Introduction to the Short Story A story is a way to say s.docx

Introduction to the Short Story
“A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other
way, and it takes every
word in the story to say what the meaning is.”
—Flannery O’Connor, American writer
3
© VideoBlocks
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the
following:
• Describe early forms of storytelling and their cultural
contexts.
• Identify and differentiate features of the short story, and
analyze their use in particular
stories.
• Analyze the themes and concepts in "Country Lovers."
• Successfully complete academic assignments that involve
writing about and analyzing
short stories.
How Stories Began Chapter 3

From the time we are very young, we see the world and
understand our lives through stories. We
learn from them long before we can explain what a story is.
Research shows that young children
can identify which is the story when presented with an
unfamiliar five-minute narrative about a
boy with magical powers and a five-minute presentation written
humorously to describe how to
play a children’s game (McAdams, 1996). The recognizable
pattern of a story is as old as human
existence; we have always been storytellers.
3.1 How Stories Began
Your environment and personal experiences influence your
response to stories. Whether you
are aware of it or not, the lens through which you envision a
story is filtered by insights you have
gained from family traditions, religious beliefs, and critical life
issues. Thus, interpretations of a
story vary based on the reader’s age, breadth of experience, and
emotional connection. Likewise,
interpretations differ from culture to culture. For example,
stories that once grew out of particu-
lar political controversies continue to be told long after the
original political context has been for-
gotten. The familiar nursery rhyme “Rock-a-bye Baby” is a
classic example. In late 17th-century
England, when there was a struggle for political power between
Catholics and Protestants, King
James II, who had converted to Catholicism, came to power.
The “Rock-a-bye Baby” narrative is
thought to reflect the rumor that the son born to him and the
queen was not their child—but
a boy hidden and secretly exchanged, giving them a Catholic
heir to the throne—until, at some
point (“when the bough breaks”) the truth would be known. The

Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes
provides extensive background information about the stories
that became known as nursery
rhymes with the publication of John Newbery’s book Mother
Goose’s Melody in mid-18th-century
England.
The earliest stories in every culture are its myths, anonymous
stories through which primitive
people sought to explain the world around them, including the
mysteries of divinity, creation,
truth, and death. Literature often retells myths, using them as
literary patterns. Because Greek
and Roman myths are the ones most closely related to our
culture, their patterns turn up often
in other literature.
Prometheus had a prominent role in Greek creation mythology.
He
was a Titan who enjoyed pleasures that humans lacked. In a
bold
move, he stole fire from the sun and brought it to earth as a gift
to humanity. Zeus, father of the gods, was offended by this
defiant
action. Because he was quarrelling with Prometheus at the time,
Zeus arranged a horrible punishment: Prometheus was chained
to
a remote rock where an eagle tormented him constantly by
tearing
at his liver. Zeus set up conditions for ending the torment, but it
did not happen for a long, long time. This myth addresses the
risk
that may accompany efforts to improve human conditions, espe-
cially if the action defies the established order of things.
Prometheus has a counterpart in British literature. Matching

the pattern of the original myth to a large extent, novelist Mary
◀ After giving fire to humanity, Prometheus was chained to a
rock as
punishment by Zeus.
Nicolas Sebastien Adam/The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty
Features of the Short Story Chapter 3
Shelley introduces readers to Dr. Victor Frankenstein, an
eccentric scientist who manages to
create “new” human life. However, the man he creates does not
possess the kind of human
refinements he hoped to achieve. Instead, his experiment
produces a grotesque monster that
torments Dr. Frankenstein and eventually kills members of the
doctor’s family. In the subti-
tle of her novel, Shelley identified Frankenstein as “The
Modern Prometheus” (Shelley, 1818).
Both Prometheus, the ancient Titan, and Frankenstein, the
modern scientist, saw themselves as
champions of humanity; both acted boldly and risked reversals,
which came; and both suffered
lasting pain as a result of their actions.
Other early story forms include the legend, the fable, the
parable, and the tale. All are short and,
like myths, provide reflections on human experiences. Legends
often are traditions as well as
stories. They are rooted in history and have fewer supernatural
aspects than myths do. Fables are
stories that often feature animals as characters, although people
and inanimate objects may also

play a key role, and always offer a moral or lesson. Parables
also illustrate a moral or lesson, but
the details of these stories carefully parallel those of the
situation surrounding the moral. Tales,
told in an uncomplicated manner, are anecdotes about an event.
3.2 Features of the Short Story
The short story, as we know it, is a fictional narrative with a
formal design. More stylized than a
simple anecdote or narrative sketch, the short story form was
developed in the 19th century. Two
American writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe,
were highly influential in creating
the short story genre. In 1842, Poe was the first to define the
genre formally, calling it an artistic
composition controlled to produce a single unified effect—
something he achieved brilliantly in
his stories that explored themes like vengeance and fear of
death. Beginning in the 20th century,
short stories tended to focus more and more on real-life
situations. In the early 20th century,
O. Henry popularized the surprise ending as a short story
technique. You will find one of his
stories in Chapter 4.
Generally, a short story has the following features:
• a plot (a series of actions, events, or developments)
• conflict (opposing actions, ideas, and decisions that hold
the plot together)
• a setting (the place where the action occurs)
• a clear time frame (usually a relatively short period of
time)
• characters (fictional individuals who initiate the action
and create the conflict)
• a point of view (the particular perspective or slant through

which the story is presented)
• a theme (the underlying idea that the story illustrates or
represents)
• particular stylistic features, including tone, irony, and
symbolism
Detailed discussion and illustrations of each of these elements
are included in the next few
chapters.
Stories also reflect culture. The term culture refers to common
characteristics of a group or a
region. Culture is never static; it is a changing phenomenon,
constantly reconfigured by human
behavior, language, laws, events, patterns, products, beliefs,
and ideals. To put it simply, culture
refers to a way of life, an ethos. Writers often reflect a
particular culture through the setting of a
story or the spirit of the characters’ lives—providing insight,
for example, into Southern culture,
post–World War I culture, or global culture. In this way, stories
preserve culture: They freeze
moments in time and create cultural awareness.
As you read “Country Lovers,” you are faced with interracial
issues, which are explored through
the character development, actions, and personal dilemmas of a
privileged white boy and an ulti-
mately powerless black girl. Notice how the author pulls you
into an awareness of the culture in
which the action happens. Also, look for the characteristics of

the short story listed above; each
one is important. (A number of common words in the story,
such as “labourer” and “honourable,”
may appear somewhat unfamiliar because they are spelled using
the British and South African
conventions rather than American ones.)
Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)
Nadine Gordimer has lived in South Africa since birth and,
except for a year
spent in university, has devoted all her adult life to writing—
completing 13
novels and 10 short story collections, works that have been
published in 40
languages. Her strong opposition to apartheid, the
socioeconomic system
that oppressed the majority black population in South Africa
(1940–1994), is
a dominant theme in her writing, with her later works reflecting
challenges
accompanying the changing attitudes in the country toward
racial relation-
ships. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.
© Kurt Krieger/Corbis
Entertainment/Corbis
Country Lovers
Nadine Gordimer (1975)
A story about forbidden love on a South African farm.
The farm children play together when they are small, but once
the
white children go away to school they soon don’t play together

any more, even in the holidays. Although most of the black chil-
dren get some sort of schooling, they drop every year farther
behind the grades passed by the white children; the childish
vocabulary, the child’s exploration of the adventurous
possibilities
of dam, koppies,1 mealie lands,2 and veld3—there comes a time
when the white children have surpassed these with the vocabu-
lary of boarding-school and the possibilities of inter-school
sports
matches and the kind of adventures seen at the cinema. This
use-
fully coincides with the age of twelve or thirteen; so that by the
time early adolescence is reached, the black children are making
along with the bodily changes common to all, an easy transition
to
adult forms of address, beginning to call their old playmates
mis-
sus and baasie little master.4
1 Koppies, a small village in South Africa.
2 Mealie lands, maize fields.
3 Veld, wide-open, rural spaces.
4 Baasie little master, a way of addressing a young white male.
Setting: The first three
paragraphs describe the
setting of the story, intro-
ducing the reader to a rural
environment in South Africa
where white children and
black children share some
common childhood experi-
ences, but, their customs,

expectations, and roles
become distinctly different
as they grow up. For exam-
ple, only the white children
leave the Kraal, or village,
to attend school in town.
The trouble was Paulus Eysendyck did not seem to realize that
Thebedi was now simply one of the crowd of farm children
down at the kraal,5 recognizable in his sisters’ old clothes. The
first Christmas holidays after he had gone to boarding-school
he brought home for Thebedi a painted box he had made in his
wood-work class. He had to give it to her secretly because he
had
nothing for the other children at the kraal. And she gave him,
before he went back to school, a bracelet she had made of thin
brass wire and the grey-and-white beans of the castor-oil crop
his
father cultivated. (When they used to play together, she was the
one who had taught Paulus how to make clay oxen for their toy
spans.6) There was a craze, even in the platteland towns like the
one where he was at school, for boys to wear elephant-hair and
other bracelets beside their watch-straps; his was admired,
friends
asked him to get similar ones for them. He said the natives
made
them on his father’s farm and he would try.
When he was fifteen, six feet tall and tramping round at school

