Name:________________
Annotation Packet
Literary Terms
Mrs. Vondra
Pre-AP English I
4
3
2
1
COMPLETION
All
assignments
are completed
Most
assignments are
completed
Some
assignments
are completed
Little to no
assignments
are completed
THOUROUGHNESS
The student’s
annotations
are very
thourough,
eploring all
required
focuses in
depth.
The student’s
annotations are
somewhat
thourough,
eploring most
required
focuses in
depth.
The student’s
annotations
are rarely
thourough,
eploring some
required
focuses, but
not in depth.
The student’s
annotations
are not
thourough,
none of the
required
focuses are
explored.
The student’s
annotations are
thoughtful,
showing
analysis of the
“why” that
accompanies
the techniques
used in the
works.
The student’s
annotations
are sometimes
thoughtful,
occassionally
showing some
analysis of the
“why” that
accompanies
the techniques
used in the
works.
The student’s
annotations
are not
thoughtful,
rarely or never
showing
analysis of the
“why” that
accompanies
the techniques
used in the
works.
The student’s
annotations
are very
thoughtful,
showing
excellent
THOUGHTFULNESS
analysis of the
“why” that
accompanies
the techniques
used in the
works.
Literary Terms
TERM
DEFINITION
EXAMPLE
Literary Terms, Continued
TERM
DEFINITION
EXAMPLE
Annotate for:
▶︎Imagery
▶organization
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
BY JAMES THURBER
“We’re going through!” The Commander’s voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore
his full-dress uniform, with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over
one cold gray eye. “We can’t make it, sir. It’s spoiling for a hurricane, if you ask me.”
“I’m not asking you, Lieutenant Berg,” said the Commander. “Throw on the power
lights! Rev her up to 8,500! We’re going through!” The pounding of the cylinders
increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. The Commander stared at
the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” he shouted. “Switch on No. 8 auxiliary!” repeated Lieutenant Berg. “Full strength in No. 3 turret!” shouted the Commander.
“Full strength in No. 3 turret!” The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge,
hurtling eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. “The Old
Man’ll get us through,” they said to one another. “The Old Man ain’t afraid of
Hell!” . . .
“Not so fast! You’re driving too fast!” said Mrs. Mitty. “What are you driving so fast
for?”
“Hmm?” said Walter Mitty. He looked at his wife, in the seat beside him, with
shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who
had yelled at him in a crowd. “You were up to fifty-five,” she said. “You know I don’t
like to go more than forty. You were up to fifty-five.” Walter Mitty drove on toward
Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN202 through the worst storm in twenty
years of Navy flying fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind. “You’re
tensed up again,” said Mrs. Mitty. “It’s one of your days. I wish you’d let Dr. Renshaw look you over.”
Walter Mitty stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her
hair done. “Remember to get those overshoes while I’m having my hair done,” she
said. “I don’t need overshoes,” said Mitty. She put her mirror back into her bag.
“We’ve been all through that,” she said, getting out of the car. “You’re not a young
man any longer.” He raced the engine a little. “Why don’t you wear your gloves?
Have you lost your gloves?” Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the
gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he
had driven on to a red light, he took them off again. “Pick it up, brother!” snapped a
cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead.
He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital
on his way to the parking lot.
. . . “It’s the millionaire banker, Wellington McMillan,” said the pretty nurse. “Yes?”
said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. “Who has the case?” “Dr. Renshaw
and Dr. Benbow, but there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York
and Dr. Pritchard-Mitford from London. He flew over.” A door opened down a long,
cool corridor and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard. “Hello,
Mitty,” he said. “We’re having the devil’s own time with McMillan, the millionaire
banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstreosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you’d take a look at him.” “Glad to,” said Mitty.
▶Setting
In the operating room there were whispered introductions: “Dr. Remington, Dr.
Mitty. Dr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty.”
“I’ve read your book on streptothricosis,” said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. “A
brilliant performance, sir.” “Thank you,” said Walter Mitty. “Didn’t know you were
in the States, Mitty,” grumbled Remington. “Coals to Newcastle, bringing Mitford
and me up here for a tertiary.” “You are very kind,” said Mitty. A huge, complicated
machine, connected to the operating table, with many tubes and wires, began at this
moment to go pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. “The new anaesthetizer is giving way!”
shouted an interne. “There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it!” “Quiet,
man!” said Mitty, in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. He began fingering delicately a row of
glistening dials. “Give me a fountain pen!” he snapped. Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its
place. “That will hold for ten minutes,” he said. “Get on with the operation.” A nurse
hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Mitty saw the man turn pale. “Coreopsis has set in,” said Renshaw nervously. “If you would take over, Mitty?” Mitty
looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. “If you wish,” he said. They slipped a white
gown on him; he adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves; nurses handed him
shining . . .
“Back it up, Mac! Look out for that Buick!” Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes.
“Wrong lane, Mac,” said the parking-lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. “Gee.
Yeh,” muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked “Exit
Only.” “Leave her sit there,” said the attendant. “I’ll put her away.” Mitty got out of
the car. “Hey, better leave the key.” “Oh,” said Mitty, handing the man the ignition
key. The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it
where it belonged.
They’re so damn cocky, thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street; they think
they know everything. Once he had tried to take his chains off, outside New Milford,
and he had got them wound around the axles. A man had had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garageman. Since then Mrs. Mitty always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he
thought, I’ll wear my right arm in a sling; they won’t grin at me then. I’ll have my
right arm in a sling and they’ll see I couldn’t possibly take the chains off myself. He
kicked at the slush on the sidewalk. “Overshoes,” he said to himself, and he began
looking for a shoe store.
When he came out into the street again, with the overshoes in a box under his arm,
Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get.
