2013 AP English Language and Composition Summer Assignment

Two Parts:

• Editorial reading and analysis (40 points possible)

• Reading Notes on Five Essays and Rhetorical Analysis of Two Essays(60 points possible)

Directions for Editorial Readings and Analysis" Select two editorialist from the list below whose writing you find particularly

compelling• Read at least five each of those two writers' editorials [10 total]• From those ten editorials, select two from each of your five selected

editorials, and write a 6-10 sentence analysis for each.• Provide copies of the 4 editorial [OP/ED] columns that you select for

analysis.• The analysis needs to include the following elements to be considered

complete:o a statement of the subjecto a definition of the problem or issue [you may need to do a little

research if you don't fully understand the problem or issue] ,o a sentence that explains the editorialist's purposeo a sentence that explains who the audience iso 1-3 sentences that identify the most effective strategies used by the

author to make his or her point [strategies can include, but are notlimited to, pathos, ethos, logos, diction, syntax, details, imagery, tone,humor, hyperbole, etc.]

o 2-3 sentences that explain whether you think the author is effective inhis or her argument[s], and why.Remember that you don't have to personally agree with someone torecognize that they make a persuasive argument.

Syndicated Editorialists [found in the OP/ED section of a newspaper or on-line]David Broder Paul KrugmanDavid Brooks Charles KrauthammerMaureen Dowd Clarence PageThomas Friedman Kathleen ParkerEllen Goodman Leonard Pitts, Jr.Jim Hoagland Mary SanchezDavid Ignatius Cal Thomas

George Will

Directions for Reading Essays and Rhetorical Analysis» Read "An Introduction to Rhetoric: Using the 'Available Means'" for defining

terms and clarity of terms: rhetoric, audience, purpose, assertion or thesis,persona, and rhetorical appeals. (This is informational only, but it will helpyou, so please read it]

• Read "Types of Essays and Reading Essays" before you begin the four essays.(This is also informational only, but it will help you, so please read it]

• You are responsible to read all five of the attached essays and make thoroughreading notes in the margins as you read. (Worth 25 possible points] Yournotes might include, but are not limited to, any or all of the following:author's purpose, clues as to audience, clarifications, questions, reflections,diction (word choice) evaluation, emotional response, re-evaluation based onemerging details, and evidence of literary/rhetorical devices such as irony,alliterations, metaphors, literal and figurative meaning, and use of symbolsand/or analogies.

Select two and write a short rhetorical analysis essay (4-5 paragraphs] for each.(17.5 points each-total of 35) Read the following guidelines for developing a shortanalysis of a text.

Elements to include in a rhetorical analysis of a text:1. SOAPS (speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject]

2. Rhetorical Strategiesa. Appeals (ethos, logos, pathos]b. Style (diction, syntax, details, imagery, tone, etc.]

3. Why did the author choose these strategies for the particular audience, occasion,and/or purpose? (This is the analysis part. Without this, you are merelysummarizing the text]

a. How do the rhetorical strategies help the author achieve his/herpurpose?

b. Why does the author choose those strategies for that particular audienceand for that particular occasion?

Once you've identified the information above, it's time to begin putting yourthoughts and ideas into a format that proves you have accurately analyzed the textThere are many ways to write an effective rhetorical analysis essay. Below is oneway that is a good, simple format to help you get started. You may find as youbecome more comfortable v\̂ th analysis that you want to deviate from this formatThat's fine as long as you are still focusing on numbers 1-3 from above.The introductory paragraph to an analysis essay is usually brief. However, it mustcontain some essential information.

Put SOAPS in your introduction and follow this format:

FORMAT:1. Speaker, Occasion, and Subject2. Purpose3. AudienceEXAMPLE:Novelist, Amy Tan, in her narrative essay, "Fish Cheeks," recounts an embarrassingChristmas Eve dinner when she was 14years old. Tan's purpose is to convey the ideathat, at fourteen, she v^asn't able to recognize the love her mother had for her or thesacrifices she made. She adopts a sentimental tone in order to appeal to similarfeelings and experiences in her adult readers.

BodyThis is the analysis part! This is where you include a detailed explanation ofstrategies used by the writer. Whether you discuss each paragraph or each sectiondepends on the length and organization of the text itself.

Every analysis paragraph MUST:• Identify the strongest rhetorical strategies used in that particular section. Thisincludes incorporating specific text examples [exact words from the text) withyour own words. Do NOT try to discuss every strategy the writer uses; pick thestrongest!• Clearly and specifically explain how the rhetorical strategies are used to help thewriter achieve his purpose and reach his audience.• The above items must be woven together seamlessly into one sophisticatedparagraph of the body of your analysis essay. A sample format is below:

FORMAT and EXAMPLE [based on Pres. Reagan's speech after the space shuttleChallenger explosion in the 1980s - look up and review]:1. The first sentence identifies which section of the text you are discussing and themain idea of that section.Reagan begins his tribute to the Challenger astronauts by acknowledging that theshuttle accident has appropriately postponed his planned State of the Union addressand by expressing the depth of his and his wife's personal grief2. The second sentence conveys the writer's support for the main idea by identifyingand providing a specific example for one rhetorical strategy used by the writer.[This sentence is repeated if you want to discuss more than one rhetorical strategy.]He appeals to the mournful emotions of the audience by admitting that he and Nancyare "pained to the core" [3], that today is rightfully a "day for mourning andremembering" (2-3), and that the accident is "truly a national loss" (4).3. The third sentence explains how the rhetorical strategies you discussed in theprevious sentences help the writer achieve his purpose by using an in order tostatement.

He joins in this time of mourning in order to unify the nation and humbly admit that"we share this pain with all of the people of our country" [4].4. The fourth sentence identifies the effect of the writer's use of these rhetoricalstrategies on the audience.This outpouring of emotion from the president conveys a calming tone that reassuresthe Nation that their grief is both understandable and proper.

Put it all together and this is what one paragraph of the body of a rhetoricalanalysis essay might look like:Reagan begins his tribute to the Challenger astronauts by acknowledging that theshuttle accident has appropriately postponed his planned State of the Union addressand by expressing the depth of his and his wife's personal grief. He appeals to themournful emotions of the audience by admitting that he and Nancy are "pained to thecore" [3], that today is rightfully a "day for mourning and remembering" (2-3), andthat the accident is "truly a national loss" (4). He joins in this time of mourning inorder to unify the nation and humbly admit that "we share this pain with all of thepeople of our country" (4). This outpouring of emotion from the president conveys acalming tone that reassures the Nation that their grief is both understandable andproper.Each essay for this assignment will require multiple paragraphs like theexample.

ConclusionThe conclusion is prohably the easiest part Be brief. In one-two sentences, simplyremind your reader of the things you said in the introduction.

Sources:"An Introduction to Rhetoric: Using the "Availahle Means" fromShea, Scanlon and Aufses The Language of Composition, Boston: Bedford/St Martin's, 2008.

"Elements to include m a rhetorical analysis essay"- Lisa Skmner,AP teacher-2012

"Types of Essays and Reading Essays" fromDiyanm, Robert One Hundred Great Essays, Boston Pengum Academics, 2011,

EssaysBarry, Dave "Road Warrior" fromDiyanni, Robert One Hundred Great Essays. Boston: Pengum Academics, 2011.