dances with the girls from the “sister” school in the same town;
when he had learnt how to tease and flirt and fondle quite inti-
mately these girls who were the daughters of prosperous farmers
like his father; when he had even met one who, at a wedding he
had attended with his parents on a nearby farm, had let him do
with her in a locked storeroom what people did when they made
love—when he was as far from his childhood as all this, he still
brought home from a shop in town a red plastic belt and gilt
hoop
ear-rings for the black girl, Thebedi. She told her father the
missus
had given these to her as a reward for some work she had
done—
it was true she sometimes was called to help out in the
farmhouse.
She told the girls in the kraal that she had a sweetheart nobody
knew about, far away, away on another farm, and they giggled,
and teased, and admired her. There was a boy in the kraal called
Njabulo who said he wished he could have brought her a belt
and
ear-rings.
When the farmer’s son was home for the holidays she wandered
far from the kraal and her companions. He went for walks alone.
They had not arranged this; it was an urge each followed
indepen-
dently. He knew it was she, from a long way off. She knew that
his dog would not bark at her. Down at the dried-up river-bed
where five or six years ago the children had caught a leguaan
one
great day—a creature that combined ideally the size and
ferocious
aspect of the crocodile with the harmlessness of the lizard—
they
squatted side by side on the earth bank. He told her traveller’s
tales: about school, about the punishments at school,

particularly,
exaggerating both their nature and his indifference to them. He
told her about the town of Middleburg, which she had never
seen.
She had nothing to tell but she prompted with many questions,
like any good listener. While he talked he twisted and tugged at
the roots of white stinkwood and Cape willow trees that looped
out of the eroded earth around them. It had always been a good
spot for children’s games, down there hidden by the mesh of
old,
5 Kraal, a village of southern African natives.
6 Wagons, typically pulled by a team of oxen.
Characters: Paulus and
Thebedi are introduced as
the main characters. What
can you conclude about
them based on their actions
and the description of their
physical appearances?
Point of View: The charac-
ters are introduced by an
observer who is not part
of the story’s action (third-
person point of view). This
observer appears to under-
stand the racial conditions,
presenting the action in

the story without advocat-
ing openly or stridently for
changes.
Details: The setting and
associated customs
described here add depth
and background context.
These details allow the
reader to understand how
and why Paulus and Thebe-
di’s relationship develops.
ant-eaten trees held in place by vigorous ones, wild asparagus
bushing up between the trunks, and here and there prickly-pear
cactus sunken-skinned and bristly, like an old man’s face,
keeping
alive sapless until the next rainy season. She punctured the dry
hide of a prickly-pear again and again with a sharp stick while
she
listened. She laughed a lot at what he told her, sometimes drop-
ping her face on her knees, sharing amusement with the cool
shady earth beneath her bare feet. She put on her pair of
shoes—
white sandals, thickly Blanco-ed7 against the farm dust— when
he
was on the farm, but these were taken off and laid aside, at the
river-bed.

One summer afternoon when there was water flowing there and
it was very hot she waded in as they used to do when they were
children, her dress bunched modestly and tucked into the legs
of her pants. The schoolgirls he went swimming with at dams or
pools on neighbouring farms wore bikinis but the sight of their
dazzling bellies and thighs in the sunlight had never made him
feel
what he felt now when the girl came up the bank and sat beside
him, the drops of water beading off her dark legs the only points
of light in the earth-smelling, deep shade. They were not afraid
of one another, they had known one another always; he did with
her what he had done that time in the storeroom at the wedding,
and this time it was so lovely, so lovely, he was surprised . . .
and
she was surprised by it, too—he could see in her dark face that
was part of the shade, with her big dark eyes, shiny as soft
water,
watching him attentively: as she had when they used to huddle
over their teams of mud oxen, as she had when he told her about
detention weekends at school.
They went to the river-bed often through those summer
holidays.
They met just before the light went, as it does quite quickly,
and
each returned home with the dark—she to her mother’s hut, he
to the farmhouse—in time for the evening meal. He did not tell
her about school or town any more. She did not ask questions
any
longer. He told her, each time, when they would meet again.
Once
or twice it was very early in the morning; the lowing of the
cows
being driven to graze came to them where they lay, dividing
them

with unspoken recognition of the sound read in their two pairs
of
eyes, opening so close to each other.
He was a popular boy at school. He was in the second, then the
first soccer team. The head girl of the “sister” school was said
to
have a crush on him; he didn’t particularly like her, but there
was
a pretty blonde who put up her long hair into a kind of doughnut
with a black ribbon round it, whom he took to see films when
the
schoolboys and girls had a free Saturday afternoon. He had been
driving tractors and other farm vehicles since he was ten years
old,
and as soon as he was eighteen he got a driver’s license and in
the holidays, this last year of his school life, he took
neighbours’
daughters to dances and to the drive-in cinema that had just
opened twenty kilometers from the farm. His sisters were
married,
7 Blanco, a compound used to protect leather and maintain
color.
5
by then; his parents often left him in charge of the farm over the
weekend while they visited the young wives and grandchildren.
When Thebedi saw the farmer and his wife drive away on a
Saturday afternoon, the boot of their Mercedes filled with fresh-

killed poultry and vegetables from the garden that it was part
of her father’s work to tend, she knew that she must come not
to the river-bed but up to the house. The house was an old one,
thick-walled, dark against the heat. The kitchen was its lively
thor-
oughfare, with servants, food supplies, begging cats and dogs,
pots boiling over, washing being damped for ironing, and the
big
deep-freezer the missus had ordered from town, bearing a cro-
cheted mat and a vase of plastic irises. But the dining-room
with
the bulging-legged heavy table was shut up in its rich, old smell
of
soup and tomato sauce. The sitting-room curtains were drawn
and
the T.V. set silent. The door of the parents’ bedroom was locked
and the empty rooms where the girls had slept had sheets of
plas-
tic spread over the beds. It was in one of these that she and the
farmer’s son stayed together whole almost: she had to get away
before the house servants, who knew her, came in at dawn.
There
was a risk someone would discover her or traces of her presence
if
he took her to his own bedroom, although she had looked into it
many times when she was helping out in the house and knew
well,
there, the row of silver cups he had won at school.
When she was eighteen and the farmer’s son nineteen and
working
with his father on the farm before entering a veterinary college,
the young man Njabulo asked her father for her. Njabulo’s
parents
met with hers and the money he was to pay in place of the cows
it is customary to give a prospective bride’s parents was settled

upon. He had no cows to offer; he was a labourer on the
Eysendyck
farm, like her father. A bright youngster; old Eysendyck had
taught
him brick-laying and was using him for odd jobs in
construction,
around the place. She did not tell the farmer’s son that her par-
ents had arranged for her to marry. She did not tell him, either,
before he left for his first term at the veterinary college, that
she
thought she was going to have a baby. Two months after her
mar-
riage to Njabulo, she gave birth to a daughter. There was no dis-
grace in that; among her people it is customary for a young man
to make sure, before marriage, that the chosen girl is not barren,
and Njabulo made love to her then. But the infant was very light
and did not quickly grow darker as most African babies do.
Already
at birth there was on its head a quantity of straight, fine floss,
like that which carries the seeds of certain weeds in the veld.
The
unfocused eyes it opened were grey flecked with yellow.
Njabulo
was the matt, opaque coffee-grounds colour that has always
been called black; the colour of Thebedi’s legs on which beaded
water looked oyster-shell blue, the same colour as Thebedi’s
face,
where the black eyes, with their interested gaze and clear
whites,
were so dominant. Njabulo made no complaint. Out of his farm
labourer’s earnings he bought from the Indian store a
cellophane-
windowed pack containing a pink plastic bath, six napkins, a
card
of safety pins, a knitted jacket, cap and bootees, a dress, and a
tin

of Johnson’s Baby Powder, for Thebedi’s baby.
Time frame: Notice how
the selected events in these
paragraphs account for
the passing of time, here
guiding the reader to focus
on Paulus as a young man
(age 19) and Thebedi as an
18-year-old.
Conflict is introduced in
two ways: (1) by Thebedi’s
marriage to Njabulo, and
(2) by her pregnancy. In
both cases it is internal con-
flict—something that The-
bedi, at this point, chooses
to deal with alone.
When it was two weeks old Paulus Eysendyck arrived home
from
the veterinary college for the holidays. He drank a glass of
fresh,
still-warm milk in the childhood familiarity of his mother’s
kitchen

and heard her discussing with the old house-servant where
they could get a reliable substitute to help out now that the girl
Thebedi had had a baby. For the first time since he was a small
boy he came right into the kraal. It was eleven o’clock in the
morn-
ing. The men were at work in the lands. He looked about him,
urgently; the women turned away, each not wanting to be the
one
approached to point out where Thebedi lived. Thebedi appeared,
coming slowly from the hut Njabulo had built in white man’s
style,
with a tin chimney, and a proper window with glass panes set in
straight as walls made of unfired bricks would allow. She
greeted
him with hands brought together and a token movement rep-
resenting the respectful bob with which she was accustomed to
acknowledge she was in the presence of his father or mother. He
lowered his head under the doorway of her home and went in.
He
said, “I want to see. Show me.”
She had taken the bundle off her back before she came out into
the light to face him. She moved between the iron bedstead
made
up with Njabulo’s checked blankets and the small wooden table
where the pink plastic bath stood among food and kitchen pots,
and picked up the bundle from the snugly blanketed grocer’s
box
where it lay. The infant was asleep; she revealed the closed,
pale,
plump tiny face, with a bubble of spit at the corner of the
mouth,
the spidery pink hands stirring. She took off the woollen cap
and
the straight fine hair flew up after it in static electricity,
showing

gilded strands here and there. He said nothing. She was
watching
him as she had done when they were little, and the gang of chil-
dren had trodden down a crop in their games or transgressed in
some other way for which he, as the farmer’s son, the white one
among them, must intercede with the farmer. She disturbed the
sleeping face by scratching or tickling gently at a cheek with
one
finger, and slowly the eyes opened, saw nothing, were still
asleep,
and then, awake, no longer narrowed, looked out at them, grey
with yellowish flecks, his own hazel eyes.
He struggled for a moment with a grimace of tears, anger, and
self-pity. She could not put out her hand to him. He said, “You
haven’t been near the house with it?”
She shook her head.
“Never?”
Again she shook her head.
“Don’t take it out. Stay inside. Can’t you take it away
somewhere.
You must give it to someone—”
She moved to the door with him.
He said, “I’ll see what I will do. I don’t know.” And then he
said: “I
feel like killing myself.”
With Paulus’s return, the
conflict becomes external.