She had told him, twice, before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a
way he hated these weekly trips to townâ”he was always getting something wrong.
Kleenex, he thought, Squibb’s, razor blades? No. Toothpaste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, carborundum, initiative and referendum? He gave it up. But she would remember it. “Where’s the what’s-its-name?” she would ask. “Don’t tell me you forgot the
what’s-its-name.” A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial.
. . . “Perhaps this will refresh your memory.” The District Attorney suddenly thrust a
heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. “Have you ever seen this
before?” Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly. “This is my WebleyVickers 50.80,” he said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The
Judge rapped for order. “You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?”
said the District Attorney, insinuatingly. “Objection!” shouted Mitty’s attorney. “We
have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he
wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the fourteenth of July.” Walter Mitty
raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. “With any known
make of gun,” he said evenly, “I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred
feet with my left hand.” Pandemonium broke loose in the courtroom. A woman’s
scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely, dark-haired girl was in Walter
Mitty’s arms. The District Attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his
chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. “You miserable cur!” . . .
“Puppy biscuit,” said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who
was passing laughed. “He said ‘Puppy biscuit,’ ” she said to her companion. “That
man said ‘Puppy biscuit’ to himself.” Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A. &
P., not the first one he came to but a smaller one farther up the street. “I want some
biscuit for small, young dogs,” he said to the clerk. “Any special brand, sir?” The
greatest pistol shot in the world thought a moment. “It says ‘Puppies Bark for It’ on
the box,” said Walter Mitty.
His wife would be through at the hairdresser’s in fifteen minutes, Mitty saw in looking at his watch, unless they had trouble drying it; sometimes they had trouble drying it. She didn’t like to get to the hotel first; she would want him to be there waiting
for her as usual. He found a big leather chair in the lobby, facing a window, and he
put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old
copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. “Can Germany Conquer the World
Through the Air?” Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.
. . . “The cannonading has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir,” said the sergeant.
Captain Mitty looked up at him through touselled hair. “Get him to bed,” he said
wearily. “With the others. I’ll fly alone.” “But you can’t, sir,” said the sergeant anxiously. “It takes two men to handle that bomber and the Archies are pounding hell
out of the air. Von Richtman’s circus is between here and Saulier.” “Somebody’s got
to get that ammunition dump,” said Mitty. “I’m going over. Spot of brandy?” He
poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined
around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood and splinters flew through the room. “A bit of a near thing,” said Captain Mitty carelessly.
“The box barrage is closing in,” said the sergeant. “We only live once, Sergeant,” said
Mitty, with his faint, fleeting smile. “Or do we?” He poured another brandy and
tossed it off. “I never see a man could hold his brandy like you, sir,” said the sergeant. “Begging your pardon, sir.” Captain Mitty stood up and strapped on his huge
Webley-Vickers automatic. “It’s forty kilometres through hell, sir,” said the sergeant.
Mitty finished one last brandy. “After all,” he said softly, “what isn’t?” The pounding
of the cannon increased; there was the rat-tat-tatting of machine guns, and from
somewhere came the menacing pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of the new flame-throwers.
Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout humming “Auprès de Ma Blonde.” He
turned and waved to the sergeant. “Cheerio!” he said. . . .
Something struck his shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over this hotel for you,” said
Mrs. Mitty. “Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to
find you?” “Things close in,” said Walter Mitty vaguely. “What?” Mrs. Mitty said.
“Did you get the what’s-its-name? The puppy biscuit? What’s in that box?” “Overshoes,” said Mitty. “Couldn’t you have put them on in the store?” “I was thinking,”
said Walter Mitty. “Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?” She
looked at him. “I’m going to take your temperature when I get you home,” she said.’
They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling
sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drugstore
on the corner she said, “Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won’t be a minute.”
She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette. It began to rain, rain
with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. . . . He put
his shoulders back and his heels together. “To hell with the handkerchief,” said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away.
Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad;
erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last. Annotate for:
▶Characterization
▶Plot
Checkouts
By Cynthia Rylant
Her parents had moved her to Cincinnati, to a large house with beveled glad windows andseveral porches and the history her mother liked to emphasize. You’ll be
lonely at first,they admitted, but you’re so nice you’ll make friends fast. And as an impulse tore at herto lie on the floor, to hold to their ankles and tell them she felt she
was dying, to offeranything, anything at all, so they might allow her to finish growing
up in the town of her childhood, they firmed there mouths and spoke from their
chests, and they said, It’s decided.
They moved her to Cincinnati, where for a month she spent the greater part of
every day in a room full of beveled glass windows, sifting through photographs of the
life she’d lived and left behind. But it is difficult work, suffering, and in its own way a
kind of art, and finally she didn’t have the energy for it anymore, so she emerged
from the beautiful house and fell in love with a bag boy at the supermarket. Of
course, this didn’t happen all at once, just like that, but in the sequence of things
that’s exactly the way it happened.
She liked to grocery shop. She loved it in the way some people have to drive long
country roads, because doing it she could think and relax and wander. Her parents
wrote up the list and handed it to her, and off she went without complaint to perform
what they regarded as a great sacrifice of her time and a sign that she was indeed a
very nice girl.
She had never told them how much she loved grocery shopping, only that she was
“willing” to do it. She had an intuition which told her that her parents were not safe
for sharing such strong, important facts about herself. Let them think they knew her.
Once inside the supermarket, her hands firmly around the handle of the cart, she
would lapse into a kind of reverie and wheel toward the produce. Like a Tibetan
monk in solitary meditation, she calmed to a point of deep, deep happiness; this feeling came to her, reliably, if strangely, only in the supermarket.
Then one day the bag boy dropped her jar of mayonnaise, and that is how she fell
in love.