DiUard, Anme "Living Like Weasels" fromDiyanm, Robert One Hundred Great Essays. Boston: Penguin Academics, 2011

Franklin, Benjamin "Arriving at Perfection" fromDiyanm, Robert One Hundred Great Essays. Boston: Penguin Academics, 2011,

Goodman, EUen. "The Company Man" fromDiyanm, Robert. One Hnndred Great Essays. Boston Pengnin Academics, 2011.

White, E B "Once More to The Lake" fromDiyanm, Robert One Hundred Great Essays Boston Penguin Academics, 2011.

To many people, the word rhetoric automatically signals that trickery ordeception is afoot. They assume tliat an advertiser is trying to manipu-

late a consumer, a politician wants to obscure a point, or a spin doctor is spin-ning. "Empty rhetoric!" is a common criticism ~- and at times an indictment. YetGreek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.CE.) defined rhetoric as "the faculty ofobserving in any given case the available means of persuasion." At its best, rheto-ric is a thoughtful, reflective activity leading to effective communication, includ-ing rational exchange of opposing viewpoints. In Aristotle's day and in ours,those who understand and can use the available means to appeal to an audienceof one or many find themselves in a position of strength. They have the tools toresolve confiicts without confrontation, to persuade readers or listeners to sup-port their position, or to move others to talte action.

Key Elements of Rhetoric

Let's start out by looking at a speech that nearly everyone has read or heard: thespeech baseball player Lou Gehrig gave at an Appreciation Day held in liis honor onJuly 4,1939. Gehrig had recently learned that he was suffering fi^om amyotrophiclateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurological disorder that has no cure (today it is known as"Lou Gehrig's disease"). Although Gehrig was a reluctant speaker, the fans' chant of"We want Lou!" brought him to the podium to deKver one of the all-time mostpowerful, heartfelt — and brief (under three hundred words) — speeches.

^ . Watch it on the Web: bedfordstmartms.com/languageofcoinp

Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got.Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. 1 havebeen in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but

THE RHETORICAL TRIANGLE2 CHAPTER 1 • AN INTRODUCTION TO RHETORIC

muiiity that has experienced liate graffiti must tal<e that context into accoiml andadjust the purpose of the piece so as not to offend the audience.

Another reason this speech is effective is that Gehrig has a crystal clear mainidea: he's the "luckiest man on the face of the earth." Whether you call this idea athesis, a claim, or an assei-tion, it is a cleai" and focused statement. Furtlier,Gehrig loiows his subject™ baseball in general, the New York Yanlcees in partic-ulai'. Though he is a champion baseball player, he is not a polished orator or ahighly sophisticated writer; therefore, as a speaker he presents himself as a com-mon man, modest and glad for the life he's lived. His audience is his fans and fel-low athletes, those in the stadium as well as those who wiU hear the speech fromafar, people rooting for him on and off the field. Gehrig's understanding of howtliese factors — subject (and main idea), speaker, and audience — interact deter-mines Ms speech: a piainspoken, positive appreciation for what he has had, and achampion's courageous acceptance of the challenges tliat lie before him. No won-der one commentator wrote, "Lou Gehrig's speech almost rocked Yankee Stadiumoff its feet."

kindness and encouragement from you fans. Look at these grand men.Which of you wouldn'L considei it the highlight of his career just to associatewith them foi even one day?

Sm e, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have imown JacobRuppert; also the buildei of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Bairow, lo havespent srx years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins; then to havespent the next nine yeais with that outstanding leadei, that smai t student ofpsychology—the best managei m baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Wliowouldn't, feel honoi'ed to have roomed with such, a giand guy as Brll Dickey?

Sine, I'm lucky. Wlien the New Yoik Giants, a team you would give yourlight aim to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift —• that's something! Wheneverybody down Lo the gioundskeepers and tliose boys in white coats re-member you with trophies — that's something!

When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who Lakes sides with you msquabbles agamst her own daughter •— that's something! AVhen you have afalher and mother wlio work ail their lives so that you can have an educationand build your body— it's ablessing! AVlienyouhavea wife whohas been atower of strength and shown moie courage than you dieamed existed —that's tbe finest I know!

So I close in saying that I migbt have been given a bad break, buL I havean awful lot lo live for! Thank you.

Why is this an effective speech? First of all, Lou Gehrig understood that rheto-lic is always situationai: it has a context— the occasion or the time and place itwas written or spoken — and a purpose or goal that tlie spealcer or writer wants toachieve. Gehrig delivered the speech between games of a doubleheader. The moreimportant context, though, is the poignant contrast between the celebration of hisathletic career and tlie life-threatening diagnosis he had received. Within this con-text, his purpose is to remain positive by looking on the bright side — his past luclcand present optimism — and downplaying the bleak outlook. He makes a singlereference to the diagnosis and does so in the straightforward language of strength:he got a "bad break" — there is no blame, no self-pity, no plea for sympathy.Tlxroughout, be maintains his focus: to celebrate the occasion and get back to

work — that is, playing baseball. While in our time the word rhetoric may suggestdeception, this speech reminds us that rhetoric can serve sincerity as well.

Context and purpose are easy to spot in Gehrig's speech; identifying them inmore complex situations is harder, but it is essential to analyzing effective rheto-ric. Wlien we read any text, we ask about the context in which it was written. Thenwe consider the purpose: is the spealcer trying to win agreement, persuade us totalce action, evoke sympathy, mal̂ e someone laugh, inform, provoke, celebrate,lepudiate, put forth a proposal, secure support, or bring about a favorable deci-sion? Keep in mind too that sometimes the context arises from current events orcultural bias. For example, someone writing about freedom of speech in a com-

One way to consider the elements in Gelirig's speech is through the rhetori-cal triangle below. Some refer to it as the Aristotelian triangle, so-called be-cause Aristotle described the interaction among subject, spealcer, and audience(or subject, writer, and reader), as well as how this interaction determines the

Spealcer

SubjectAudience -*•

Aristotle's Rhetorical Triangle

CHAPTER 1 • AN INTRODUCTION TO RHETORIC APPEALS TO ETHOS, LOGOS, AND PATHOS

well-being. Lou Gehrig establishes ethos quite simply because he is a good sport,a regular guy who shares the audience's love of baseball and family, and like them,he hag known good luck and bad breaks.

In some instances, a speaker's reputation immediately establishes ethos. Forexample, the speaker maybe a scholar in Russian history and economics as well asthe secretary of state. Or the speaker may be "the dog whisperer," a well-lcnownanimal behaviorist. In other cases, the speaker establishes ethos through the dis-course itself, whether written or spoken, by making a good impression. Thatimpression may result from a tone of reason and goodwill or from the type andthoroughness of information presented. The speaker's ethos — expertise andlcnowledge, experience, training, sincerity, or a combination of these — gives theaudience a reason for listening.