10
Emotional Depth: Deep
emotions are often
expressed in short stories.
Notice the range of feelings
and emotions that Paulus
experiences.
15
Her eyes began to glow, to thicken with tears. For a moment
there
was the feeling between them that used to come when they were
alone down at the river-bed.
He walked out.
Two days later, when his mother and father had left the farm for
the day, he appeared again. The women were away on the lands,
weeding, as they were employed to do as casual labour in the
summer; only the very old remained, propped up on the ground
outside the huts in the flies and the sun. Thebedi did not ask
him
in. The child had not been well; it had diarrhoea. He asked
where
its food was. She said, ‘“The milk comes from me.” He went
into
Njabulo’s house, where the child lay; she did not follow but
stayed

outside the door and watched without seeing an old crone who
had lost her mind, talking to herself, talking to the fowls who
ignored her.
She thought she heard small grunts from the hut, the kind of
infant grunt that indicates a full stomach, a deep sleep. After a
time, long or short she did not know, he came out and walked
away with plodding stride (his father’s gait) out of sight,
towards
his father’s house.
The baby was not fed during the night and although she kept
tell-
ing Njabulo it was sleeping, he saw for himself in the morning
that
it was dead. He comforted her with words and caresses. She did
not cry but simply sat, staring at the door. Her hands were cold
as
dead chickens’ feet to his touch.
Njabulo buried the little baby where farm workers were buried,
in the place in the veld the farmer had given them. Some of the
mounds had been left to weather away unmarked, others were
covered with stones and a few had fallen wooden crosses. He
was
going to make a cross but before it was finished the police came
and dug up the grave and took away the dead baby: someone—
one of the other labourers? their women?—had reported that
the baby was almost white, that, strong and healthy, it had died
suddenly after a visit by the farmer’s son. Pathological tests on
the
infant corpse showed intestinal damage not always consistent
with
death by natural causes.
Thebedi went for the first time to the country town where

Paulus
had been to school, to give evidence at the preparatory examina-
tion into the charge of murder brought against him. She cried
hysterically in the witness box, saying yes, yes (the gilt hoop
ear-
rings swung in her ears), she saw the accused pouring liquid
into
the baby’s mouth. She said he had threatened to shoot her if she
told anyone.
More than a year went by before, in that same town, the case
was
brought to trial. She came to Court with a new-born baby on her
back. She wore gilt hoop ear-rings; she was calm; she said she
had
not seen what the white man did in the house.
Paulus Eysendyck said he had visited the hut but had not
poisoned
the child.
20
Theme: From this point
on, the main theme of the
story is developed and
emphasized—as circum-
stances present at least the
possibility that Thebedi will
be able to take a credible
stand against Paulus’s crim-
inal action and confront the

racially biased conditions
that oppose her. Ultimately,
though, her strength and
intentions are no match
for the impenetrable social
traditions.
25
The Defence did not contest that there had been a love relation-
ship between the accused and the girl, or that intercourse had
taken place, but submitted there was no proof that the child was
the accused’s.
The judge told the accused there was strong suspicion against
him
but not enough proof that he had committed the crime. The
Court
could not accept the girl’s evidence because it was clear she had
committed perjury either at this trial or at the preparatory
exami-
nation. There was the suggestion in the mind of the Court that
she
might be an accomplice in the crime; but again, insufficient
proof.
The judge commended the honourable behavior of the husband
(sitting in the court in a brown-and-yellow quartered golf cap,
bought for Sundays) who had not rejected his wife and had
“even

provided clothes for the unfortunate infant out of his slender
means.”
The verdict on the accused was “not guilty.”
The young white man refused to accept the congratulations of
press and public and left the Court with his mother’s raincoat
shielding his face from photographers. His father said to the
press,
“I will try and carry on as best I can to hold up my head in the
district.”
Interviewed by the Sunday papers, who spelled her name in a
variety of ways, the black girl, speaking in her own language,
was
quoted beneath her photograph: “It was a thing of our
childhood,
we don’t see each other any more.”
“Country Lovers,” from “Town and Country Lovers” in Life
Times: Stories 1952–2007
by Nadine Gordimer, p. 267, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
Reprinted by permission of
Russell & Volkening as agents for the author. Copyright © 1980
by Nadine Gordimer.
R E S P O N S E A N D R E F L E C T I O N Q U E S T I O N
S
Connecting
Right from the opening sentence it is clear that this will be a
story about interracial relationships.
What tone does the author immediately establish in exploring
this theme? How does Thebedi’s

innocence affect you? Do you identify with her, or are you
skeptical about her because her child-
hood innocence keeps her from understanding her social
position?
Considering
Identify and analyze the cultural factors that contribute to
Thebedi’s hopes and disappointments.
Notice how the story’s time frame (covering several years in
Thebedi’s life) serves to slowly reveal
issues that will dampen her hopes and increase her
disappointments.
Concluding
Is Paulus alone responsible for his daughter’s death? Is Thebedi
totally powerless in preventing her
baby’s death? What, in the end, does the story suggest about the
power vs. powerless dilemma that
is all too prevalent in our world?
30
Writing About Short Stories Chapter 3
3.3 Writing About Short Stories
Writing is a learning process that requires you to engage in
reshaping, or transforming, knowl-
edge. Your topic may be a concept, an assumption, a fact, or a
conclusion you have reached.
Because thinking precedes writing, you first have to think about
your subject, analyze it, and

select and arrange words to express the particular things you
want to communicate about it.
Or, to put it another way, when you sit down to write, your
thoughts don’t come to you neatly in
sequential order. You have to discuss, debate, and sort out in
your mind what you want to put
on the screen or paper in front of you. As you do this, you will
discover new ideas, insights, or
conclusions. Approaching writing in this manner will surely
increase your understanding of the
topic—you will gain knowledge. Even if a writing experience
only reinforces an understanding
you already have of a particular subject, it is still valuable
because it solidifies learning. Writing in
this way becomes a tool for learning and increasing your
knowledge.
Writing assignments related to a short story will not simply
require you to retell the plot or pro-
vide memorized information. Instead, written responses to a
short story require critical thinking.
That means you must reflect on what you have read, then
analyze it, synthesize it, and evaluate it
in light of your own experience. Each of these is a separate
activity:
• When you analyze a story, you focus on examining the
nature of its individual elements.
• When you synthesize, you focus on discovering the
relationships of these elements and
their combined effect in the story.
• When you evaluate, you focus on making a judgment
about the value of the story. Your

statement is personal, but it needs to express more than
likes/dislikes. For instance, it
might identify and document a story’s quality, its creativity, its
moral or ethical view, or its
significance in relation to particular contemporary issues.
This writing process becomes an intellectual quest in which you
seek to capture knowledge, draw
it into the realm of your experience and understanding, and use
words to define it. This challeng-
ing quest is called learning, and the writing process used to
communicate it to others becomes,
unavoidably, a learning process.
Keep in mind that the short story is a distinct genre within the
spectrum of imaginative litera-
ture. In writing about the short story, it is important to
emphasize its essential elements. These
elements will be discussed in detail in the next few chapters. In
the meantime, you can use these
general guidelines in preparing an analysis of a short story:
• Be aware of the central conflict and how it is resolved—
because conflict is the central ele-
ment in a short story.
• Identify the idea that underlies the story and notice how it
is made clear by the outcome of
the conflict.
• Look carefully at the characters and setting to determine
what each contributes to the
story’s theme.
Journaling as an Analytical Resource