He was nervous—first day on the job—and along had come this fascinating girl,
standing in the checkout line with the unfocused stare one often sees in young children, her face turned enough away that he might take several full looks at her as he
packed sturdy bags full of food and the goods of modern life. She interested him because her hair was red and thick, and in it she had placed a huge orange bow, nearly
the size of a small hat. That was enough to distract him, and when finally it was her
groceries he was packing, she looked at him and smiled, and he could respond only
by busting her jar of mayonnaise on the floor, shards of glass and oozing cream decorating the area around his feet.
She loved him at exactly that moment, and if he’d known this, perhaps he
wouldn’t have fallen into the brown depression he fell into, which lasted the rest of
his shift. He believed he must have looked a fool in her eyes, and he envied the sureness of everyone around him: the cocky cashier at the register, the grim and harried
their breaks. He wanted a second chance. Another chance to be confident and say
witty things to her as he threw tin cans into her bags, persuading her to allow him to
help her to her car so he might learn just a little about her, check out the floor of the
▶Conflict
car for signs of hobbies or fetishes2 and the bumpers for clues as to beliefs and loyalties. But he busted her jar of mayonnaise, and nothing else worked out for the rest of
the day.
Strange, how attractive clumsiness can be. She left the supermarket with stars in
her eyes, for she had loved the way his long, nervous fingers moved from the conveyor belt to the bags, how deftly (until the mayonnaise) they had picked up her
items and placed them into her bags. She had loved the way the hair kept falling into
his eyes as he leaned over to grab a box or a tin. And the tattered brown shoes he
wore with no socks. And the left side of his collar turned in rather than out.
The bag boy seemed a wonderful contrast to the perfectly beautiful house she had
been forced to accept as her home, to the history she hated, to the loneliness she had
become used to, and she couldn’t wait to come back for more of his awkwardness and
dishevelment.
Incredibly, it was another four weeks before they saw each other again. As fate
would have it, her visits to the supermarket never coincided with his schedule to bag.
Each time she went to the store, her eyes scanned the checkouts at once, her heart
in her mouth. And each hour he worked, the bag boy kept one eye on the door, watching for the red-haired girl with the big orange bow.
Yet in their disappointment these weeks, there was a kind of ecstasy. It is reason
enough to be alive, the hope you may see again some face which has meant something to you. The anticipation of meeting the bag boy eased the girl’s painful transition into her new and jarring life in Cincinnati. It provided for her an anchor amid all
that was impersonal and unfamiliar, and she spent less time on thoughts of what she
had left behind as she concentrated on what might lie ahead. And for the boy, the
long often tedious hours at the supermarket, which provided no challenge other than
that of showing up the following workday . . . these hours became possibilities of mystery and romance for him as he watched the electric doors for the girl in the orange
bow.
And when finally they did meet up again, neither offered a clue to the other that
he, or she, had been the object of obsessive thought for weeks. She spotted him as
soon as she came into the store, but she kept her eyes strictly in front of her as she
pulled out a cart and wheeled it toward the produce. And he, too, knew the instant
she came through the door—though the orange bow was gone, replaced by a small
but bright yellow flower instead—and he never once turned his head in her direction
but watched her from the corner of his vision as he tried to swallow back the fear in
his throat.
It is odd how we sometimes deny ourselves the very pleasure we have longed for
and which is finally within our reach. For some perverse reason she would not have
been able to articulate, the girl did not bring her cart up to the bag boy’s checkout
when her shopping was done. And the bag boy let her leave the store, pretending no
notice of her.
This is often the way of children, when they truly want a thing, to pretend that
they don’t. And then they grow angry when no one tries harder to give them this
thing they so casually rejected, and they soon find themselves in a rage simply because they cannot say yes when they mean yes. Humans are very complicated. (And
perhaps cats, who have been known to react in the same way, though the resulting
rage can only be guessed at.)
The girl hated herself for not checking out at the boy’s line, and the boy hated
himself for not catching her eye and saying hello, and they most sincerely hated
each
other without having every exchanged even two minutes of conversation.
Eventually—in fact, within the week—a kind and intelligent boy who lived very
near her beautiful house asked the girl to a movie, and she gave up her fancy for the
bag boy at the supermarket. And the bag boy himself grew so bored with his job that
he made a desperate search for something better and ended up in a bookstore where
scores of fascinating girls lingered like honeybees about a hive. Some months later
the bag boy and the girl with the orange bow again crossed paths, standing in line
with their dates at amovie theater, and, glancing toward the other, each smiled
slightly, then looked away, as strangers on public buses often do when one is moving off the bus and the other is moving on.
Annotate for:
▶diction
▶organization
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
Abraham Lincoln
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new
nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation
so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field
of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting
and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not
hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note,
nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It
is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they
who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of
the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
I Have A Dream
Martin Luther King
▶ Metaphor
▶Allusion
▶Anaphora
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest
demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today,
signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of
withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the
life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains
of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the
Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile
in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of
our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to
fall heir.
This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be
guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her
citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America
has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that
there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we
have come to cash this check- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of
now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing
drug of gradualism.
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from
the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is
the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of
brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be
content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There
will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold
which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we
must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom
by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our
struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise
to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must
not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as
evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is
tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot
turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When
will you be satisfied?"
We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable
horrors of police brutality.
We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel,
cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.
We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller
ghetto to a larger one.
We can never be satisfied as long as our chlidren are stripped of their selfhood
and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for whites only."
We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down
like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and
tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you
have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the
storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have
been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back
to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us
not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today
and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American
dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created
equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves
and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table
of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with
the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed
into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its
governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be
able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exhalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked
places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all
flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this
faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With
this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a
beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we
will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new
meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land
where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let
freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom
ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the
mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring
from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that; let freedom ring
from the Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain
of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring
from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be
able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men,
Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing
in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
A Sound of Thunder
Ray Bradbury
▶Foreshaddowing
▶Characterization
▶Plot
The sign on the wall seemed to quaver under a film of sliding warm water. Eckels
felt his eyelids blink over his stare, and the sign burned in this momentary darkness:
TIME SAFARI, INC.
SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST.
YOU NAME THE ANIMAL.
WE TAKE YOU THERE.
YOU SHOOT IT.
Warm phlegm gathered in Eckels' throat; he swallowed and pushed it down. The
muscles around his mouth formed a smile as he put his hand slowly out upon the
air, and in that hand waved a check for ten thousand dollars to the man behind the
desk.
"Does this safari guarantee I come back alive?"
"We guarantee nothing," said the official, "except the dinosaurs." He turned. "This
is Mr. Travis, your Safari Guide in the Past. He'll tell you what and where to shoot.
If he says no shooting, no shooting. If you disobey instructions, there's a stiff penalty of another ten thousand dollars, plus possible government action, on your return."
Eckels glanced across the vast office at a mass and tangle, a snaking and humming
of wires and steel boxes, at an aurora that flickered now orange, now silver, now
blue. There was a sound like a gigantic bonfire burning all of Time, all the years and
all the parchment calendars, all the hours piled high and set aflame.
A touch of the hand and this burning would, on the instant, beautifully reverse itself. Eckels remembered the wording in the advertisements to the letter. Out of
chars and ashes, out of dust and coals, like golden salamanders, the old years, the
green years, might leap; roses sweeten the air, white hair turn Irish-black, wrinkles
vanish; all, everything fly back to seed, flee death, rush down to their beginnings,
suns rise in western skies and set in glorious easts, moons eat themselves opposite
to the custom, all and everything cupping one in another like Chinese boxes, rabbits
into hats, all and everything returning to the fresh death, the seed death, the green
death, to the time before the beginning. A touch of a hand might do it, the merest
touch of a hand.
"Unbelievable." Eckels breathed, the light of the Machine on his thin face. "A real
Time Machine." He shook his head. "Makes you think, If the election had gone
badly yesterday, I might be here now running away from the results. Thank God
Keith won. He'll make a fine President of the United States."
"Yes," said the man behind the desk. "We're lucky. If Deutscher had gotten in, we'd
have the worst kind of dictatorship. There's an anti everything man for you, a militarist, anti-Christ, anti-human, anti-intellectual. People called us up, you know, joking but not joking. Said if Deutscher became President they wanted to go live in
1492. Of course it's not our business to conduct Escapes, but to form Safaris. Anyway, Keith's President now. All you got to worry about is-"
"Shooting my dinosaur," Eckels finished it for him.
"A Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Tyrant Lizard, the most incredible monster in history.
Sign this release. Anything happens to you, we're not responsible. Those dinosaurs
are hungry."
Eckels flushed angrily. "Trying to scare me!"
"Frankly, yes. We don't want anyone going who'll panic at the first shot. Six Safari
leaders were killed last year, and a dozen hunters. We're here to give you the severest thrill a real hunter ever asked for. Traveling you back sixty million years to bag
the biggest game in all of Time. Your personal check's still there. Tear it up."Mr.
Eckels looked at the check. His fingers twitched.
"Good luck," said the man behind the desk. "Mr. Travis, he's all yours."
They moved silently across the room, taking their guns with them, toward the Machine, toward the silver metal and the roaring light.
First a day and then a night and then a day and then a night, then it was day-nightday-night. A week, a month, a year, a decade! A.D. 2055. A.D. 2019. 1999! 1957!
Gone! The Machine roared.
They put on their oxygen helmets and tested the intercoms.
Eckels swayed on the padded seat, his face pale, his jaw stiff. He felt the trembling
in his arms and he looked down and found his hands tight on the new rifle. There
were four other men in the Machine. Travis, the Safari Leader, his assistant,
Lesperance, and two other hunters, Billings and Kramer. They sat looking at each
other, and the years blazed around them.
"Can these guns get a dinosaur cold?" Eckels felt his mouth saying.
"If you hit them right," said Travis on the helmet radio. "Some dinosaurs have two
brains, one in the head, another far down the spinal column. We stay away from
those. That's stretching luck. Put your first two shots into the eyes, if you can, blind
them, and go back into the brain."
The Machine howled. Time was a film run backward. Suns fled and ten million
moons fled after them. "Think," said Eckels. "Every hunter that ever lived would
envy us today. This makes Africa seem like Illinois."
The Machine slowed; its scream fell to a murmur. The Machine stopped.
The sun stopped in the sky.
The fog that had enveloped the Machine blew away and they were in an old time, a
very old time indeed, three hunters and two Safari Heads with their blue metal
guns across their knees.
"Christ isn't born yet," said Travis, "Moses has not gone to the mountains to talk
with God. The Pyramids are still in the earth, waiting to be cut out and put up. Remember that. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler-none of them exists." The man
nodded.
"That" - Mr. Travis pointed - "is the jungle of sixty million two thousand and fiftyfive years before President Keith."
He indicated a metal path that struck off into green wilderness, over streaming
swamp, among giant ferns and palms.
"And that," he said, "is the Path, laid by Time Safari for your use, It floats six inches
above the earth. Doesn't touch so much as one grass blade, flower, or tree. It's an
anti-gravity metal. Its purpose is to keep you from touching this world of the past in
any way. Stay on the Path. Don't go off it. I repeat. Don't go off. For any reason! If
you fall off, there's a penalty. And don't shoot any animal we don't okay."
"Why?" asked Eckels.
They sat in the ancient wilderness. Far birds' cries blew on a wind, and the smell of
tar and an old salt sea, moist grasses, and flowers the color of blood.