Logos

Writers and spealcers appeal to logos, or reason, by offering dear, rational ideas.Appealing to logos (Greelc, "embodied thought") means having a dear main idea,or thesis, with specific details, examples, facts, statistical data, or expert testimonyas support. Of course, the idea must be logical. Although on first reading or hear-ing, Gehrig's speech may seem largely emotional, it is actually based on irrefutablelogic. He starts with the thesis that he is "the luckiest man on the face of the earth"and supports itwith two points: (1) his seventeen years of playing baseball and (2)his belief that he has "never received anything but kindness and encouragementfiom [his] feiis." Specifically, he has worked with good people on the field, he'sbeen part of a sterling team, and he has the "blessing" of a supportive family. Thathe has gotten a "bad brealc" neither negates nor even lessens any of these experi-ences. What assumption, or underlying belief, links these seemingly contrastingideas? It's that Gehrig is lucky even though he's had a bad break. He assumes, nodoubt as his audience does, that bad breaks are a natural and inevitable part of Ufe.

Another way to appeal to logos is to acknowledge a counterargument —that is, to anticipate objections or opposing views. While you might worry thatraising an opposing view will weal(£n your argument, you'll be vulnerable if youignore ideas that rmi counter to your own. In acknowledging a counterargument,you agree (concede) that an opposing argument may be true, but then you deny(refiite) the validity of all or part of the argument. This concession and refutationactually strengthens your argument; it appeals to logos by demonstrating thatyou considered your subject carefully before making your argument.

In longer, more complex texts, the writer may address the counterargumentin greater depth. Lou Gehrig, however, simply concedes what some of his Iisteneismay thinlc — that his bad break is cause for discouragement or even giving up; hedisagrees because he has "an awfiii lot to live for!" Granted, he implies his conces-sion rather than stathig it outright, but in addressing it at all, he acknowledges acontrasting way of viewing his situation, that is a counterargument.

structure and language of the argument — that is, a text or image that estabhshesa position.

Thus far, we've been analyzing a speech from the viewpoint of the audience,or readers, but skilled writers consider this interaction as they are developing anessay, speech, letter, or other text. Writers or speakers must first choose a subjectand then evaluate what they already know about it, what others have said about it,and what land of evidence or proof will suf&dently develop their position.

You might think the identity of the speaker in your own writing is obvious,but that's not necessarily so. Writers often assume what Aristotle called a per-sona — the character the spealcer creates when he or she writes or speaks —depending on the context, prnpose, subject, and audience. Are you speaking as apoet, comedian, or scholar? Are you spealdng as an expert on ice skating, popularmusic, or a spedfic software program? Are you speaking as a literary critic in yourEnglish class or as a concerned citizen in your local community?

Before you proceed with these explorations and begin to craft an essay, how-ever, it's important to think about the audience. What does the audience laiowabout the subject? What is the audience's attitude toward it? Is there commongroimd between the writer's and reader's views on the subject? Each audiencerequires you to use different information to shape your argument effectively.

Imagine you are writing an essay for a college appfication. Who will read it?What will they be expecting? What is likely to impress them enough to admit youto their school? Or perhaps you're addressing peers you're working with on a col-laborative project. Maybe you are writing a letter to a prospective employer whohas never met you. If you are writing to a newspaper to express an environmentalconcern or opposition to a policy proposed by an elected official, your audiencemight be a larger group — for example, the whole community.

Appeals to Ethos, Logos, and Pothos

After analyzing the relationship of speaker to subject, audience to speaker, andaudience to subject, a writer is ready to make some strategic choices. One is howto persuade the audience by appealing to ethos, logos, and pathos.

Ethos

Speakers and writers appeal to ethos, or character, to demonstrate that they arecredible and trustworthy. Thinlc, for example, of a speech discouraging childrenfrom using alcohol. Speakers might appeal to ethos by stressing that tliey are con-cerned parents, psychologists specializing in alcoholism or adolescent behavior,or recovering alcoholics themselves. Appeals to ethos often emphasize shared val-ues between the speaker and the audience; when a parent speaks to other parentsin the same community, they share a concern for their children's education or

Types of EssaysThe word "essay" comes from the French "essai" (essay), which derivesfrom the French verb "essayer"—to try or attempt. The word "essay"suggests less a formal and systematic apjjroach to a topic than a casual,even random one. In this sense, an essay differs from other proseforms such as the magazine article, whose purpose is usually to mformor persuade, and the review, which evaluates a book or performance.

contrast in the cause of developing a logical argument. And tKey mayinclude information and explanation along with personal experienceand argumentation. More often than not, the most interesting andmemorable of essays mix and match what are typically thought ofas distinct essay types and the conventions associated with them.Contemporary essayists, in particular, cross horders and mix modes, asthey write essays that hreak the rules in a quest to be engaging, persua-sive, and interesting.

Essays, to be sure, may also evaluate, and they often inform as well as per-suade. But their manner of going about offering information, making acase, and providing an evaluation differs from those less variable genres.

The essay can be compared with the short story in that some essays,like short stories, include narrative. But the short story is fiction, theessay fact. And fiction works largely by implication, the essay mostly byexpository discursiveness. Essays explain what stories imply. This is notto say that essayists don't make use of fictional techniques and strategies.They do so often, particularly in personal or familiar essays, whichinclude narration and description.

The essay can also be linked with poetry, particularly with the morediscursive poems that explain as well as image ideas that tell straight-forwardly rather than hint or suggest in a more oblique manner.Essayists, on the other hand, typically say what's on their mind fairlydirectly. They explain what they are thinking. Poets more often writeabout one thing in terms of another (they write about love, for exam-ple, in terms of war). And they prefer implication to explication, whichis more characteristic of the essay writer.

Kinds of essays include, broadly, personal essays and formal essays.Personal essays are those in which the writer is amply evident—frontand center. Employing the personal pronoun "I," personal essays includeopinions and perspectives explicitly presented as the writer's own ina personal, even idiosyncratic, manner. Formal essays, by contrast, typ-ically avoid the pronoun "I," and they omit personal details. Formalessays include expository essays, analytical essays, and argumentative,or persuasive, essays. Expository essays explain ideas and scenarios,using standard patterns of organization, including comparison andcontrast, classification, and cause and effect. Analytical essays offeran analysis and interpretation of a text or performance, typicallybreaking that text or performance into parts or aspects, and present-ing both an evaluative judgment and the evidence on which it isbased. Argumentative, or persuasive, essays advance a thesis or claimand present evidence that is organized as part of a logical demonstra-tion, utilizing the modes of deductive and inductive reasoning, andincluding support for the argumentative claim in the form of reasons,examples, and data as evidence.

Most essays, even the most personal ones, are composites andblends. They may tell personal stories rich in descriptive detail to pro-vide evidence to support an idea or claim to persuasion. They may usetraditional patterns of expository organization such as comparison and

Reading EssaysReading essays is a lot like reading other forms of literature. It requirescareful attention to language—to the words on the page and to what's"written between the lines." Reading essays involves essentially fiveinterrelated mental acts: observing, connecting, inferring, questioning,and concluding. Good readers attend to the details of language andstructure of the essays they read. They note not only the informationthat writers of essays provide, but also how that information is pre-sented, how any stories are told, how arguments are made, and evi-dence presented. Good readers of essays look for connections amongthe details they observe—details of image and structure, argument andevidence. And good readers draw inferences based on those connectedobservations, inferences that prepare them to make an interpretiveconclusion from their inferences.

Good readers are also engaged by what they read. They respondvinth questions that echo in their minds as they read. They make theirreading an active engagement with the essay text, an involvement thatcontinues after their actual reading of the words on the page has beencompleted.