Keeping a journal on the reading selections in this course can be
a useful resource for you. A
journal is simply a record of your thoughts, observations, and
feelings. Journals are, perhaps,
best structured when you record “thoughts and observations” on
one side of the journal and
“feelings” on the other. In general, you needn’t pay particular
attention to form or style—just get
your thoughts down. As a learning tool, a journal is useful in
helping you clarify, reflect on, and
explore new ideas generated by your recorded impressions.
Each of these activities stimulates
critical thinking and increases self-awareness. Each is an
engaging and self-informing learning
experience.
You can also use journaling as a tool for literary analysis.
Specifically, journaling is an excellent
first step in the process of writing an analytical essay. By
reviewing your brief journal observa-
tions (sometimes only a word or two) made after reading a short
story, you will often see con-
nections that suddenly spark a new insight. For example, you
might see the theme of the story
differently now because you’ve had time to reflect on it.
Without a doubt, journaling will provide
you with valuable resources for analyzing and writing about
literature. See Table 3.1 for a journal-
ing template you can use in this course. Make a habit of writing
in your journal as you read each
literary selection. Later, you can refer back to your entries and

be reminded of your thoughts on
each piece in preparation for an assignment or paper.
Table 3.1: Journal template
MY JOURNAL
Thoughts/observations Feelings/responses/applications Links
Writing an Analytical Essay in Response to a Short Story
In preparing to write an analytical essay, you should use the
basic steps outlined in Chapter 2
for developing a short-answer essay. That is, you should read
the story carefully, mark parts that
appear important, reflect on what you’ve read in order to
develop your response, reread particular
sections if necessary, and then—to support your view—locate
content details and literary tech-
niques that you can include in your essay. If you are journaling
as you read, you probably have
much of this information already.
The analytical essay requires a more extensive interpretation of
what you have read, but your
approach to preparing it does not need to change. For example,
in preparing to write a short-
answer essay about Paulus Eysendyck’s character in “Country
Lovers,” you might think about
how he treats Thebedi when they are young children
unconcerned about the social structure that
separated them, how he responds to her when he comes home
from school in the summer, and
how he treats their infant daughter. After these reflections, you
would describe the predominant
aspect of his character and identify supporting details from the

story. Your short-answer response
could be stated in one or two paragraphs. An analytical essay,
on the other hand, requires more
depth. So, in preparing it, you would need to consider additional
aspects of the story that make
you take notice of Paulus’s character—including descriptions of
him, contrasts between him and
Njabulo, the way his actions reflect his social position, and
more.
Table 3.2 illustrates how an analytical essay resembles a short
essay but has more depth and more
breadth.
These steps are necessary in developing the structure of an
analytical essay related to a piece of
literature. They assume that you have been given a specific
topic. If you are asked to choose a
topic, begin by thinking about your topic in broad terms, then
narrow its scope.
Table 3.2: Structure of an analytical essay
Writing goals Essential elements in an essay’s
structure
Supporting evidence
1. Establish your focus Establish the focus of your essay in the
opening
paragraph by clearly presenting your position on
the topic. You do this by stating your argument

and how that claim can be supported. This
statement becomes the thesis sentence—the
central focus of the essay.
Make general reference to
the evidence you will use to
support your claim.
2. Develop your
argument
Use a separate paragraph to develop each
aspect of your argument.
• Arrange paragraphs beginning with a
presentation of the major point in your
argument—or with a minor point, whichever
approach seems stronger.
• If applicable, add one or more paragraphs to
show your awareness of other points of view
and how your position relates to them.
• Create clear transitions from paragraph to
paragraph.
Mark sections of the story that
can be used to illustrate each
aspect of your argument.
Find insights that critics have
offered on your topic; incorpo-
arate them into your essay and
include your response to them.
Use your course’s approved
formatting style in your source

citations.
3. Summarize Create a closing paragraph that essentially
restates the argument/thesis you stated in your
opening paragraph, and succinctly summarize
the claims that support it.
4. Review your first draft Consider what you have written to be
a first
draft, not a finished essay. Check it for mechan-
ical errors. Read it aloud several times; change
wording or sentence structures until there is a
smooth, coherent flow of thought throughout
your essay.
5. Submit your revised
Draft
R E S P O N D I N G T O R E A D I N G
Sample Outline for an Analytical Essay
The following student response carefully analyzes Thebedi’s
character, using details from the story to
support the argument that she does, indeed, change. The outline
is included to show how to plan
and develop the structure of an essay.
Question: Through her central role in “Country Lovers,”
Thebedi reveals a lot about
herself. Other people and events reveal impressions of her, too.
Do you believe her

character remains the same or changes over the course of the
story? Choose a position
and make an argument for it in an analytical essay of about 500
words.
Outline
Paragraph 1
Introduction (built around a thesis statement)
Thesis Statement (its two components)
• Thebedi is presented as an innocent child; she has hopeful
dreams.
• Thebedi’s social status and her love relationship with
Paulus cause her hopeful
nature to be replaced with submissiveness.
Paragraph 2
Focus of first observation: Thebedi’s early relationship with
Paulus
• Her innocence allows her to be generous; she gives him
gifts.
• She is attentive to his stories.
Paragraph 3
Focus of next observation: Their love relationship
• Thebedi demonstrates her dreams, her risk-taking nature.
• But she lacks genuine courage (doesn’t tell him she’s
pregnant).

• She accepts the arranged marriage with Njabulo.
Paragraph 4
Focus of next observation: Thebedi’s later meetings with Paulus
• She wants to rekindle her love for him, but she retreats to
her racial role. Her
anger makes her testify against him, but it does not change
anything.
• In the end, feeling powerless, she submits to what society
demands.
Paragraph 5
Focus of next observation: Thebedi’s behavior in court
• A year has passed; she does not testify against Paulus.
• She is seen as powerless and submissive to her life
conditions.
Paragraph 6
Conclusion (summary and restatement of thesis)
• Thebedi’s experience shows how difficult it is to change
social traditions and
discrimination.
• Despite her innocence and hopes, she realizes that she
cannot change her situa-
tion; submissiveness becomes her dominant character trait.
Read the student’s essay developed from the outline above. The
annotations point out both the

strengths of the analytical essay’s design and aspects that are
common in the structure of most
short stories.
Illustrate with
details from the
story.
Illustrate with
details from the
story.
Illustrate with
details from the
story.
Illustrate with
details from the
story.
Character of Thebedi—A Victim of Racial Turmoil
In Nadine Gordimer’s story “Country Lovers,” we meet
Thebedi, an innocent black
girl, playing with other children, some of whom are white, and
we learn—as the
story unfolds—how her social status and her love relationship
with Paulus cause

her hopeful nature to be replaced with submissiveness. Despite
her hopeful per-
spective (and even her expression of anger), she realizes her
powerlessness and
settles into acceptance of her life situation.
Thebedi’s generosity is an indication of her youthful innocence.
When Paulus goes
away to school, she gives him “a bracelet she has made of thin
brass wire and the
grey-and-white beans of the castor oil crop his father
cultivated” (Clugston, 2010,
section 3.1, para. 2). She also expresses this generous spirit
when, “like any good
listener,” she is attentive to Paulus’s stories and asks questions.
She carries her childhood openness into her teenage years and is
attracted to
Paulus, a white boy, who has been one of her childhood
playmates. They explore
love, which leads to the birth of a daughter, creating a crisis
that has no simple
resolution in South Africa’s racially tense society. In her love
relationship with
Paulus, she shows that she is a risk taker and idealistic by
finding ways to continue
her love relationship with him secretly. But her risk taking
never develops into full-
blown courage. She doesn’t tell Paulus that she is pregnant; she
doesn’t tell him
that her parents have arranged for her to marry Njabulo. In
marrying Njabulo, she
reveals her submissive character; rather than refusing and
protesting against the
racial customs, she accepts them.

When Paulus comes to see their baby, Thebedi has an
opportunity to express
her hope for new life—an opportunity to plead for help. Her
generosity and
love for Paulus swell within her (“her eyes began to glow, to
thicken with
tears”) (Clugston, 2010, section 3.1, para. 19), but she remains
silent. Later, at
the preliminary investigation, with anger motivating her to be
strong, she tes-
tifies against Paulus, backing up her statements by crying
“hysterically,” and
even enhancing her story by saying that Paulus had threatened
to shoot her
if she told anyone. This action shows her struggle against
submissiveness; she
wants change.
However, a year later, when the trial is held, her courage is
gone; she does not tes-
tify against Paulus. Instead, she says “she had not seen what the
white man did in
the house” (Clugston, 2010, section 3.1, para. 25). By this time,
she has given birth
to Njabulo’s child. She has accepted her place in the social
structure; she speaks to
the newspaper reporter in her “own language.” She knows she
has no power to
do otherwise; she has to let go of whatever idealistic hopes her
relationship with
Paulus might have brought. She puts her hopes behind her,
telling the newspaper
reporter, “It was a thing of our childhood, we don’t see each
other any more”
(Clugston, 2010, section 3.1, para. 32).