"We don't want to change the Future. We don't belong here in the Past. The government doesn't like us here. We have to pay big graft to keep our franchise. A Time
Machine is finicky business. Not knowing it, we might kill an important animal, a
small bird, a roach, a flower even, thus destroying an important link in a growing
species."
"That's not clear," said Eckels.
"All right," Travis continued, "say we accidentally kill one mouse here. That means
all the future families of this one particular mouse are destroyed, right?"
"Right"
"And all the families of the families of the families of that one mouse! With a stamp
of your foot, you annihilate first one, then a dozen, then a thousand, a million, a
billion possible mice!"
"So they're dead," said Eckels. "So what?"
"So what?" Travis snorted quietly. "Well, what about the foxes that'll need those
mice to survive? For want of ten mice, a fox dies. For want of ten foxes a lion
starves. For want of a lion, all manner of insects, vultures, infinite billions of life
forms are thrown into chaos and destruction. Eventually it all boils down to this:
fifty-nine million years later, a caveman, one of a dozen on the entire world, goes
hunting wild boar or saber-toothed tiger for food. But you, friend, have stepped on
all the tigers in that region. By stepping on one single mouse. So the caveman
starves. And the caveman, please note, is not just any expendable man, no! He is an
entire future nation. From his loins would have sprung ten sons. From their loins
one hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization. Destroy this one man, and you
destroy a race, a people, an entire history of life. It is comparable to slaying some of
Adam's grandchildren. The stomp of your foot, on one mouse, could start an earthquake, the effects of which could shake our earth and destinies down through Time,
to their very foundations. With the death of that one caveman, a billion others yet
unborn are throttled in the womb. Perhaps Rome never rises on its seven hills. Perhaps Europe is forever a dark forest, and only Asia waxes healthy and teeming. Step
on a mouse and you crush the Pyramids. Step on a mouse and you leave your print,
like a Grand Canyon, across Eternity. Queen Elizabeth might never be born, Washington might not cross the Delaware, there might never be a United States at all. So
be careful. Stay on the Path. Never step off!"
"I see," said Eckels. "Then it wouldn't pay for us even to touch the grass?"
"Correct. Crushing certain plants could add up infinitesimally. A little error here
would multiply in sixty million years, all out of proportion. Of course maybe our
theory is wrong. Maybe Time can't be changed by us. Or maybe it can be changed
only in little subtle ways. A dead mouse here makes an insect imbalance there, a
population disproportion later, a bad harvest further on, a depression, mass starvation, and finally, a change in social temperament in far-flung countries. Something
much more subtle, like that. Perhaps only a soft breath, a whisper, a hair, pollen on
the air, such a slight, slight change that unless you looked close you wouldn't see it.
Who knows? Who really can say he knows? We don't know. We're guessing. But
until we do know for certain whether our messing around in Time can make a big
roar or a little rustle in history, we're being careful. This Machine, this Path, your
clothing and bodies, were sterilized, as you know, before the journey. We wear
these oxygen helmets so we can't introduce our bacteria into an ancient atmosphere."
"How do we know which animals to shoot?"
"They're marked with red paint," said Travis. "Today, before our journey, we sent
Lesperance here back with the Machine. He came to this particular era and followed certain animals."
"Studying them?"
"Right," said Lesperance. "I track them through their entire existence, noting which
of them lives longest. Very few. How many times they mate. Not often. Life's short,
When I find one that's going to die when a tree falls on him, or one that drowns in a
tar pit, I note the exact hour, minute, and second. I shoot a paint bomb. It leaves a
red patch on his side. We can't miss it. Then I correlate our arrival in the Past so
that we meet the Monster not more than two minutes before he would have died
anyway. This way, we kill only animals with no future, that are never going to mate
again. You see how careful we are?"
"But if you come back this morning in Time," said Eckels eagerly, you must've
bumped into us, our Safari! How did it turn out? Was it successful? Did all of us get
through-alive?"
Travis and Lesperance gave each other a look.
"That'd be a paradox," said the latter. "Time doesn't permit that sort of mess-a man
meeting himself. When such occasions threaten, Time steps aside. Like an airplane
hitting an air pocket. You felt the Machine jump just before we stopped? That was
us passing ourselves on the way back to the Future. We saw nothing. There's no
way of telling if this expedition was a success, if we got our monster, or whether all
of us - meaning you, Mr. Eckels - got out alive."
Eckels smiled palely.
"Cut that," said Travis sharply. "Everyone on his feet!"
They were ready to leave the Machine.
The jungle was high and the jungle was broad and the jungle was the entire world
forever and forever. Sounds like music and sounds like flying tents filled the sky,
and those were pterodactyls soaring with cavernous gray wings, gigantic bats of delirium and night fever.
Eckels, balanced on the narrow Path, aimed his rifle playfully.
"Stopthat!"saidTravis."Don'tevenaimforfun,blastyou!Ifyourgunsshouldgo
off--"
talonedfeetclawingdampearth,leavingprintssixinchesdeepwhereveritsettleditsweight.
EckelsBlushed."Where'sourTyrannosaurus?"
Itranwithaglidingballetstep,fartoopoisedandbalancedforitstentons.It
movedintoasunlitareawarily,itsbeautifullyreptilianhandsfeelingtheair.
"Why,why,"Eckelstwitchedhismouth."Itcouldreachupandgrabthemoon."
Lesperancecheckedhiswristwatch."Upahead,We'llbisecthistrailinsixtyseconds.Lookfortheredpaint!Don'tshoottillwegivetheword.StayonthePath.
StayonthePath!"
Theymovedforwardinthewindofmorning.
"Strange,"murmuredEckels."Upahead,sixtymillionyears,ElectionDayover.