Reading in this manner—observing, connecting, inferring, ques-tioning, and concluding—alerts readers to nuances, to things renderedbut not explained or elaborated by the writer. Active, deliberative read-ing of this sort involves both intellectual comprehension and emotionalapprehension, a consideration of the feelings essays generate as wellas the thinldng they stimulate. This reading process requires that read-ers make sense of gaps in texts; that they recognize linguistic, literary,and cultural conventions; that they generalize on the basis of textualdetails; that they bring their values to bear on the essays they read; andthat they do all these things concurrently and sim,ultaneously.

off, and he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling fromhis palm, and soak him off like a stuhborn label.

And once, says Ernest Thompson Seton—once, a man shot an eagleout of the sky. He examined the eagle and found the dry skull of aweasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eaglehad pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instincttaught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won. I would like to have seenthat eagle from the air a few weeks or months before he was shot: wasthe whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant?Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel withhis talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautifulairborne bones?

nI have been reading about weasels because I saw one last week. I star-tled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.

Twenty minutes from my house, through the woods by the quarryand across the highway, is Holhns Pond, a remarkable piece of shallow-ness, where I like to go at sunset and sit on a tree trunk. HoUins Pondis also called Murray's Pond; it covers two acres of bottomland nearTinker Creek with six inches of water and six thousand lily pads. Inwinter, brown-and-white steers stand in the middle of it, merely damp-ening their hooves; from the distant shore they look like miracle itself,complete with miracle's nonchalance. Now, in summer, the steers aregone. The water lilies have blossomed and spread to a green horizon-tal plane that is terra firma to plodding blackbirds, and tremulous ceil-ing to black leeches, cray fish, and carp.

This is, mind you, suburbia. It is a five-minute walk in three direc-tions to rows of houses, though none is visible here. There's a 55 mphhighway at one end of the pond, and a nesting pair of wood ducks atthe other. Under every bush is a muskrat hole or a beer can. The farend is an alternating series of fields and woods, fields and woods,threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracks—in whose bare clay vTildturtles lay eggs.

So, I had crossed the highway, stepped over two low barbed-wirefences, and traced the motorcycle path in all gratitude through the wildrose and poison ivy of the pond's shoreline up into high grassy fields.Then I cut down through the woods to the mossy fallen tree whereI sit. This tree is excellent. It makes a dry, upholstered bench at the

Annie Dillard (b. ig45) developed an interest in nature at the age often, afterdiscovering The Field Book of Ponds and Streams in a branch of the Pittsburghlibrary system. While studying creative writing and theology at Hollins College inrural Virginia, she began a journal of observations of natural phenomena thatwould eventually become the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek(1974), her first published work of nonjiction. This was followed by Holy theFirm (ig77), a mystical meditation on the natural world, and Teaching a Stoneto Talk (igSz), a collection of philosophical essays. A professor at Wesjeyan College,Dillard has also published several volumes of poetry, a novel, and a memoir ofher youth, An American Childhood (igSj). Her most recent book is a novel. TheMaytrees (2007).

A N N I E D I L L A R D

In "Living Like Weasels," Annie Dillard descnbes an encounter with a weaselshe had one day while resting on a log in a patch of woods near a housingdevelopment m Virginia. Ddlard hegms m the expository mode, detailingfacts about weasels, especially their tenacity and wildness. Bnt she shifts,hefore long, into a meditation on the value and necessity of instinct andtenacity in human hfe. Dillard's tone changes from the factual declaration ofthe opening into speculative wonder at the weasel's virtues and, finally, intourgent admonition. By the end of the essay Diilard has made the weasel asymbol of how human beings might live.

As a "nature writer," Dillard is compelling. She digs deep heneath thesurface of her subjects, always looking for connections between the naturaland human worlds. In "Living Like Weasels," these connections take theform of speculating ahout the connections and disjunctions between thewildness and ferocity of a little hrown-hodied, furry creature, and the humanneed to fmd our necessity, lock onto it, and never let go. Dillard privilegeswildness over civilization, mystical communion over separateness, instinctover intellect. She clearly values the weasel's tenacity.

A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He sleeps in his under-ground den, his tail draped over his nose. Sometimes he lives in hisden for two days without leaving. Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice,muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm,, andoften dragging the carcasses home. Obedient to instinct, he bites hisprey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat orcrunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go. Onenaturalist refused to kill a weasel who was socketed into his handdeeply as a rattlesnake. The man could in no way^pry the tiny weasel

upper, marshy end of the pond, a plush jetty raised from the thorn shorebetween a shallow blue body of water and a deep blue body of slcy.

The sun had just set. I was relaxed on the tree trunk, ensconced inthe lap of hchen, watching the lily pads at my feet tremble and partdreamily over the thrusting path of a carp. A yellow bird appeared tomy right and fLew behind me. It caught my eye; I swivele'd around—and the next instant, mexphcably, I was looking down at a weasel, whowas looking up at me.

o

III

Weasel! I'd never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thmas a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert.His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would havemade a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe twobrown hairs' worth, and then the pure white far began that spreaddown his underside. He had two black eyes I didn't see, any more thanyou see a window.

The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from be-neath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I wasstunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyeslocked, and someone threw away the key.

Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedlyon an overgrown path when each had been thinking of somethingelse: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, ora sudden beating of brains with all the charge and intimate grate ofrubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved thefields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled intothat black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, ourskulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don't. We keep ourskulls. So.

He disappeared. This was only last week, and already I don't re-member what shattered the enchantment. I think I blinked, I thinkI retrieved my brain from the weasel's brain, and tried to memorizewhat I was seeing, and the weasel felt the yartk of separation, the ca-reemng splashdown into real life and the urgent current of instinct Hevanished under the wild rose. I waited motionless, my mind suddenlyfull of data and my spirit with pleadings, but he didn't return.

Please do not tell me about "approach-avoidance conflicts." I tellyou I've been in that weasel's bram for sixty seconds,, and he was in

mine. Brains are private places, muttering through unique and secrettapes—but the weasel and I both plugged mto another tape simultane-ously, for a sweet and shocking time. Can I help it if it was a blank?

What goes on m his brain the rest of the time? What does a weaselthink about? He won't say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feath-ers, mouse blood and bone: uncoUected, unconnected, loose-leaf, andblown.

IVI would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollms Pondnot so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, Idon't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular—shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints pre-cisely over the prints of my hands?—but I might learn something ofmindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sensesand the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives mnecessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the lastignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel livesas he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel's:open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, rememberingnothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will

VI missed my chance. I should have gone for the throat. I should havelunged for that streak of white under the weasel's chm and held on,held on through mud and into the wild rose, held on for a dearer life.We could live under the wild rose v/ild as weasels, mute and uncompre-hending. I could very calmly go wild. I could live two days m the den,curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking,breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses. Down is a goodplace to go, where the mind is single. Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses. I remember muteness asa prolonged and giddy fast, where every moment is a feast of utterancereceived. Time and events are merely poured, unremarked, and in-gested directly, lilce blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular vein.Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and exploreby the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere presentto the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?

We could, you know. We can live any way we want. People takeVOWS of poverty, chastity, and obedience—even of silence—by choice.The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, tolocate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This isyielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't 'attack' anything; a weasel livesas he's meant to, yielding at every mom,ent to the perfect freedom ofsingle necessity.