“Country Lovers” is a story that shows how difficult it is to
change social tradi-
tions and discriminatory behavior. Despite Thebedi’s hopeful
perspective, she
cannot change her situation, and her submissiveness becomes
her dominant
character trait.
Work Cited
Clugston, R. Wayne. Journey Into Literature. San Diego:
Bridgepoint Education, Inc., 2010. EPUB file.
Writer’s first obser-
vation about The-
bedi’s character
APA citation for a
direct quotation
from the story
Notice how refer-
ences to specific
events and actions
in the story are
used (without direct
quotations) to
show the change in
Thebedi’s character
from openness
and courage to

submissiveness.
This quotation from
the story is placed in
parentheses—apart
from the sentence
structure. The later
quotation is fit
into the sentence
structure.
This transitional
word sets the tone
for the whole para-
graph—which gives
evidence of the
permanence of The-
bedi’s submissive
character.
Concise summary
and reiteration of
thesis statement.
Key Terms and Concepts Chapter 3
Summary
Chapter 3 explains how stories began and briefly describes ways

that stories have defined and
enriched human experience. Myths, the earliest stories in every
culture, seek to explain the
world, including the mysteries of divinity, creation, truth, and
death. On the other hand, legends,
tales, fables, and parables emphasize and clarify particular
human experiences. This chapter also
considers the short story form as it has developed during the
last two centuries, illustrating its
distinctive narrative features and providing guidelines for
analyzing and writing about short sto-
ries. Additionally, this chapter presents Nadine Gordimer’s
“Country Lovers” to illustrate essen-
tial characteristics of the short story.
Key Terms and Concepts
culture Common characteristics of a group or a region.
Writers often reflect a particular
culture through the setting of a story or the spirit of the
characters’ lives—providing insight, for
example, into Southern culture, post–World War I culture, or
global culture.
fable A story that often features animals as characters—
although people and inanimate
objects often play a key role. In all cases, the fable presents a
moral or lesson.
legends Often traditions as well as stories, legends are rooted
in history and have fewer super-
natural aspects than myths.
myths Anonymous, primitive stories that seek to explain the
world, including the mysteries
surrounding divinity, creation, truth, and death.

parable A brief story that illustrates a moral situation or
lesson, with details of the story care-
fully paralleling those of the particular situation surrounding
the moral.
tale An anecdote about an event that is told in an
uncomplicated manner.
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Report Information from ProQuest
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09 March 2017 ProQuest
Table of contents
1. Creating a coaching culture across a global sales
force.............................................................................. 1
Bibliography...........................................................................
........................................................................... 7
09 March 2017 ii ProQuest

Document 1 of 1
Creating a coaching culture across a global sales force
Author: Phillips, Tracy
ProQuest document link
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to explore how Microsoft Advertising
built a coaching culture across its global sales
manager population. This case study illustrates how a coaching
program was delivered that allowed for the
complexity within the business as well as being flexible enough
to meet the needs of different cultures. This
practical case study material from Microsoft Advertising, a
global provider of digital advertising platforms, shows
how the learning and development team developed the
performance coaching capability of sales managers in
order to lift the performance of the global sales force.
Links: Linking Service
Full text:
Headnote
Abstract
Purpose - The aim is to explore how Microsoft Advertising built
a coaching culture across its global sales
manager population.
Design/methodology/approach - This case study illustrates how
a coaching program was delivered that allowed
for the complexity within the business as well as being flexible
enough to meet the needs of different cultures.
Findings - This practical case study material from Microsoft
Advertising, a global provider of digital advertising
platforms, shows how the learning and development team
developed the performance coaching capability of
sales managers in order to lift the performance of the global
sales force.
Practical implications - It explores the implications of designing

a program suitable for global delivery across five
continents, in ten countries and with 22 nationalities of
participants, as well as the practicalities of delivery.
Originality/value - This paper provides information on the
coaching culture across Microsoft Advertising's global
sales manager population.
Keywords Coaching, Sales performance, Sales managers,
Advertising, Global program
Paper type Research paper
Microsoft Advertising is a global leader in the provision of
digital advertising platforms. The company's solutions
enable other businesses to connect digitally with target
consumers and optimize advertising impact. Its primary
business mission is to build a large global base of highly
satisfied, loyal consumers.
In 2006, it became clear that in order to Improve sales
performance and maintain its competitive market
position, the sales manager population within Microsoft
Advertising was going to be key. A sales academy
program, tailored specifically for sales people within the
business, was already in place when feedback from the
global sales managers, via an internal survey, identified a very
specific need for coaching skills development. A
needs assessment followed and confirmed this feedback.
In the fast-paced sales environment, sales managers felt that
they didn't have the time to coach their employees
and knew they could improve in the area of providing
developmental feedback. They recognized they had a
tendency for providing solutions to problems rather than
enabling team members to deliver answers
themselves. They became aware that rather than leading and
empowering their teams, they were managing
them.
Investing in coaching: the business rationale
In addition to the employee development need, there was also a
clear business imperative for investing in a

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coaching culture for sales managers. They occupied a unique
position within the organization as the interface
between the product, the customers and the service delivery
(direct reports, peers and managers). Developing
their coaching skills and creating a coaching culture had the
potential to have a far reaching and positive
impact.
Microsoft Advertising recognized that third party support was
necessary in order to implement and promote this
degree of change on a global scale. Sales managers were spread
across all markets outside of the USA,
including Europe, Canada, Latin America and Asia. Impressed
by its international capabilities, experiential
approach and ability to drive sustained change, it selected
performance consultancy, Lane4, to work in
partnership with the sales academy to design and deliver a
global coaching program.
Creating the More Than Coaching program
The learning and development team formed a strong working

partnership with Lane4 to create the global
coaching skills program - "More Than Coaching." They were
determined that this program should develop the
performance coaching capability of sales managers in order to
lift the performance levels of the global sales
force.
The More Than Coaching project team, which consisted of both
members of Lane4 and Microsoft Advertising,
ran a series of discovery one-on-one discussions and focus
groups with regional sales directors, sales
managers and HR teams across regions. The purpose of this
discovery was to design a program that would
meet both specific challenges faced by the sales managers, and
the different challenges faced by the various
regions.
The findings indicated that the program needed to build on
previous technical selling training to develop a
sustainable coaching culture. The fast-paced sales culture
generates great challenges and often insufficient
support levels. Furthermore, it is common that sales managers
are unfamiliar with the concepts of coaching and
find it difficult to promote effective coaching within their
teams.
Keeping the program relevant
The More Than Coaching program was therefore designed with
the intent to improve the coaching skills of sales
managers and create a desire to promote a coaching mindset
throughout the organization. The approach was
also supported by the knowledge that Microsoft Advertising's
sales managers respond especially well when
they acquire new skills that are directly applicable to the daily
challenges that they face. Making a clear
connection between enhanced coaching skills and business
performance was integral to each element of the
global program.
Digital advertising sales teams are facing increased competition

as the growth in online advertising space
continues. The Microsoft Advertising sales teams were no
different, operating in a pressurized environment with
consistently high targets to achieve within tight deadlines. A
natural focus on numbers and a significant
emphasis on individual performance can also give rise to
competition within teams. Therefore, a need was
identified to develop the mental toughness of the sales managers
and their team members.
Setting the objectives and detailed design
Having examined all the information, the learning and
development team worked with Lane4 to crystallize the
objectives for the program. They included:
* Create a motivating sales environment.
* Generate accountability for sales performance.
* Deliver feedback to drive sales performance.
* Empower direct reports to make decisions.
* Generate creative solutions within teams.
The more detailed design of the program followed taking into
account both the complexity inherent within the
Microsoft Advertising business and the need for a program
flexible enough to meet the needs of different
cultures, while providing a common language and consistent
message. Before the global rollout, the senior
leadership team went through a pilot of the program serving the
dual purpose of finessing the content as well as
ensuring board buy-In and engagement.
The comprehensive six-month program consisted of
experiential, conceptual and reflective workshop learning,
peer action-learning support groups to increase learning and
behavior change, and one-on-one coaching

sessions with Lane4 coaches who showed participants how to
put the skills into practice. This cycle was then
repeated. The program ended with the coaches observing
managers during real-life coaching sessions and
assessing the managers' skills. Each participant also provided a
portfolio that documented their program
experiences and competencies learned. In order to benchmark
current coaching behaviors and set personal
goals for the program, as well as to measure progress, each
participant completed a 360 degree assessment
before and after the program.
Figure 1 shows the program that was rolled out globally from
2006 to 2008. The program has been refined since
its initial inception to encourage more self-facilitation by
Microsoft (for example, encouraging self-facilitation of
the Learning Support Groups within the cohorts). The content of
the workshops has also been combined into
one workshop that explores coaching for performance as well as
motivation.
A focus on coaching and mental toughness
In a highly pressurized sales environment, where targets are
king, mental resilience is key to keeping focused
on the end goal and not letting stress get in the way. Many
managers found that during stressful times, rather
than advising and allowing other team members to deal with
challenges, they would do the job themselves to
get it done quickly. This action not only added to the stress of
their jobs, but it was also detrimental to the
learning and development of their team members.
Sales managers learned how to adopt a performance coaching
mindset, which helped them to let go of certain
projects and, through pointed questioning, help their staff to
work out the solutions for themselves. A coaching
mindset Is underpinned by a fundamental belief in potential.
This mindset enabled the sales managers to raise
awareness and generate responsibility of the people they were