KeithmadePresident.Everyonecelebrating.Andhereweare,amillionyears
lost,andtheydon'texist.Thethingsweworriedaboutformonths,alifetime,not
evenbornorthoughtofyet."
"Safetycatchesoff,everyone!"orderedTravis."You,Birstshot,Eckels.Second,
Billings,Third,Kramer."
"I'vehuntedtiger,wildboar,buffalo,elephant,butnow,thisisit,"saidEckels.
"I'mshakinglikeakid."
"Sh!"Travisjerkedangrily."Hehasn'tseenusyet."
"Itcan'tbekilled,"Eckelspronouncedthisverdictquietly,asiftherecouldbeno
argument.Hehadweighedtheevidenceandthiswashisconsideredopinion.
TheriBleinhishandsseemedacapgun."Wewerefoolstocome.Thisisimpossible."
"Shutup!"hissedTravis.
"Nightmare."
"Turnaround,"commandedTravis."WalkquietlytotheMachine.We'llremithalf
yourfee."
"Ah,"saidTravis.
"Ididn'trealizeitwouldbethisbig,"saidEckels."Imiscalculated,that'sall.And
nowIwantout."
Everyonestopped.
"Itseesus!"
Travisraisedhishand."Ahead,"hewhispered."Inthemist.Thereheis.There's
HisRoyalMajestynow."
"There'stheredpaintonitschest!"
Thejunglewaswideandfulloftwitterings,rustlings,murmurs,andsighs.
Suddenlyitallceased,asifsomeonehadshutadoor.
Silence.
Asoundofthunder.
Outofthemist,onehundredyardsaway,cameTyrannosaurusRex.
"It,"whisperedEckels."It......
"Sh!"
Itcameongreatoiled,resilient,stridinglegs.Ittoweredthirtyfeetabovehalfof
thetrees,agreatevilgod,foldingitsdelicatewatchmaker'sclawsclosetoitsoily
reptilianchest.Eachlowerlegwasapiston,athousandpoundsofwhitebone,
sunkinthickropesofmuscle,sheathedoverinagleamofpebbledskinlikethe
mailofaterriblewarrior.Eachthighwasatonofmeat,ivory,andsteelmesh.
Andfromthegreatbreathingcageoftheupperbodythosetwodelicatearms
dangledoutfront,armswithhandswhichmightpickupandexaminemenlike
toys,whilethesnakeneckcoiled.Andtheheaditself,atonofsculpturedstone,
liftedeasilyuponthesky.Itsmouthgaped,exposingafenceofteethlikedaggers.
Itseyesrolled,ostricheggs,emptyofallexpressionsavehunger.Itclosedits
mouthinadeathgrin.Itran,itspelvicbonescrushingasidetreesandbushes,its
TheTyrantLizardraiseditself.ItsarmoredBleshglitteredlikeathousandgreen
coins.Thecoins,crustedwithslime,steamed.Intheslime,tinyinsectswriggled,
sothattheentirebodyseemedtotwitchandundulate,evenwhilethemonster
itselfdidnotmove.Itexhaled.ThestinkofrawBleshblewdownthewilderness.
"Getmeoutofhere,"saidEckels."Itwasneverlikethisbefore.Iwasalwayssure
I'dcomethroughalive.Ihadgoodguides,goodsafaris,andsafety.Thistime,I
Biguredwrong.I'vemetmymatchandadmitit.Thisistoomuchformetoget
holdof."
"Don'trun,"saidLesperance."Turnaround.HideintheMachine."
"Yes."Eckelsseemedtobenumb.Helookedathisfeetasiftryingtomakethem
move.Hegaveagruntofhelplessness.
"Eckels!"
Hetookafewsteps,blinking,shufBling.
"Notthatway!"
TheMonster,attheBirstmotion,lungedforwardwithaterriblescream.Itcoveredonehundredyardsinsixseconds.TheriBlesjerkedupandblazedBire.A
windstormfromthebeast'smouthengulfedtheminthestenchofslimeandold
blood.TheMonsterroared,teethglitteringwithsun.
TheriBlescrackedagain,Theirsoundwaslostinshriekandlizardthunder.The
great level of the reptile's tail swung up, lashed sideways. Trees exploded in clouds
of leaf and branch. The Monster twitched its jeweler's hands down to fondle at the
men, to twist them in half, to crush them like berries, to cram them into its teeth
and its screaming throat. Its boulderstone eyes leveled with the men. They saw
themselves mirrored. They fired at the metallic eyelids and the blazing black iris,
ready strange reptilian birds and golden insects were busy at the steaming armor. A
sound on the floor of the Time Machine stiffened them. Eckels sat there, shivering.
"I'm sorry," he said at last.
Like a stone idol, like a mountain avalanche, Tyrannosaurus fell.
Eckels got up.
Thundering, it clutched trees, pulled them with it. It wrenched and tore the metal
Path. The men flung themselves back and away. The body hit, ten tons of cold flesh
and stone. The guns fired. The Monster lashed its armored tail, twitched its snake
jaws, and lay still. A fount of blood spurted from its throat. Somewhere inside, a sac
of fluids burst. Sickening gushes drenched the hunters. They stood, red and glistening.
"Go out on that Path alone," said Travis. He had his rifle pointed, "You're not coming back in the Machine. We're leaving you here!"
The thunder faded.
The jungle was silent. After the avalanche, a green peace. After the nightmare, morning.
Billings and Kramer sat on the pathway and threw up. Travis and Lesperance stood
with smoking rifles, cursing steadily. In the Time Machine, on his face, Eckels lay
shivering. He had found his way back to the Path, climbed into the Machine.
Travis came walking, glanced at Eckels, took cotton gauze from a metal box, and
returned to the others, who were sitting on the Path.
"Clean up."