VII think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to graspyour one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever ittalces you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live,cannot you part. Seize'it and let it seize you up alofl: even, till your eyesburn out and drop; let your muslcy flesh fall off in shreds, and let yourvery bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields andwoods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.

IIII

they drove on the interstate highway system in a specially equippedobservation van. By the third day, they vyere deliberately running othermotorists off the road.

"These people are MORONS!" v^as their official report.That is the main cause of Road Rage; the realization that many of

your fellov^ motorists have the same brain structure as a cashev^. Themost common example, of course, is the motorists who feel a need todrive in the left-hand, or "passing," lane, even though they are goingslower than everybody else. Nobody knows why these motorists do this.Maybe they belong to some kind of religious cult that believes the rightlane is sacred and must never come in direct contact with tires. Maybeone time, years ago, these motorists happened to be driving m the leftlane v/hen their favorite song came on the radio, so they've driven overthere ever since, in hopes that the radio will play that song again.

But whatever makes these people drive this way, there's nothingyou can do about it. You can honk at them, but it will have no effect.People have been honking at them for years: It's a normal part of theirenvironment. They've decided that, for some mysterious reason, wher-ever they drive, there is honking. They choose not to ponder this mys-tery any further, lest they overburden their cashews.

I am very familiar with this problem, because I live and drive in M-iami, which proudly bills itself as The Inappropriate-Lane-DrivingCapital Of The World, a place where the left lane is thought of not somuch as a thoroughfare as a public recreational area, where motoristsfeel free to stop, hold family reunions, barbecue pigs, play volleyball,etc. Compounding this problem is another common type of Miamimotorist, the aggressive young male whose car has a sound system sopowerful that the driver must go faster than the speed of sound at alltimes, because otherwise the nuclear bass notes emanating from hisrear speakers will catch up to him and cause his head to ej^lode.

So the tmy minority of us Miami drivers who actually qualify asnormal find ourselves constantly being trapped behind people driftingalong on the interstate at the speed of diseased livestock, while at thesame time we are being tailgated and occasionally bumped from be-hind by testosterone-deranged youths who got their driver trainingfrom watching the space-fighter battle scenes in Star Wars. And ofcourse nobody EVER signals or yields, and people are CONSTANTLYcutting us off, and AFTER A WHILE WE START TO FEEL SOME RAGE,OK? YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT, MISTER NEWS MEDIAOPINION-MAKER??

Dave Bany (b. 1947), a native ofArmonk, New York, graduatedfiom HaverfordCollege. -A/ter tenyears of working as a newspaper reporter and later as a businesswriting consultant, he began turning out afieelance humor column in lgSo. He isnow on the staff of the Miami Herald, and his popular column is syndicated inmore than one hundred fijiy papers around the country. Bany has published manycollections of these columns, which ofienjind irony and humor in the everydaycircumstances of middle-class Americans; among his collections is Dave Barry IsNot Taking This Sitting Down (2000). Barry was awarded a Puhtzer Prize forcommentary in 19S8.

DAVE BARRY

In "Road Warrior," the humor columnist Dave Barry writes about the recentlydiagnosed quality of "road rage" that is said to afflict America's motorists."Road rage" refers to the pent-up and ejiplosively released anger and hostilitythat dnvers feel and express in an era of increasing automobile traffic conges-tion and ever-increasing delays. Soaal analysts attribute dnver "road rage" notonly to all the additional cars and dnvers doggmg the roads, but also to adecline in civility that seems to many to afflict American society today.

Barry pokes fun at the drivers who flout the rules of the road, and mcritiazmg their misbehavior, he works himself up into a kind of rage, indi-cated by bis use of CAPITAL LETTERS. In venting a hit over road rage, Barrysegues into describing what he calls "Parking Lot Rage" and "Shopping CartRage," two forms of anger that push Barry's discussion of road rage intocomic territory.

Barry has some fun as he descrihes the frustration that drivers feelwhen, looking for a parking space, they see someone sitting in a car, appar-ently ready to pull out, without fkially domg so. They just sit there, leading,as Barry suggests, to "Parking Lot Rage." He also descrihes the congestion ofshopping carts in supermarket aisles, which leads to still another hnd ofrage that Bany describes while offenng up criticism of both the proliferationof product choices confrontmg supennarket patrons, and the automatedtelephone service—^which leads to yet another kind of "rage." Barry's humorboth describes these various reasons for anger and simultaneously defusesthat anger.

If you do much driving on our nation's highways, you've probablynoticed that, more and more often, bullets are coming through yourV7indshield. This is a common sign of Road Rage, v/hich the opinion-makers in the news media have decided is a serious problem, currentlyranking just behind global warming and several points ahead of Asia.

How widespread is Road Rage? To answer that question, researchersfor the National Institute of Traffic Safety recently did a study in which

In addition to Road Rage, I frequently experience Parking Lot Rage,which occurs when I pull into a crowded supermarket paridng lot, andI see people get into their car, clearly ready to leave, so I stop my carand wait for them to vacate the spot, and. . . nothing happens! Theyjust stay there! WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY DOING IN THERE??!!COOiaNG DINNER???

When I finally get into the supermarket, I often experience Shop-ping Cart Rage. This is caused hy the people—and you just KNOWthese are the same people who always drive in the left-hand lane—^whoroutinely manage, by careful placement, to block the entire aisle with asingle shopping cart. If we really want to keep illegal immigrants fromentering the United States, we should employ Miami residents armedwith shopping carts; we'd only need about two dozen to block the en-tire Mexican border.

What makes the supermarket congestion even worse is that shop-pers are taking longer and longer to. decide what to buy, because everyproduct in America now comes in an insane number of styles andsizes. For example, I recently went to the supermarket to get orangejuice. For just one brand of orange juice, Tropicana, I had to decidewhether I wanted Original, HomeStyle, Pulp Plus, Double Vitamin C,Grovestand, Calcium, or Oid-Eashioned; I also had to decide whetherI wanted the i6-ounce, 32-ounce, 64-ounce, 96-ounce, or six-pack size.This is WAY too many product choices. It caused me to experience WayToo Many Product Choices Rage. I would have called Tropicana andcomplained, but I probably would have wound up experiencing Auto-mated Phone Answering System Rage. (". . . For questions about PulpPlus in the 32-ounce size, press 23. For questions about Pulp Plus in the64-ounce size, press 24. For questions about. . . .")

My point is that there are many causes f̂ or rage in our modernworld, and if we're going to avoid unnecessary violence, we all need to"keep our cool." So let's try to be more considerate, OK? OtherwiseI will lolly ou.

:HnU-

a steady uniform Rectitude of Conduct. For this purpose I thereforecontriv'd the foilowiiig Method.

In the various Enumerations of the moral Virtues I had met with inmy Reading, I found the Catalogue more or less numerous, as differentWriters included more or fewer Ideas under the same Name. Temper-ance, for Example, was by some confm'd to Eating and Drinking, whilehy others it was extended to mean the moderating every other Pleasure,Appetite, Inclination or Passion, bodily or mental, even to our Avariceand Ambition. I propos'd to myself, for the sake of Clearness, to userather more Names with fewer Ideas annex'd to each, than a few Nameswith more Ideas; and I included after Thirteen Names of Virtues all thatat that time occurr'd to me as necessary or desirable, and armex'd to eacha short Precept, which fully express'd the Extent I gave to its Meaning.