coaching. The program was designed to
develop their coaching skills, which they could apply in a
variety of scenarios, including
* with their team members;
* to effectively challenge their line managers; and
* to identify specific needs of their customers.
The specific skills of coaching (building a coaching
relationship, asking effective questions through active
listening, helping people set motivating goals and providing
people with developmental and motivational
feedback) were then developed throughout the program. In
parallel with developing coaching skills, it was also
important to develop the "mental toughness" necessary for the
sales managers to lead within such a
pressurized environment.
So what is mental toughness?
In today's fast-paced business world, more and more attention is
being focused on people's ability to perform to
high levels when faced with stretching goals, tight deadlines
and changing demands. The highly competitive
sales environment is a perfect example of this. The concept of
mental toughness, originating from the world of
sport, is widely regarded to be one of the most important
psychological attributes in achieving performance
excellence when faced with these pressures.
Lane4's mental toughness research was originally based on elite
sport performers but has been subsequently
extended to include lessons from the military, aviation and
business worlds. Lane4's mental toughness
framework identifies four pillars of mental toughness: focus,
motivation, self-belief and handling pressure. The
participants of the More Than Coaching program explored how
each of the components of mental toughness is
important in determining performance in both sport and
business. The mental toughness skills developed by the
sales managers could then be applied with the people they are

coaching.
The program has evolved since the initial roll out and the
modified workshops focus on coaching for
performance along with one of the four pillars of mental
toughness - making your motivation work for you.
Global rollout: delivery across cultures
The original More Than Coaching program went on to be
delivered in ten countries, across five continents and
22 nationalities. It included local language delivery in Japan
and Korea. Local facilitators were able to design
materials in order to suit the context and differing requirements
of each region, while staying true to the core
program. The program was flexible enough to meet the various
different cultural needs which emerged along
the way in order to become Microsoft Advertising's first
successful initiative in the field of learning and
development on a truly global scale.
For example, in order to deliver the program in an efficient
way, various countries were grouped together,
resulting in very different cultures within one cohort. Canada
and Latin America were one such example with
quite different beliefs and approaches. Coaching felt quite akin
to the Canadian culture whereas countries such
as Brazil and Argentina, which arguably have more paternalistic
cultures, found coaching more of a challenging
concept. Fortunately, the program had many touch points and
included smaller group sessions (peer action-
learning support groups and one-on-one coaching sessions)
where these specific cultural challenges could be
explored further.
Matching the facilitator carefully to the people within each

group was imperative, not only in terms of language
capability but also other cultural factors. For example, in
Singapore a local facilitator initially started to deliver
the program but it quickly became clear that the group were all
ex pats who had difficulty understanding the
Singaporean accent. Being flexible and honest enough to
recognize when the dynamics within a group were not
working and finding a solution at an early stage was critical.
Following are the key lessons learned from the global program
delivery:
* Global initiatives are most effective when there is a standard
program, delivered locally and with flexibility.
* Think carefully about which countries/cultures are clustered
together for delivery.
* Allow time within the program for smaller group interventions
to explore specific cultural challenges (e.g. peer
action-learning support groups, one-on-one coaching).
* Do your research and match the facilitator carefully to the
people in each group.
* Don't be afraid to change facilitator if the dynamics are not
working.
The ripple effect
The results of the program were dramatic and far reaching and
are still ongoing. Sales managers were
measured and re-measured using a 360 degree coaching
feedback questionnaire before and after More Than
Coaching. The following data reflects the results from the
initial program rollout between 2006 and 2008.
* 71 percent of managers, peers and direct reports (over 1,900)
across all regions, rated sales managers as
showing marked improvement in all coaching behaviors. This
360 degree data illustrates that the program has
touched not only the sales managers who attended, but indeed
their colleagues, direct reports and managers.
* 75 percent of managers, peers and direct reports of
participants across all regions rated sales managers as

showing an Increased positive behavioral shift in "providing
honest and constructive feedback on performance."
* 75 percent of managers, peers and direct reports of
participants rated sales managers as showing a positive
behavior shift in "encouraging and enabling people to take
responsibility for their own performance and ongoing
development."
* 72 percent of managers, peers and direct reports across all
regions rated sales managers as showing a
positive behavioral shift in "asking questions in order to
encourage others to develop their own Ideas."
Managers fed back that the program had helped them to create a
motivating sales environment by teaching
them how to find out team motivations and challenge personal
assumptions around team members'
performance. One-to-one reviews with staff became much more
effective and managers are now more
confident in giving constructive feedback.
The most significant change, noticed by managers, was the
ability to empower direct reports to make decisions;
rather than just saying what they thought was the best path, they
have learnt to listen and ask the right
questions, enabling people to choose their own path and
determine what the best outcome is. This has
generated creative solutions within teams and freed up
managers' time as a result of trusting others with day-to-
day sales functions (Figure 2).
The program is still ongoing (in the modified format) as and
when new sales managers join Microsoft
Advertising. Due to its success in the Australian joint venture
(ninemsn), a condensed version of More Than

Coaching is also being rolled out to other functions outside of
sales.
Sidebar
"The fast-paced sales culture generates great challenges and
often insufficient support levels."
Sidebar
"[...] more attention is being focused on people's ability to
perform to high levels when faced with stretching
goals."
Sidebar
To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail:
[email protected]
Or visit our web site for further details:
www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints
AuthorAffiliation
Tracy Phillips is Readiness Manager (EMEA/GAP) at Microsoft
Advertising, London, UK.
AuthorAffiliation
About the author
Tracy Phillips is the Readiness Manager (EMEA/GAP) for
Microsoft Advertising based in London. She currently
leads the learning and development effort across the Microsoft
Advertising field sales/service teams in EMEA
and Asia, with an emphasis on delivering valuable training
initiatives that have measurable ROI to the business.
Prior to Microsoft Advertising, Phillips was a Human
Performance Manager at Accenture in Phoenix, Arizona.
She holds a Master of Labor Relations and Human Resources
from Michigan State University and a BA in
Psychology from Arizona State University. Tracy Phillips can
be contacted at: [email protected]
Subject: Multinational corporations; Business coaching;
Advertising agencies; Corporate culture; Salespeople;
Case studies;
Company / organization: Name: Microsoft Advertising; NAICS:
541810;

Classification: 9180: International; 9510: Multinational
corporations; 8301: Advertising agencies; 6200:
Training & development; 9110: Company specific
Publication title: Strategic HR Review; Bingley
Volume: 10
Issue: 4
Pages: 5-10
Number of pages: 6
Publication year: 2011
Publication date: 2011
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing, Limited
Place of publication: Bingley
Country of publication: Hong Kong
Publication subject: Business And Economics
ISSN: 14754398
Source type: Trade Journals
Language of publication: English
Document type: Feature
Document feature: Diagrams Tables
ProQuest document ID: 888588890
Document URL:
12
Copyright: Copyright Emerald Group Publishing, Limited 2011
Last updated: 2016-12-10
Database: ProQuest Central
12

Bibliography
Citation style: APA 6th - American Psychological Association,
6th Edition
Phillips, T. (2011). Creating a coaching culture across a global
sales force. Strategic HR Review, 10(4), 5-10.
Retrieved from
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Contact ProQuest
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http://www.proquest.com/go/pqissupportcontact
http://search.proquest.com/info/termsAndConditionsCreating a
coaching culture across a global sales forceBibliography
Responding to Literary
Experiences
“I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.”

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson
2
© VideoBlocks
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the
following:
• Develop a framework for responding to what you read.
• Describe how the use of persona affects your response to
literature.
• Analyze the themes and concepts presented in this
chapter's literary selections.
• Discuss what literature contributes to your life.
• Recognize figures of speech, including similes and
metaphors.
Writing About What You Read Chapter 2
2.1 Writing About What You Read
In our opening chapter, we observed that enjoying literature
begins with the depth of connection
you make with the imaginary world that a piece of literature
creates. The purpose of this chapter
is to look at a range of literary experiences and to describe what
is involved in responding to them
in meaningful ways. Responding is a personal activity that
allows you to reflect on your experi-
ences and to gain valuable insights about the human condition;
responding can also be a struc-
tured analytical process that requires use of literary tools and
techniques. Responding requires

active mental engagement: exploring ideas, forming
conclusions, and, ultimately, critiquing what
you have read as objectively as possible.
Because this book is an introduction to literature, it offers a
broad range of reading experiences.
Some selections may be familiar, some will introduce you to
surprising insights, and others will
engage you in human encounters and life complexities that
don’t have obvious solutions. The
readings will pull you beyond the scope of popular literature,
beyond conventional romances
with happy endings, and beyond detective stories where
impossible cases are always solved at the
last moment, allowing the forces of good to succeed. Does
exploring more challenging literature
mean that you should never read popular literature, sometimes
called “commercial literature”?
No, this approach readily acknowledges the pleasure and
delightful escape that such reading
offers, but it also takes you beyond the popular literature
horizon, where broader ventures and
more challenging explorations await.
The level of intellectual demands on the reader will vary
because writers have very different
purposes when they write. When the events in a story are
presented simply and developed in a
straightforward manner without extensive detail, the writer’s
intentions are likely to be obvi-
ous and easy to understand. But when a writer’s primary
purpose is hidden or buried in sym-
bols—when, for example, the author sets out to interpret a
puzzling phenomenon or human
condition—the reader will likely need to make careful
intellectual inquiry to understand the

author’s intent.
Framework for Responding to What You Read
As stated previously, reading creates imaginative experiences. It
connects you to new experiences
that become meaningful when you allow them to influence your
thoughts and feelings. To make
your responses active and engaging, you should ask: Is my
reading experience echoing things
that have happened in my life? Is it connecting me to things
I’ve never considered before? Am I
surprised by (or content with) the way it makes me feel? Does it
make me think about a concept
or issue that is important to me or to humanity at large?
Also as you read, consider how the writer develops the
situations, characters, and emotions that
stand out for you. Analyze them. Then, draw conclusions about
what you have read; develop your
interpretation, focusing on how your reading experience relates
to your life, ideas, and values—
not just your values, but others’ also. Your responses can be
organized into three steps: connect-
ing, considering, and concluding. These steps provide a simple
but effective response framework
that you will use throughout this book. See Table 2.1 for
explanations of each step.
At first glance, this matrix may suggest that reading should
produce neat linear responses in
an intellectual inquiry process that is orderly, almost
mechanical. But certainly that is not what

