NAME
CLASS
DATE
LrrE RATU RE ACT WIrY
The Weary Blues
The Harlem Renaissance was a resurgence of literature, art, and music that
centered in New York’s Harlem during the 1920s. Langston Hughes, who was
known as the Poet Laureate of Harlem, wrote about the movement: ‘We
younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual darkskinned selves without fear or shame.. We know we are beautiful. And ugly
too... We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we
stand on top of the mountain free within ourselves.” The poem that follows
was published in Hughes’s first volume, The Weary Blues, in 1926.
Mother to Son
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
1. In what ways is this poem both universal and specific? In your answer, con
sider the main idea of the poem, the speaker, and the person being addressed.
2. Why is the image of a crystal stair a particularly vivid one?
3. Predicting Consequences How might life have been different for the
speaker if life had been a crystal stair 2
16
•
Literature Activity
Chapter 21 Survey Edition
Chapter 11 Modern American History Edition
NAME
CLASS
DATE
I ‘TLWY
Tales of the Jazz Age
C
H
A
p
T
E
R
21
F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered to be the spokesperson for the Jazz Age, the frenetic
decade following World War I. Years later, he wrote that he was grateful to the
Jazz Age because “it bore him up, flattered him and gave him more money than
he had dreamed of, simply for telling people that he felt as they did.” The excerpt
below is from Tales of the JazzAge, a collection of short stories published in 1922.
As you read, think about how the main characters reflect the new manners and morals
of the 1920s.
The Jelly-bean
The Jelly-bean walked out on the porch to a
deserted corner, dark between the moon on the
lawn and the single lighted door of the ballroom.
There he found a chair and, lighting a cigarette,
drifted into the thoughtless reverie that was his
usual mood.
Suddenly the square of yellow light that fell
through the door was obscured by a dark figure.
A girl had come out of the dressing-room and was
standing on the porch not more that ten feet away.
Jim heard a low-breathed “doggone” and then
she turned and saw him. It was Nancy Lamar.
Jim rose to his feet.
“Howdy?”
“Hello—” She paused, hesitated and then
approached. “Oh, it’s—Jim Powell.”
He bowed slightly, tried to think of a casual
remark.
“Do you suppose,” she began quickly, “I
mean—do you know anything about gum?”
“What?”
“I’ve got gum on my shoe. Some utter ass left
his or her gum on the floor and of course I
stepped in it.”
Jim blushed, inappropriately.
“Do you know how to get it off?” she
demanded petulantly.
“Why— I think maybe gasolene—”
The words had scarcely left his lips when
she grasped his hand and pulled him at a run
off the low veranda,
toward a group of cars
parked in the moonlight by the first hole of the
golf course.
“Turn on the gasolene,” she commanded
breathlessly.
“What?”
..
© Prentice-Hall, Inc.
.
“For the gum of course. I’ve got to get it off. I
can’t dance with gum on.”
Obediently Jim turned to the cars and began
inspecting them with a view to obtaining the
desired solvent.
“Here,” he said after a moment’s search.
He turned the spout; a dripping began....
“Ah,” she sighed contentedly, “let it all out.
The only thing to do is to wade in it.”
In desperation he turned on the tap full and
the pool suddenly widened sending tiny rivers
and trickles in all directions.
“That’s fine. That’s something like.”
Raising her skirts she stepped gracefully in.
“I know this’fl take it off,” she murmured.
She stepped daintily out of the gasolene and
began scraping her slippers.. on the runningboard of the automobile. The Jelly-bean contained
himself no longer. He bent double with explosive
laughter and after a second she joined in.
“You’re here with Clark Darrow, aren’t you?”
she asked as they walked back toward the veranda.
“Yes,”
“You know where he is now?”
“Out dancin’, I reckon.”
“The deuce. He promised me a highball.”
“Well,” said Jim, “I guess that’ll be all right. I
got his bottle right here in my pocket.”
She smiled at him radiantly.
“I guess maybe you’ll need ginger ale
though,” he added.
“Not me. Just the bottle.”
“Sure enough?”
She laughed scornfully.
“Try me. I can drink anything any man can.
Let’s sit down.”
.
Chapter2l LiteratureActivity
•
29
NAME
CLASS
(continued)
IVITY
T
LWLI!L!ALUREAC
C
H
A
p
T
E
R
21
She perched herself on the side of a table.
Taking out the cork she held the flask to her lips
and took a long drink. He watched her fascinated.
“Like it?”
“No, but I like the way it makes me feel. I
think most people are that way.”
Jim agreed.
“My daddy liked it too well. It got him.”
“American men,” said Nancy gravely, “don’t
know how to drink.”
“What?” Jim was startled.
“In fact,” she went on carelessly, “they don’t
know how to do anything very well. The one
thing I regret in my life is that I wasn’t born in
England.”
“In England?. Do you like it over there?”
