught
me the most valuable lesson
about living in the white world: Always throw the first punch.
Seventh Grade
I leaned through the basement window of the HUD house and
kissed the white girl who would

later be raped by her foster-parent father, who was also white.
They both lived on the reservation,
though, and when the headlines and stories filled the papers
later, not one word was made of their color.
Just Indians being Indians, someone must have said somewhere
and they were wrong.
But on the day I leaned out through the basement window of the
HUD house and kissed the
white girl, I felt the good-byes I was saying to my entire tribe. I
held my lips tight against her lips, a
dry, clumsy, and ultimately stupid kiss.
But I was saying good-bye to my tribe, to all the Indian girls
and women I might have loved, to
all the Indian men who might have called me cousin, even
brother,
I kissed that white girl and when I opened my eyes, I was gone
from the reservation, living in a
farm town where a beautiful white girl asked my name.
“Junior Polatkin,” I said, and she laughed.
After that, no one spoke to me for another five hundred years.
Eighth Grade
At the farm town junior high, in the boys’ bathroom, I could
hear voices from the girls’ bath-

room, nervous whispers of anorexia and bulimia. I could hear
the white girls’ forced vomiting, a sound
so familiar and natural to me after years of listening to my
father’s hangovers.
“Give me your lunch if you’re just going to throw it up,” I said
to one of those girls once.
I sat back and watched them grow skinny from self pity.
Back on the reservation, my mother stood in line to get us
commodities. We carried them
home, happy to have food, and opened the canned beef that even
the dogs wouldn’t eat.
But we ate it day after day and grew skinny from self pity.
5Sherman Alexie: Indian Education
There is more than one way to starve.
Ninth Grade
At the farm town high school dance, after a basketball game in
an overheated gym where I had
scored twenty-seven points and pulled down thirteen rebounds, I
passed out during a slow song.
As my white friends revived me and prepared to take me to the
emergency room where doctors

would later diagnose my diabetes, the Chicano teacher ran up to
us.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s that boy been drinking? I know all
about these Indian kids. They start
drinking real young.”
Sharing dark skin doesn’t necessarily make two men brothers.
Tenth Grade
I passed the written test easily and nearly flunked the driving,
but still received my Washington
State driver’s license on the same day that Wally Jim killed
himself by driving his car into a pine tree.
No traces of alcohol in his blood, good job, wife and two kids.
“Why’d he do it?” asked a white Washington State trooper.
All the Indians shrugged their shoulders, looked down at the
ground.
“Don’t know,” we all said, but when we look in the mirror, see
the history of our tribe in our
eyes, taste failure in the tap water, and shake with old tears, we
understand completely.
Believe me, everything looks like a noose if you stare at it long
enough.
Eleventh Grade

Last night I missed two free throws which would have won the
game against the best team in
the state. The farm town high school I played for is nicknamed
the “Indians,” and I’m probably the
only actual Indian ever to play for a team with such a mascot.
This morning I pick up the sports page and read the headline:
INDIANS LOSE AGAIN.
Go ahead and tell me none of this is supposed to hurt me very
much.
Twelfth Grade
I walk down the aisle, valedictorian of this farm town high
school, and my cap doesn’t fit be-
cause I’ve grown my hair longer than it’s ever been. Later, I
stand as the school-board chairman recites
my awards and accomplishments, and scholarships.
I try to remain stoic for the photographers as I look toward the
future.
Back home on the reservation, my former classmates graduate: a
few can’t read, one or two
are just given attendance diplomas, most look forward to the

parties, The bright students are shaken,
frightened, because they don’t know what comes next.
They smile for the photographer as they look back toward
tradition. The tribal newspaper runs
my photograph and the photograph of my former classmates
side by side.
Postscript: Class Reunion
Victor said, “Why should we organize a reservation high school
reunion? My graduating class
has a reunion every weekend at the Powwow Tavern.”
Author: Sherman Alexie; Article Title: Indian Education;
Source Title: The Lone Ranger and
Tonto Fistfight in Heaven; Publication Date: 1993; City of
Publication: New York, NY; Publisher:
Atlantic Monthly Press; Pages: 171-180; URL:
http://www.cengage.com/custom/static_content/
OLC/s76656_76218lf/alexie.pdf.

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