Writing About What You Read Chapter 2
happens when you read literature. Life itself is not that way!
When you read a piece of literature
imaginatively and with mental vigor, you are stepping inside it,
projecting your perspective
across its landscape. Although the author may provide signposts
to follow as you discover what
the literary piece intends, you make your own path. Often, it’s a
winding one; progress can be
slow. Maybe you miss important details that explain the
behavior of an important character,
or you limit the capabilities of a character to the boundaries of
your own experience. Or, you
might miss important connections between what is happening
and why it’s happening, requir-
ing you to do some rereading. Stop-and-go reading like this can
be frustrating, but it also cre-
ates learning opportunities. Expect to do this kind of reading in
an introduction to literature
course—because the truest satisfaction in reading comes from
exploring, moving from insight
to insight.
Table 2.1 Reader’s response framework: Connecting,
considering, and concluding
Connecting
(Imaginative reading)
Involves allowing feelings, curiosity, aspirations, desire to
escape, and associations with past or present experiences to
motivate you to read.
Individual link
and imaginative

“entry” into a
piece of literature.
Considering
(Analysis)
Involves focusing on basic literary elements, artistic skills,
aesthetic features, ideas, observations, contexts, and
dilemmas that you discover as you read and want to explore
in some depth.
Personal inquiry,
as you analyze
and think about
the content and
unique structure
of the literary
work.
Concluding
(Interpretation)
Involves finding your own explanations, making sense of
what you are reading, and determining the value of its
implications.
The matrix in Table 2.1 provides a starting point in the
exploratory process. It will help you dis-
cover insights, appreciate literary techniques, and find
significance in your reading. Throughout
this book, many reading selections include a follow-up
Response and Reflection section contain-
ing questions based on the matrix. These questions—asking you
to connect, consider, and con-
clude—are designed to call attention to details and ideas that
will deepen your response.

A Sample Response
Knowing that you will be expected to write about what you read
introduces an obligation. It
requires you to read not just for pleasure, but also with specific
purpose. When reading for plea-
sure, you can allow yourself to be caught up in experiencing a
story, poem, or play—simply enjoy-
ing the suspenseful moments and identifying with imagined
settings. But reading literature with
a purpose requires you to have something to say about what
you’ve read. It can’t be just a sweep-
ing general statement, such as “That was a great story; it really
held my attention.” Your written
statement needs to include specific and thoughtful observations
that can be supported by details
in the piece of literature you have read. The framework of
connecting, considering, and concluding
can be used in developing your written responses, as illustrated
in Responding to Reading: Sample
Short-Answer Written Response.
How Use of Persona Affects Your Response to Literature
Chapter 2
R E S P O N D I N G T O R E A D I N G
Sample Short-Answer Written Response
Question: Is Sammy presented in the story “A & P” as a person
whose actions are solidly
established, or as one “coming of age,” searching for answers
about how to act in the

adult world?
Published in 1961, early in a decade of counterculture and
social revolution in
America, Updike’s story presents a glimpse into different
generational responses
to these significant movements. The story is set north of Boston
where people
are proud of their Puritan heritage, which dates back to colonial
days and remains
firmly established in their culture. Lengel, the store manager,
feels compelled to
uphold this Puritan ethic when he sees the girls in swimming
suits shopping in his
store. He is offended, both by what they are wearing and also by
their casual atti-
tude when pushing social norms. He confronts them, pointing
out that store policy
does not permit shoppers to be dressed in swimwear. Sammy, a
19-year-old, is
part of the younger generation that supports social change. He
sees the situation
differently, demonstrating how adamantly he opposes Lengel’s
approach by quit-
ting his job on the spot. He takes a gallant stand not only to
impress the girls, but
also to advance the spirit of freedom, excitement, and change
introduced by their
presence. Unfortunately, rather than producing heroic, dramatic
results, his protest
brings only embarrassing personal consequences.
Sammy quit his job in a voice loud enough for the girls to hear,
hoping they would
see him “as their unsuspected hero” (as cited in Clugston,
2014). However, they

did not acknowledge him as they left, and when he got to the
store parking lot
they were gone. Consequently, he experiences no external
affirmation of his
action, no applause for being a hero. But, Sammy gains new
insight: he realizes
“how hard the world was going to be” (as cited in Clugston,
2014). That is, he
begins to understand that his quest for change—stimulated not
just by the girls’
entrance but by stifling routines in his work environment—
would be an arduous
struggle requiring commitment and persistence over time;
achievement of social
change is not driven by spur-of-the moment actions. He shows
the strength of this
awareness later when he disagrees with the idea that the A & P
incident was a sad
one. Sammy disagrees because he learned a lot from the
experience. He may not
have found answers to all the questions he has about becoming a
man, but his
self-knowledge and outlook are more realistically grounded than
ever before.
Connecting:
Writer briefly sum-
marizes important
factors that contrib-
ute to the incident
in the A & P store
and the actions that
occur.

Note: The last sen-
tence is not part
of the summary; it
is the thesis state-
ment—identifying
the purpose of the
written response.
Considering:
Writer selects
details and spe-
cific examples as
evidence of the
rationale and
understanding that
underlie Sammy’s
actions.
Concluding:
Writer repeats the
“point” of the thesis
statement—namely,
that Sammy’s
self-knowledge is
increased.
2.2 How Use of Persona Affects Your Response
to Literature

If there’s a nameplate on your desk at work, it’s possible for
someone who passes by to get a sense of
who you are just by looking at your desk, noticing how things
are arranged, glancing at the design of
your coffee cup, and so on. If these items could speak, the
observer could learn a lot more about you,
of course. A piece of literature is somewhat like that desk: The
author’s name is on it, and you can
discover things about the author when you read. But there’s a
difference. Unlike inboxes and coffee
cups, the characters in stories and poems and plays can speak.
As they do, they may represent what
the author thinks, or they may be “speaking for themselves”—
representing views that are different
from the author’s. In other words, it’s important to understand
an author’s use of persona.
Chapter 2
Persona in “The Road Not Taken”
In Latin, persona means “mask.” When it is used in literature,
persona refers to the person who
is the narrator in a story or the speaker in a poem. In other
words, the main voice in a work of
fiction or poetry is usually not the author’s voice, although it
may reflect the author’s views. The
main voice comes from the person the author created to narrate
or speak. In most cases, this
speaker is a character in the story or the poem, but sometimes a
persona can be an outside voice,
a speaker who is looking at the action but is not part of it.

Look carefully at the student’s analysis in the box following
Robert Frost’s famous poem “The
Road Not Taken.” The analysis identifies the persona (speaker)
as a person who is approaching
decision making thoughtfully, but this person is not necessarily
Robert Frost.
Also note Frost’s use of symbol in the poem. A symbol is an
object, person, or action that conveys
two meanings: its literal meaning and something it stands for. In
“The Road Not Taken,” Frost
presents the literal image of two roads. But he suggests that
they stand for something other than
what their literal meaning conveys: They represent (symbolize)
life’s pathways on which our day-
by-day experiences unfold.
Robert Frost (1874–1963)
Robert Frost was born in San Francisco. At age 11, he moved
with his fam-
ily to New England. He attended both Dartmouth College and
Harvard
but did not graduate. After an unsuccessful attempt at farming,
he and
his wife moved to England in 1912. There, with encouragement
from poet
Ezra Pound, he published his first two collections of poems, A
Boy’s Will
and North of Boston. He returned to the United States in 1915
as a popu-
lar poet and was even more celebrated in the years that
followed, winning
the Pulitzer Prize for his works four times. He was sought after
as an artist

in residence at universities in New England and wrote candidly
about the
poetic process. His lyrical style and masterful use of ordinary
language and
rural settings made his poetry delightful. Building on delight,
he engaged in
ironic inquiry to give expression to complex ideas and questions
that define
the human spirit.
© Bettmann/CORBIS
The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost (1916)
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
5
10
Chapter 2

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
“The Road Not Taken” from the book THE POETRY OF
ROBERT FROST edited by Edward Connery Lathem.
Copyright © 1923, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, copyright
© 1951 by Robert Frost.
Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
S A M P L E R E S P O N S E A N D R E F L E C T I O N Q
U E S T I O N S
The following questions are reflective of those you will
encounter throughout the remainder of this
textbook. The sample answers provided are examples of how
you might respond to these questions.
Connecting (Imaginative reading)
Q. What allowed you to connect to the poem?
A. I was able to connect to this poem immediately because I’d
often heard the title quoted in public
speeches. Then, I became interested in seeing if I could figure
out why the idea of “the road not
taken” is so often mentioned in speeches.