“Yes. Immensely. I’ve never been there in
person, but I’ve met a lot of Englishmen who
were over here in the army, Oxford and
Cambridge men—you know. —and of course
I’ve read a lot of English novels.”
Jim was interested, amazed.
“D’ you ever hear of Lady Diana Manners?”
she asked earnestly.
No, Jim had not.
“Well, she’s what I’d like to be. Dark, you
know, like me, and wild as sin. She’s the girl who
rode her horse up the steps of some cathedral or
church or something and all the novelists made
their heroines do it afterwards.”
Jim nodded politely. He was out of his depths.
“Pass the bottle.” suggested Nancy. “I’m
going to take another little one. A little drink
wouldn’t hurt a baby.
“You see,” she continued, again breathless
after a draught. “People over there have style.
Nobody has style here, I mean the boys here
.
.
.
DATE
.
aren’t really worth dressing up for or doing
sensational things for. Don’t you know?”
“I suppose so—I mean I suppose not,”
murmured Jim.
“And I’d like to do ‘em all. I’m really the only
girl in town that has style.”
She stretched out her arms and yawned
pleasantly.
“Like to have boat,” she suggested dreamily.
“Like to sail out on a silver lake, say the Thames,
for instance. Have champagne and caviare sand
wiches along. Have about eight people. And one
of the men would jump overboard to amuse the
party and get drowned like a man did with Lady
Diana Manners once.”
“Did he do it to please her?”
“Didn’t mean drown himself to please her.
He just meant to jump overboard and make
everybody laugh.”
“I reckin they just died laughin’ when he
drowned.”
“Oh, I suppose they laughed a little,” she
admitted. “I imagine she did, anyway. She’s
pretty hard, I guess—like I am,”
“You hard?”
“Like nails.” She yawned again and added,
“Give me a little more from that bottle,”
Jim hesitated but she held out her hand
defiantly.
“Don’t treat me like a girl,” she warned him.
“I’m not like any girl you ever saw.” She consid
ered. “Still, perhaps you’re right. You got—you
got old head on young shoulders.”
She jumped to her feet and moved toward the
door. The Jelly-bean rose also.
“Good-bye,” she said politely, “good-bye.
Thanks, Jelly-bean.”
Reprinted with permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing
Company, from THE SHORT STORIES OF F. SCOTT’ FITZGERALD, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli.
Copyright © 1920 by Metropolitan Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1948 by Zelda Fitzgerald.
1. In what ways does Nancy Lamar represent a typical flapper? Cite details
from the excerpt to substantiate your answer.
2. Determining Relevance How do Jim and Nancy reflect the revolution in
morals and manners that characterized the 1920s?
30
•
Chapter 21 LiteratureActivity
© Prentice-Halt, Inc.
Date
Name
.
LITERATURE SELECTION
from
by John Dos Passos
Section 1
In The Big Money (1936), one of the novels in his trilogy, U.S.A., Dos Passos uses a
series of shifting scenes to explore American life. In this excerpt, he focuses on the
Sacco- Vanzetti case. The “newsreel” section intersperses news headlines with the
lyrics to a song to give a feel for the times. The “camera eye” section records the
narrator’s stream-of-consciousness reactions. The paragraphs printed in italics are
excerpts from Vanzetti’s prison letters. Judging from this excerpt, how do you
think Dos Passos felt about the Sacco-Vanzetti trial?
NEWSREEL LXVI
THE CAMERA EYE (50)
HOLMES DENIES STAY
they have clubbed us off the streets they
are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the
poI1t1ciams the newspaperedtors the old judges the
small men with reputations the collegepresidents
the wardheelers (listen businessmen collegepresi
dents judges America will not forget her betray—
ers) they hire the men with guns the uniforms
the policecars the patrolwagons
all right you have won you will kill the brave
men our friends tonight
there is nothing left to do we are beaten
we the beaten crowd together in these old dingy
schoolrooms on Salem Street shuffle up and down
the gritty creaking stairs sit hunched with bowed
heads on benches and hear the old words of the
haters of oppression made new in sweat and
agony tonight
our work is over the scribbled phrases the
nights typing releases the smell of the printshop
the sharp reek of’ newprinted leaflets the rush for
Western Union stringing words into wires the
search for stinging words to make you feel who are
your oppressors America
America our nation has been beaten by
strangers who have turned our language inside out
who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke
and made them slimy and foul
their hired men sit on the judge’s bench they sit
back with their feet on the tables under the dome
of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs
they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the
powerplants
they have built the electricchair and hired the
executioner to throw the switch
all right we are two nations
America our nation has been beaten by
strangers who have bought the laws and fenced off
A better world9 in birth
Tiny Wasps Imported From Korea In Battle To
Death With Asiatic Beetle
BOY CARRIED MILE I)OWN SEWER; SHOT OUT ALIVE
CHICAGO BARS MEETINGS
Forjustice thunders condemnation
Washington Keeps Eye On Radicals
Arise rejected of the earth
PARIS BRUSSELS MOSCOW GENEVA ADD THEIR VOICES
a)
>
it is the/mat conflict
Let each stand in his place
(J,
a)
Cl,
a:
Geologist Lost In Cave Six Days
The International Party
Ci
C
a)
SACCO AND VANZEITI MUST DIE
Shalt be the human race.