These Names of Virtues with their Precepts were

1. Temperance. Eat not to Dulness. Drink not to Elevation.2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or your self. Avoid

trifling conversation.3. Order. Let all your Things have their Places. Let each Part of your

Business have its Time.4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail

what you resolve,5. Frugality. Make no Expence but to do good to others or yourself:

I.e. Waste nothing.6. Industry. Lose no Time. Be always employ'd in something useful. Cut

off all unnecessary Actions.7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful Deceit. Think innocently and justiy; and, if you

speak; speak accordingly.8. Justice. Wrong none, by doing Injuries or omitting the Benefits that are

your Duty.9. Moderation. Avoid Extreams. Forbear resenting Injunes so much as

you think they deserve.10. Cleaniiness. Tolerate no Uncleanness in Body, Cloaths or Habitation.11. Tranquiiity. Be not disturbed at Trifles, or at Accidents common or un-

avoidable.12. Chastity. Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspnng; Never to Duiness,

Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another's Peace or Reputation.13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

My intention being to acquire the Habitude of all these Virtues,I judg'd it would be well not to distract my Attention by attempting thewhole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time, and when I shouldbe Master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on till I should

Benjamin Franklin (1706-iygo), one of the most versatile and widely admiredfigures in American history, was horn m Boston and apprenticed at an early age toa printer and newspaper publisher. As a young man, he moyed to Philadelphia tomake his fortune, eventually acquiring his awn printing and newspaper housewhere he produced the popular Poor Richard's Almanack/rom 1732 to 1757.Essentially self-taught, Franklm helped to establish what hecame the AmericanPhilosophical Society and the University of Pennsylvania, and his experimentswith electricity were noted worldwide. A leading figure in the American Revolutionand the establishment of the United States as a democracy. Franklin has beenreferred to as the "wisest American." His autobiography of his earlyyears isconsidered a classic of American literature.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

In "Arnving at Perfection," an excerpt from his Autobiography, BenjammFranklin lays out a plan for his own self-improvement Frankm was a consciousand a conscientious perfectionist. His little essay on self-improvement reflectsthe enlightenment ideals of his time with their emphasis on reason andprogress. But it also reflects an older tendency m American culture: thetendency toward self-examination and self-correction, a meditative cast ofmind Frankim inherited from his Puritan ancestors. Frankhn weds these twotendencies toward self-exammation and toward self-improvement, towardthe moral and the practical.

Franklin's goal for what he calls this "hold and arduous Project" is to hveeach day without committing any faults. As a rationalist, he sees no reasonwhy he shouldn't he able to live according to a standard of moral propriety.He comes to realize, however, that "there are many ways he can lapse from hishigh standard—^through hahit, carelessness, mclmation, and had example.

It was about this time that I conceiv'd the bold and arduous Project ofarriving at moral Perfection. I wish'd to live without committing anyFault at any time; I would conquer all that either Natural Inclination,Custom, or Company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew,what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do theone and avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken a Task ofmore Difficulty than I had imagined: While my Care was employ'd inguarding against one Fault, I was often surpriz'd by another. Habit tookthe Advantage of Inattention. Inclmation was sometimes too strong forReason. I concluded at length, that the mere speculative Conviction thatit was our Interest to be compleatly virtuous, was not sufficient to pre-vent our Slipping, and that the contrary Habits must be broken and goodOnes acquired and established, before we can have any Dependance on

have gone thro' the tHrteen. And as the previous Acquisition of somemight facilitate the Acquisition of certain o thers, I arrang'd them withthat View as they stand above. Temperance first, as it tends to procurethat Coolness and Clearness of Head, which is so necessary where con-stant Vigilance v̂ as to be kept up, and Guard maintained, against theunremitting Attraction of ancient Habits, and the Force of perpetualTemptations. This being acqulr'd and establisli'd. Silence would be moreeasy, and my Desire being to gain Knovirledge at the same time thatI improy'd in Virtue, and considering that in Conversation it wasobtained rather by-the Use of the Ears than of the Tongue, and thereforewishing to break a Habit I was getting into of Prattling, Punning andJoking, which only made me acceptable to trifling Company I gaveSilence the second Place. This, and the next. Order, I expected wouldallow me more Time for attending to m^ Project and my Studies;RESOLUTION once become habitual, would keep me firm in myEndeavors to obtain all the subsequent Virtues; Frugaliiy and Industry, byfreeing me from my remaining Debt, and producing Affluence andIndependance would make more easy the Practice of Sincerity andJustice, etc. etc. Conceiving then that agreable to the Advice of Pythagorasm his Golden Verses, daily examination would be necessary, I contnv'dthe following Method for conducting that Examination.

I made a little Book in which I allotted a Page for each of theVirtues. I rul'd each Page with red Ink so as to have seven Columnsone for each Day of the Week, marldng each Column with a Letter forthe Day. I cross'd these Columns with thirteen red Lines, marking theBeginning of each Line with the first Letter of one of the Virtues,on which Line and in its proper Column I might mark by a httle blackSpot every Fault I found upon Examination, to have been committedrespecting that Virtue upon that Day.

I determined to give a Week's strict Attention to each of the Virtuessuccessively. Thus m the first Week my great Guard was to avoid everythe least Offence against Temperance, leaving the other Virtues to theirordmary Chance, only marking every Evening the faults of the Day.Thus if in the first Week I could keep my first Line marked T clear ofSpots, I suppos'd the Habit of that Virtue so much strengthen'd and itsopposite weaken'd. that I might venture extending my Attention to in-clude the next, and for the following Week keep both Lines clear ofSpots. Proceeding thus to the last, I could go thro' a Course compleat inThirteen Weeks, and four Courses in a Year. And like Urn who having aGarden to weed, does not attempt to eradicate all the bad Herbs aL

TEMPERANCE

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once, which would exceed his Reach and his Strength, but works onone of the Beds at a time, and having accomplish'd the first proceedsto a second; so I should have, (I hoped) the encouraging Pleasure ofseeing on my Pages the Progress I made in Virtue, by clearing succes-sively my Lines of their Spots, till in the End by a Number of Courses.

I should be happy in viewing a clean Book after a thirteen Weeksdaily Examination. . . .

Ellen Goodman (b. 1941) is a native of Newton, Massachusetts, and a graduate ofRaddiffe College. After vjorldng as a reporter for smieral news organizations, shejoined the Boston Globe in 1967 and has been on the staff there ever since. Shewrites an editorial column titled "At Large" that mixes the personal with the politicalin a way that has achieved hroad appeal among readers; it is currently syndicated inniore than 250 newspapers nationwide. These columns have been collected in severalvolumes, including Paper Trail: Common Sense in Uncommon Times (2004),Goodman won the Pulitzer Prize for commentaty in lgSo.mELLEN GOODMAN

In "The Company Man," Ellen Goodman presents a sketch of a characterwho sacrifices everything for his work. He gives up aU pretension to a sociallife and hecomes disconnected irom his wife and family, while keeping hisfocus entirely on his job as a corporate vice president.