Considering (Analysis)
Q. What do you know about the speaker in this poem?
A. The speaker is a serious, thoughtful person, and could be
either a woman or a man. There is no
precise indication of the speaker’s age, but the last line of the
poem suggests that the person is
reflective, thinking not just about a present decision but about
future consequences as well. Even
though stanza 2 suggests the choice could have gone either
way—both roads were a lot alike—the
speaker chose the one “less traveled by” and is willing to accept
whatever the choice will bring,
knowing that choosing the other road for future travel is not
possible. It is clear, also, that the
speaker is reflecting on a choice related to a significant life
decision that involves commitment and
integrity, and is not merely selecting a road in the woods.
Concluding (Interpretation)
Q. What do the comments “telling this with a sigh” (line 16)
and “that has made all the difference”
(line 20) reveal about life choices?
A. I’ve concluded that the poem emphasizes the ambiguity
associated with life choices. From what
I already knew about the poem, I thought it dealt simply with
making a challenging (“less traveled
by”) choice. However, I now see that it reflects not just on the
motive for choosing, but also on
the nature of choice making. There appears to be delight, at
least satisfaction, on the part of the
speaker at the beginning of the poem, but the “sigh” mentioned

at the end suggests that the choice
was more complex than it appeared: It may have even resulted
in personal regret. Consequently, the
poem reveals the nature of decision making, implying that, at
best, it’s a fuzzy process with ambigu-
ous aspects—both at the moment a choice is made and
afterwards. In this way, the poem makes a
wise observation and explores important life knowledge.
15
20
Chapter 2
Your Turn
Try using the literary response framework connecting,
considering, concluding to explore mean-
ing in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” In this brief
narrative, there is not a lot of action,
but you can gain important insights about the action—and the
story’s outcome—by paying close
attention to what the main character, Mrs. Mallard, is thinking.
Kate Chopin (1850–1904)
Chopin was born in St. Louis (her birth name was Katherine
O’Flaherty),
one of five children—the only one to live beyond age 25. After
attending
Catholic schools, she married Oscar Chopin, a cotton broker,
and moved to

New Orleans. When he died 12 years later, she was left to raise
their six chil-
dren. Various journals, including Atlantic Monthly and Vogue,
published her
short stories. One of her novels, The Awakening, was
controversial because
it acknowledged a woman’s strength in spite of her adulterous
life. Chopin’s
writings expressed her personal quest for freedom and
contributed to the
rise of feminism.
Missouri History Museum,
St. Louis
The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin (1894)
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble,
great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the
news
of her husband’s death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences;
veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband’s
friend
Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the
newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was
received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of
“killed.”
He had only taken time to assure himself of its truth by a second
telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less
ten-
der friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same,

with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at
once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms.
When
the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room
alone. She would have no one follow.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy
arm-
chair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion
that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of
trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The
delicious
breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was
crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one
was
5
Chapter 2
singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were
twitter-
ing in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through
the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the
west
facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the
chair,

quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and
shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to
sob
in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke
repres-
sion and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare
in
her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those
patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather
indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it,
fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and
elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky,
reaching
toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled
the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning
to
recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and
she
was striving to beat it back with her will—as powerless as her
two
white slender hands would have been.
When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her
slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath:
“free, free, free!” The vacant stare and the look of terror that
had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and
bright.
Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed
every inch of her body.

She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy
that
held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss
the
suggestion as trivial.
She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind,
tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked
save
with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw
beyond
that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that
would
belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms
out
to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for her during those coming
years;
she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will
bend-
ing hers in that blind persistence with which men and women
believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-
creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem
no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of
illumination.
And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not.
What
did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for
in
10
15

Chapter 2
the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly
rec-
ognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to
the
keyhole, imploring for admission. “Louise, open the door! I
beg;
open the door—you will make yourself ill. What are you doing,
Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”
“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking in
a
very elixir of life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her.
Spring
days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her
own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was
only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might
be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importu-
nities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried
herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her
sis-
ter’s waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards
stood
waiting for them at the bottom.

Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was
Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly
carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the
scene of the accident, and did not even know that there had been
one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’
quick motion to screen himself from the view of his wife.
But Richards was too late.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart
disease—
of joy that kills.
This selection is in the public domain.
R E S P O N S E A N D R E F L E C T I O N Q U E S T I O N
S
Connecting (Imaginative reading)
How is your interest in this story immediately established? How
does Chopin create suspense?
Considering (Analysis)
Locate details in the story that give you a sense of what Mrs.
Mallard’s relationship with her hus-
band was like. In paragraphs five and six, how does the author’s
mention of new spring life, twitter-
ing sparrows, and patches of blue sky help you understand Mrs.
Mallard’s feelings—and her hopes?
Concluding (Interpretation)
Mrs. Mallard (in paragraphs eight and nine) is experiencing

change. She feels that something is
“approaching” her, seeking to “possess her.” What do you think
she is struggling with? Had she
ever loved her husband?
20
What Literature Contributes to Our Lives Chapter 2
2.3 What Literature Contributes to Our Lives
Through literature, we can explore human experiences deeply
and search for meaning. It opens
new worlds, presents new ideas, and stimulates personal change.
In these ways, literature influ-
ences each individual differently. Nevertheless, its conventional
contributions fall into widely rec-
ognized categories. Here are six of these notable contributions,
with a literary example selected
to illustrate each one.
Literature Restores the Past
In many ways, literature reflects historical issues and
conditions. Long before stories were written
down, they were passed along through oral traditions. At least
eight periods in literary history
can be roughly identified in the development of Western
civilization (Wheeler, 2010).
Classical period (8th century BCE to middle of 5th century CE)
Medieval period (about 1,000 years, ending in 15th century)
Renaissance and Reformation period (roughly, 16th to
mid-17th century)
Enlightenment or Neoclassical period (mid-17th century

through 18th century)
Romantic period (roughly, first half of 19th century)
Victorian period (1832–1901)
Modern period (roughly, first half of the 20th century)
Postmodern period (roughly, since end of World War II,
1945)
In all these periods, social, economic, political, and religious
traditions greatly influenced writers.
Century after century, their works reflected wars, natural
disasters, common events, and human
achievements in cultures they personally knew. So, although we
often gain insights about perma-
nent things from writers, we also get a glimpse of conditions
that existed in the passing moment
in which they were writing. Some writers develop works that
openly celebrate ideas and the spirit
of their age, describing them in detail and making it easy for
readers to visualize past events and
customs. Other writers take an indirect approach with much less
description, requiring readers
to read more deeply, to examine behaviors and values in order
to get a sense of life in earlier peri-
ods. Either way, works of literature help to restore the past.
For example, Langston Hughes’s “Dream Boogie” (1951) lifts
up the civil rights quest as a dream
with human significance, “a dream deferred” that would be a
long time in coming. In the 1950s,
when Hughes published the poem, most black Americans were
not experiencing the fulfillment
of the hopes and dreams that Emancipation (nearly 100 years
earlier) had promised. Looking
back, we know that it would be more than a decade before
significant change would come, as a
result of non-violent protests under the leadership of Martin

Luther King, Jr. and the passage of
civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and
the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
You might say, then, that this piece of literature functions both
as Hughes’s portrait of an impor-
tant human ideal that has not yet been achieved (racial
reconciliation), and as a photograph—a
snapshot of the state of that idealistic dream in the United
States in the early 1950s. In an earlier
essay, Hughes acknowledged,
Most of my poems are racial in theme and treatment, derived
from the life I know. In many
of them I try to grasp and hold some of the meanings and
rhythms of jazz. . . . [J]azz to me is
one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the
eternal tom-tom beating in the
Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white
world. (Hughes, 1926, p. 694)
What Literature Contributes to Our Lives Chapter 2
Dream Boogie
Langston Hughes (1951)
Good morning, daddy!
Ain’t you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?
Listen closely:
You’ll hear their feet

Beating out and beating out a —
You think
It’s a happy beat?
Listen to it closely:
Ain’t you heard
something underneath
like a —
What did I say?
Sure,
I’m happy!
Take it away!
Hey, pop!
Re-bop!
Mop!
Y-e-a-h!
"Dream Boogie" from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
by Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold
Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate Editor, copyright ©
1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes.
Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf
Doubleday Publishing Group, a division
of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Used by permission
of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated.
Copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes.
Literature Stimulates the Imagination
Those who create literature may make some use of literal

definitions and factual descriptions,
but the appeal and magic in their works are fashioned by the
word pictures, feelings, and exqui-
site detail they create, revealing how particular things look in
their minds. Writers enable us to
see things clearly, often in new ways that alter previous
perceptions. They often use figures of
speech such as similes and metaphors to stimulate our
imaginations. Each will be illustrated
more fully in later chapters:
Simile—A direct comparison of two things that are ordinarily
not thought to be similar, using
like or as to connect them. In these lines from an 18th-century
love song by Robert Burns, a per-
son’s lover is compared to a rose (visual imagery) and to a
melody (auditory imagery):
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
Metaphor—An imaginative comparison of two unlike things,
suggesting how each resembles
the other. In the following poem, poet Carl Sandburg compares
changing fog patterns to the
silent, subtle movements of a cat:
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