D
0
Much I thought of you when I was lying in the
death house—the singing, the kind tender voices of
the children from the playground where there tca
all the lfe and the joy of liberty—just one step from
the wall that contains the buried agony of three
buried souls. It would remind me so often of you
and of your sister 011(1 1 wish I could see i/on erery
moment. but I feel better that ioii will not conic to
the death house so that ijou could not see the horn—
Me picture of three liring in. agony waiting to be
elect rocu ted.
0
a,
a,
0
Cl)
Cu
0
a)
E
Cu
)
The Big Money
Politics of the Roaring Twenties 11
Name
The Big Money continued
the meadows and cut down the woods for pulp and
turned our pleasant cities into slums and sweated
the wealth out of our people and when they want
to hire the executioner to throw the switch
but do they know that the old words of the
immigrants are being renewed in blood and agony
tonight do they know that the old American speech
of the haters of oppression is new tonight in the
mouth of an old woman from Pittsburgh of a husky
boilermaker from Frisco who hopped freights clear
from the Coast to come here in the mouth of a
Back Bay socialworker in the mouth of an Italian
printer of a hobo from Arkansas the language of
the beaten nation is not forgotten in our ears
tonight
the men in the deathhouse made the old words
new before they died
If it had not been for these things, I might have
lived out my lfe talking at streetcorners to scorning
men. I might have died unknown, unmarked, a fail
ure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in
ourfull life can we hope to do such work for toler
ance, forjustice, for man’s understanding of man as
how we do by an accident.
they have won why are they scared to be seen
on the streets? on the streets you see only the
downcast faces of the beaten the streets belong
to the beaten nation all the way to the cemetery
where the bodies of the immigrants are to be
burned we line the curbs in the drizzling rain we
crowd the wet sidewalks elbow to elbow silent pale
looking with scared eyes at the coffins
we stand defeated America
Research Options
1. Find out more about the life of either Nicola
Sacco or Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Then write an
obituary that might have appeared in a 1927
newspaper. Include relevant details about either
Sacco or Vanzetti’s life and death.
2. Find out about another prominent American
writer or artist—besides novelist John Dos
Passos and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay—who
also supported Sacco and Vanzetti. Then explaiii
to the class how this person voiced his or her
opinions about the case.
now their work is over the immigrant haters
of oppression lie quiet in black suits in the little
undertaking parlor in the North End the city is
quiet the men of the conquering nation are not to
be seen on the streets
U)
a)
U)
c,)
(S
a)
-J
C)
0
C)
0)
0)
U)
I
.
12
UNIT
6,
CHAPTER
20
LITERATURE SELECTION
Name
Date
LITERATURE SELECTION
“Justice Denied in Massachusetts”
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Section 1
Edna St. Wncent Milay wrote this poem, which was published in The Buck in the
Snow and Other Poems (1928), after the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti As
you read the poem, think about its mood.
Let us abandon then our gardens and go home
And sit in the sitting-room.
Shall the larkspur blossom or the corn grow under
this cloud?
Sour to the fruitful seed
Is the cold earth under this cloud,
Fostering quack and weed, we have marched upon
but cannot conquer;
We have bent the blades of our hoes against the
stalks of them.
0
0
(I)
0
C,)
Let us go home, and sit in the sitting-room.
Not in our day
Shall the cloud go over and the sun rise as before,
Beneficent upon us
Out of the glittering bay,
And the warm winds be blown inward from the sea
Moving the blades of corn
With a peaceful sound.
Forlorn, forlorn,
Stands the blue hay-rack by the empty mow.
And the petals drop to the ground,
Leaving the tree unfruited.
The sun that warmed our stooping backs and
withered the weed uprooted—
We shall not feel it again.
We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain.
What from the splendid dead
We have inherited—
Furrows sweet to the grain, and the weed
subdued—
See now the slug and the mildew plunder.
Evil does overwhelm
The larkspur and the corn;
We have seen them go under.
Let us sit here, sit still,
Here in the sitting-room until we die;
At the step of Death on the walk, rise and go;
Leaving to our children’s children this beautiful
doorway,
And this elm,
And a blighted earth to till
With a broken hoe.
C.)
0)
c,)
D
0
O
C)
Cl)
Discussion Questions
1. How does the poem’s speaker feel after Sacco
and Vanzetti are executed?
2. What images best convey the mood of this
poem? Give examples.
3. Compare Millay’s and Dos Passos’s reactions to
the Sacco and Vanzetti case.
I
Politics of the Roaring Twenties 13