Goodman tells the story of "Phil," the company man, the phrase itselfconveying the extent of his commitment to his career. She keeps herlanguage general, making Phil a symbol of company men (and now womentoo) everywhere. Describing him as a "type A" workaholic who lives for hiswork on the job, Goodman simplifies the man and the choices he makes.What she loses in presenting Phil as a complete and complex human being,she gains in making a point about what matters, or should matter, most inour lives.

, He worked himself to death, finally and precisely, at 3:00 A.M. Sundaymorning.

The obituary didn't say that, of course. It said that he died of a coro-nary thrombosis—I think that was it—but everyone among his friendsand acquaintances knew it instantly. He was a perfect Type A, a worka-holic, a classic, they said to each other and shook their heads—andthought for five or ten minutes about the way they lived.

This man who worked himself to death finally and precisely at 3:00A.M. Sunday morning—on his day off—was fifty-one years old and avice-president. He was, however, one of six vice-presidents, and one ofthree who might conceivably—if the president-died or retired soon

• enough—^have moved to the top spot. Phil knew that.He worked six days a week, five of them until eight or nine at night,

during a time when his own company had begun the four-day week for•everyone but the executives. He worked like the Important People. Hehad no outside "extracurricular interests," unless, of course, you thinkabout a monthly golf game that way. To Phil, it was work. He always ate

Phil was overweight and nervous and worked too hard. If he wasn'tat the office, he was worried about it. Phil was a Type A, a heart-attacknatural You couid have piclced him out in a minute from a lineup.

So when he finally worked himself to death, at precisely 3:00 A.M.Sunday morning, no one was really surprised.

By 5:00 P.M. the afternoon of the funeral, the company presidenthad begun, discreetly of course, VTith care and taste, to make inquiriesabout his replacement. One of three men. He asked around: "Who'sbeen working the hardest?"

egg salad sandwiches at his desk. He was, of course, overweight, by 20or 25 pounds. He thought it was okay, though, because he didn't smoke.

On Saturdays, Phil wore a sports jacket to the office instead of asuit, because it was the weekend.

He had a lot of people worldng for him, maybe sixty, and most ofthem Hked him most of the time. Three of them will be seriously con-sidered for Ms job. The obituary didn't mention that.

But it did list his "survivors" quite accurately. He is survive'd by hiswife, Helen, forty-eight years old, a good woman of no particular mar-ketable skills, who worked in an office before marrying and mothering.She had, according to her daughter, given up trying to com.petewith his work years ago, when the children were small. A companyfriend said, "I know how much you vrill miss him." And she answered,"I already have."

"Missing him all these years," she must have given up part of her-self which had cared too much for the man. She would be "well takencare of."

His "dearly beloved" eldest of the "dearly beloved" children is ahardworking executive in a manufacturing firm dovm South. In theday and a half before the funeral, he went around the neighborhoodresearching his father, asldng the neighbors what he was like. Theywere embarrassed.

His second child is a girl, who is twenty-four and newly married.She lives near her mother and they are close, but whenever she wasalone with her father, in a car driving somewhere, they had nothing tosay to each other.

The youngest is twenty, a boy, a high-school graduate who hasspent the last couple of years, like a lot of his friends, doing enoughodd jobs to stay in grass and food. He was the one who tried to grab athis father, and tried to mean enough to him to keep the man at home.He was his father's favorite. Over the last two years, Phil stayed upnights worrying about the boy.

The boy once said, "My father and I only board here."At the funeral, the sixty-year-old company president told the forty-

eight-year-old widow that the fifty-one-year-old deceased had meantmuch to the company and would be missed and would be hard toreplace. The widow didn't look him in the eye. She was afraid he wouldread her bitterness and, after all, she would need him to straighten outthe finances— t̂he stock options and all that.

placidity of a lake in the woods. A few weeks ago this feeling got sostrong I hought myself a couple of hass hooks and a spinner andreturned to the lake where we used to go, for a week's fishing and torevisit old haunts.

I took along my son, who had never had any fresh water up hisnose and who had seen lily pads only from train windows. On the jour-ney over to the lake I began to wonder what it would be like. I won-dered how time would have marred this unique, this holy spot—thecoves and streams, the hills that the sun set behind, the camps and thepaths hehind the camps. I was sure that the tarred road would havefound it out, and I wondered in what other ways it would be desolated.It is strange how much you can remember ahout places like that onceyou allow your mind to return into the grooves that lead back. Youremember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of another thing.I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lakewas cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled ofthe lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent enteredthrough the screen. The partitions in the camp were thin and did notextend clear to the top of the rooms, and as I was always the first upI would dress softly so as not to wake the others, and sneak out into thesweet outdoors and start out in the canoe, keeping close along theshore in the long shadows of the pines. I remembered being very care-ful never to rub my paddle against the gunwale for fear of disturbingthe stillness of the cathedral.

The lake had never been what you would call a wild lake. Therewere cottages sprinkled around the shores, and it was in farming coun-try although the shores of the lake were quite heavily wooded. Some ofthe cottages were owned by nearby farmers, and you would live at theshore and eat your meals at the farmhouse. That's what our family did.But although it wasn't wild, it was a fairly large and undisturbed lakeand there were places in it that, to a child at least, seemed infinitelyremote and primeval.

I was right about the tar: it led to within half a mile of the shore.But when I got back there, with my boy, and we settled into a campnear a farmhouse and into the kind of summertime I had known,I could teli that it was going to be pretty much the same as it had beenbefore—I knew it, lying in bed the first morning, smelling thebedroom and hearing the boy sneak quietly out and go off along theshore in a boat. I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore,by simple transposition, that I was my father. This sensation persisted.

E. B. White (i8gg-ig8s) was born to wealthy parents in Mount Vernon, New York,a suburb of Manhattan. At Cornell University, he was editor of the campusnewspaper, and he early settled on a career in journalism. In ig2y he joined thestaff of the newly formed New Yorker magazine and contributed greatly to thesophisticated, sharply ironic tone of the publication. He relocated his family torural Maine in 1933 and lejt the New Yorker in 1937 to write a monthly cqlumn

for Harper's. These more serious and emotionally felt essays were collected in OneMan's Mest (ig42), andWhite published two more major essay collections inig54and 1962. He is also the author of several popular children's books, including ••Stuart Little (1945) and Charlotte's Web (1952J. Considered a peerless stylist,White also edited and expanded The Elements of Style by Willard Strunkjr.

E. WHITE

E. B. White's "Once More to the Lake" describes a visit to a Maine lake thatWhite makes with his family, which evokes memories of the annual trip hemade there when he was a young boy. Reflecting on his recent trip in thecontext of the time he spent at the lake as a youth. White creates a lyricalrememhrance of the place and a speculative essay ahout the passage of time,about change and changlessness, and about mortality.

One summer, along about 1904, my father rented a camp on a lake inMaine and took us all there for the month of August. We all got ring-worm from some kittens and had to rub Pond's Extract on our armsand legs night and morning, and my father rolled over in a canoe withail his clothes on; but outside of that the vacation was a success andfrom then on none of us ever thought there was any place in the worldlike that lake in Maine. We returned summer after summer—always onAugust 1 for one month. I have since become a salt-water man, butsometimes in summer there are days when the restlessness of the tidesand the fearful cold of the sea water and the incessant wind that blowsacross the afternoon and into the evening make me wish for the

kept cropping up all the time we were there. It was not an entirely newfeeling, but in this setting it grew much stronger. I seemed to be livinga dual existence. I would be in the middle of some simple act, I wouldbe piddng up a bait box or laying down a table fork, or I would be say-ing something, and suddenly it would be not I but my father who wassaying the words or making l:he gesture. It gave me a creepy sensation.