They wiped the blood from their helmets. They began to curse too. The Monster lay,
a hill of solid flesh. Within, you could hear the sighs and murmurs as the furthest
chambers of it died, the organs malfunctioning, liquids running a final instant from
pocket to sac to spleen, everything shutting off, closing up forever. It was like standing by a wrecked locomotive or a steam shovel at quitting time, all valves being released or levered tight. Bones cracked; the tonnage of its own flesh, off balance,
dead weight, snapped the delicate forearms, caught underneath. The meat settled,
quivering.
Another cracking sound. Overhead, a gigantic tree branch broke from its heavy
mooring, fell. It crashed upon the dead beast with finality.
"Get up!" cried Travis.
Lesperance seized Travis's arm. "Wait-"
"Stay out of this!" Travis shook his hand away. "This fool nearly killed us. But it isn't
that so much, no. It's his shoes! Look at them! He ran off the Path. That ruins us!
We'll forfeit! Thousands of dollars of insurance! We guarantee no one leaves the
Path. He left it. Oh, the fool! I'll have to report to the government. They might revoke our license to travel. Who knows what he's done to Time, to History!"
"Take it easy, all he did was kick up some dirt."
"How do we know?" cried Travis. "We don't know anything! It's all a mystery! Get
out of here, Eckels!"
Eckels fumbled his shirt. "I'll pay anything. A hundred thousand dollars!"
Travis glared at Eckels' checkbook and spat. "Go out there. The Monster's next to
the Path. Stick your arms up to your elbows in his mouth. Then you can come back
with us."
"That's unreasonable!"
"The Monster's dead, you idiot. The bullets! The bullets can't be left behind. They
don't belong in the Past; they might change anything. Here's my knife. Dig them
out!"
The jungle was alive again, full of the old tremorings and bird cries. Eckels turned
slowly to regard the primeval garbage dump, that hill of nightmares and terror. After a long time, like a sleepwalker he shuffled out along the Path.
"There." Lesperance checked his watch. "Right on time. That's the giant tree that
was scheduled to fall and kill this animal originally." He glanced at the two hunters.
He returned, shuddering, five minutes later, his arms soaked and red to the elbows.
He held out his hands. Each held a number of steel bullets. Then he fell. He lay
where he fell, not moving.
"You want the trophy picture?"
"You didn't have to make him do that," said Lesperance.
"What?"
"Didn't I? It's too early to tell." Travis nudged the still body. "He'll live. Next time he
won't go hunting game like this. Okay." He jerked his thumb wearily at Lesperance.
"Switch on. Let's go home."
"We can't take a trophy back to the Future. The body has to stay right here where it
would have died originally, so the insects, birds, and bacteria can get at it, as they
were intended to. Everything in balance. The body stays. But we can take a picture
of you standing near it."
The two men tried to think, but gave up, shaking their heads.
They let themselves be led along the metal Path. They sank wearily into the Machine
cushions. They gazed back at the ruined Monster, the stagnating mound, where al-
1492. 1776. 1812.
They cleaned their hands and faces. They changed their caking shirts and pants. Eckels was up and around again, not speaking. Travis glared at him for a full ten minutes.
"Don't look at me," cried Eckels. "I haven't done anything."
“Who can tell?”
"Just ran off the Path, that's all, a little mud on my shoes-what do you want me to
do-get down and pray?"
It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and
knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic
dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels' mind whirled. It couldn't
change things. Killing one butterfly couldn't be that important! Could it?
"We might need it. I'm warning you, Eckels, I might kill you yet. I've got my gun
ready."
His face was cold. His mouth trembled, asking: "Who - who won the presidential
election yesterday?"
"I'm innocent. I've done nothing!"
The man behind the desk laughed. "You joking? You know very well. Deutscher, of
course! Who else? Not that fool weakling Keith. We got an iron man now, a man
with guts!" The official stopped. "What's wrong?"
1999.2000.2055.
The Machine stopped.
"Get out," said Travis.
The room was there as they had left it. But not the same as they had left it. The
same man sat behind the same desk. But the same man did not quite sit behind
the same desk. Travis looked around swiftly. "Everything okay here?" he snapped.
"Fine. Welcome home!"
Travis did not relax. He seemed to be looking through the one high window.
"Okay, Eckels, get out. Don't ever come back." Eckels could not move.
"You heard me," said Travis. "What're you staring at?"
Eckels stood smelling of the air, and there was a thing to the air, a chemical taint
so subtle, so slight, that only a faint cry of his subliminal senses warned him it was
there. The colors, white, gray, blue, orange, in the wall, in the furniture, in the sky
beyond the window, were . . . were . . . . And there was a feel. His flesh twitched.
His hands twitched. He stood drinking the oddness with the pores of his body.
Somewhere, someone must have been screaming one of those whistles that only a
dog can hear. His body screamed silence in return. Beyond this room, beyond this
wall, beyond this man who was not quite the same man seated at this desk that
was not quite the same desk . . . lay an entire world of streets and people. What
sort of world it was now, there was no telling. He could feel them moving there,
beyond the walls, almost, like so many chess pieces blown in a dry wind ....
But the immediate thing was the sign painted on the office wall, the same sign he
had read earlier today on first entering. Somehow, the sign had changed:
TYME SEFARI INC.
SEFARIS TU ANY YEER EN THE PAST.
YU NAIM THE ANIMALL.
WEE TAEK YU THAIR.
YU SHOOT ITT.
Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his
boots. He held up a clod of dirt, trembling, "No, it can't be. Not a little thing like
that. No!"
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very
beautiful and very dead.
"Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!" cried Eckels.
Eckels moaned. He dropped to his knees. He scrabbled at the golden butterfly
with shaking fingers. "Can't we," he pleaded to the world, to himself, to the officials, to the Machine, "can't we take it back, can't we make it alive again? Can't we
start over? Can't we-"
He did not move. Eyes shut, he waited, shivering. He heard Travis breathe loud in
the room; he heard Travis shift his rifle, click the safety catch, and raise the
weapon.
There was a sound of thunder.
▶Theme
▶Symbol
The Sniper
Liam ÓFlaherty
Dublin lay enveloped in darkness but for the dim light of the moon that shone
through the clouds. Here and there through the city, machine guns and rifles broke
the silence of the night. Republicans and Free Staters were waging civil war.
On a roof-top a Republican sniper lay watching. Beside him lay his rifle and over
his shoulders were slung a pair of field-glasses. His face was the face of a student,
thin and ascetic, but his eyes had the cold gleam of the fanatic. They were deep and
thoughtful, the eyes of a man who is used to look at death. He was eating a sandwich hungrily. He had eaten nothing since morning.
Then he paused for a moment, considering whether he should risk a smoke. It was
dangerous. The flash might be seen in the darkness, and there were enemies watching. He decided to take the risk.
Placing a cigarette between his lips, he struck a match, inhaled the smoke hurriedly
and put out the light. Almost immediately, a bullet flattened itself against the parapet of the roof. The sniper took another whiff and put out the cigarette. Then he
crawled away to the left.
Cautiously he raised himself and peered over the parapet. There was a flash and a
bullet whizzed over his head. He dropped immediately. He had seen the flash. It
came from the opposite side of the street.
Just then an armoured car came across the bridge and advanced slowly up the
street. It stopped on the opposite side of the street, fifty yards ahead. The snipeŕs
heart beat faster. It was an enemy car. He wanted to fire, but he knew it was useless. His bullets would never pierce the steel that covered the grey monster.
Then round the corner of a side street came an old woman, her head 30 covered by
a tattered shawl. She began to talk to the man in the turret of the car. She was pointing to the roof where the sniper lay. An informer.
The turret opened. A mańs head and shoulders appeared, looking towards the
sniper. The sniper raised his rifle and fired. The head fell heavily on the turret wall.
The woman darted towards the side street. The sniper fired again. The woman
whirled round and fell with a sudden shriek into the gutter.
Suddenly from the opposite roof a shot rang out and the sniper dropped his rifle
with a curse. The rifle clattered to the roof. The sniper thought the noise would
wake the dead. He stooped to pick the rifle up. He couldńt lift it. His forearm was
dead.
“Christ,” he muttered, “Ím hit.”
Dropping flat on to the roof, he crawled back to the parapet. Then he lay still and,
closing his eyes, he made an effort of will to overcome the pain.
In the street beneath all was still. The armoured car had retired speedily over the
bridge, with the machine gunneŕs head hanging lifeless over the turret. The woman
́s corpse lay still in the gutter.
The sniper lay still for a long time nursing his wounded arm and planning escape.
Morning must not find him wounded on the roof. The enemy on the opposite roof
covered his escape. He must kill that enemy and he could not use his rifle. He had
only a revolver to do it. Then he thought of a plan. Taking off his cap, he placed it
over the muzzle of his rifle.
Then he pushed the rifle slowly upwards over the parapet, until the cap was visible
from the opposite side of the street.
Almost immediately there was a report, and a bullet pierced the centre of the cap.
The sniper slanted the rifle forward. The cap slipped down into the street. Then
catching the rifle in the middle, the sniper dropped his left hand over the roof and
let it hang, lifelessly. After a few moments he let the rifle drop to the street. Then he
sank to the roof, dragging his hands with him.
Crawling quickly to the left, he peered up at the corner of the roof. His ruse had succeeded. That other sniper, seeing the cap and rifle fall, thought that he had killed
his man. He was now standing before a row of chimney pots, looking across, with
his head clearly silhouetted against the western sky.
The Republican sniper smiled and lifted his revolver above the edge of the parapet.
The distance was about fifty yards – a hard shot in the dim light, and his right arm
was paining him like a thousand devils. He took steady aim. His hand trembled
with eagerness. Pressing his lips together, he took a deep breath through his nostrils and fired. He was almost deafened with the report and his arm shook with the
recoil.
Then when the smoke cleared he peered across and uttered a cry of joy. His enemy
had been hit. He was reeling over the parapet in his death agony. He struggled to
keep his feet, but he was slowly falling forward, as if in a dream. The rifle fell from
his grasp, hit the parapet, fell over and then clattered on to the pavement.
Then the dying man on the roof crumpled up and fell forward. The body turned
over and over in space and hit the ground with a dull thud. Then it lay still.
The sniper looked at his enemy falling and he shuddered. The lust of battle died in
him. He became bitten by remorse. The sweat stood out on his forehead. Weakened
by his wound and the long summer day of fasting and watching on the roof, he revolted from the sight of the shattered mass of his dead enemy. His teeth chattered,
he began to gibber to himself, cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody.
He decided to leave the roof now and look for his company commander, to report.
Everywhere around was quiet. There was not much danger in going through the
streets.
When the sniper reached the street, he felt a sudden curiosity as to the identity of
the enemy sniper whom he had killed. He wondered did he know him. Perhaps he
had been in his own company before the split in the army. He decided to risk going
over to have a look at him. In the upper part of the street there was heavy firing, but
around here all was quiet.
The sniper darted across the street. A machine-gun tore up the ground around him
with a hail of bullets, but he escaped. He threw himself face downwards beside the
corpse. The machine-gun stopped. Then the sniper turned over the dead body and
looked into his brotheŕs face.
▶personification
▶alliteration
▶Rhetorical question
Abandoned Farmhouse
BY TED KOOSER
He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, say the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.
A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall
papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves
covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,
says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.
Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.
And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.
Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard
like branches after a storm—a rubber cow,
a rusty tractor with a broken plow,
a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.
▶ Irony