"We went fishing the next morning. I felt the same damp moss cov-ering the worms in the bait can, and saw the dragonfly alight on the tipof my rod as it hovered a few inches from the surface of the water. Itwas the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt thateveryihing was as it always had been, that the years were a mirage andthat there had been no years. The small waves were the same, chuck-ing the rowboat under the chin as we fished at anchor, and the boatwas the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in thesame places, and under the floorboards the same fresh-water leavingsand debris—the dead helgramite, the wisps of moss, the rusty dis-carded fishhook, the dried blood from yesterday's catch. We staredsilently at the tips of our rods, at the dragonflies that came and went.I lowered the tip of mine into the water, tentatively, pensively dislodg-ing the fly, which darted two feet away, poised, darted two feet back,and came to rest again a little farther up the rod. There had been noyears between the ducking of this dragonfly and the other one—theone that was part of m.emory. I looked at the boy, who was silentlywatching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watch-ing. I felt dizzy and didn't know which rod I was at the end of.

We caught two bass, hauling them in briskly as though they weremackerel, pulling them, over the side of the boat in a businesslike man-ner without any landing net, and stunning them, with a blow on theback of the head. When we got back for a swim before lunch, the lakewas exactly where we had left it, the same number of inches from thedock, and there was only the merest suggestion of a breeze. Thisseemed an utterly enchanted sea, this lake you could leave to its owndevices for a few hours and come back to, and find that it had notstirred, this constant and trustworthy body of water. In the shallows,the dark, water-soaked sticks and twigs, smooth and old, were undulat-ing in clusters on the bottom against the clean ribbed sand, and thetrack of the mussel was plain. A school of minnows swam by, eachminnow with its small individual shadow, doubling the attendance, soclear and sharp in the sunlight. Some of the other campers were inswimming, along the shore, one of them with a cake of soap, and the

water felt thin and clear and unsubstantial. Over the years there hadbeen this person with the cake of soap, this cultist, and here he was.There had been no years.

Up to the farmhouse io dinner through the teeming, dusty field,the road under our sneakers was only a two-track road. The middletrack was missing, the one with the marks of the hooves and thesplotches of dried, flaky manure. There had always been three tracks tochoose from in choosing which track to walk in; now the choice wasnarrowed down to two. For a moment I missed terribly the middlealternative. But the way led past the tennis court, and something aboutthe way it lay there in the sun reassured me; the tape had loosenedalong the backline, the alleys were green with plantains and otherweeds, and the net (installed in June and removed in September)sagged in the dry noon, and the whole place steamed with midday heatand hunger and eraptiness. There was a choice of pie for dessert, andone was blueberry and one was apple, and the waitresses were thesame country girls, there having been no passage of time, only the illu-sion of it as in a dropped curtain—the waitresses were still fifteen;their hair had been washed, that was the only difference—they hadbeen to the movies and seen the pretty girls with the clean hair.

Summertime, oh, summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade-proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweetfernand the juniper forever and ever, summer without end; this was thebackground, and the life along the shore was the design, the cottagerswith their Innocent and tranquil design, their tiny docks with the flag-pole and the American flag floating against the white clouds in theblue sky, the little paths over the roots of the trees leading from cam.pto camp and the paths leading back to the outhouses and the can oflime for sprinlding, and at the souvenir counters at the store the minia-ture birchbark canoes and the postcards that showed things looking alittle better than they looked. This was the American family at play,escaping the city heat, wondering whether the newcomers in the campat the head of the cove were "common" or "nice," wondering whetherit was true that the people who drove up for Sunday dinner at the farm-house were turned away because there wasn't enough chicken.

It seemed to me, as I kept remembering all this, that those timesand those summers had been infinitely precious and worth saving.There had been jollity and peace and goodness. The arriving (at thebeginning of August) had been so big a business in itself, at the railwaystation the farm wagon drawn up, the first sm.ell of the pine-laden air.

threw the switch a twentieth of a second too soon you would catch theflywheel when it still had speed enough to go up past center, and theboat would leap ahead, charging bull-fashion at the dock.

We had a good week at the camp. The bass were biting well and thesun shone endlessly, day after day. We would be tired at night and liedown in the accumulated heat of the little bedrooms after the long hotday and the breeze would stir almost imperceptibly outside and thesmell of the swamp drift in through the rusty screens. Sleep wouldcome easily and in the morning ,the red squirrel would be on the roof,tapping out his gay routine. I kept remembering everything, lying inbed in the mornings—the small steamboat that had a long roundedstern like the lip of a Ubangi, and how quietly she ra.n on the moon-light sails, when the older boys played their mandolins and the girlssang and we ate doughnuts dipped in sugar, and how sweet the musicwas on the water in the shining night, and what it had felt like to thinkabout girls then. After breakfast we would go up to the store and thethings were in the same place—the minnows in a bottle, the plugs andspinners disarranged and pawed over by the youngsters from the boys'camp, the Fig Newtons and the Beeman's gum. Outside, the road wastarred and cars stood in front of the store. Inside, all was just as it hadalways been, except there was more Coca-Cola and not so much Moxieand root beer and birch beer and sarsaparilia. We would walk out withthe bottle of pop apiece and sometimes the pop woiold baclcfire up ournoses and hurt. We explored the streams, quietly, where the turtles slidoff the sunny logs and dug their way into the soft bottom; and we layon the town wharf and fed worms to the tame bass. Everywhere wewent I had trouble making out which was I, the one walking at my side,the one walking in my pants.

One afternoon while we were there at that lake a thunderstormcame up. It was like the revival of an old melodrama that I had seenlong ago with childish awe. The second-act climax of the drama of theelectrical disturbance over a lake in America had not changed in anyimportant respect. This was the big scene, still the big scene. The wholething was so familiar, the first feeling of oppression and heat and ageneral air around camp of not wanting to go very far away. Inmidafternoon (it was all the same) a curious darkening of the sky, and alull in everything that had made life tick; and then the way the boatssuddenly swung the other way at their moorings with the coming of abreeze out of the new quarter, and the premonitory rumble. Then thekettle drum, then the snare, then the bass drum and cymbals, then

the first glimpse of the smiling farmer, and the great importance of thetrunks and your father's enormous authority in such matters, and thefeel of the wagon under you for the long ten-mile haul, and at the topof the last long hill catching the first view of the lake after elevenmonths of not seeing this cherished body of water. The shouts andcries of the other campers when they saw you, and the trunks to beunpacked, to give up their rich burden. (Arriving was less excitingnowadays, when you sneaked up in your car and parked it under a treenear the camp and took out the bags and in five minutes it was all over,no fuss, no loud wonderful fuss about trunks.)

Peace and goodness and jollity. The only thing that was wrong now,really, was the sound of the place, an unfamiliar nervous sound of theoutboard motors. This was the note that jarred, the one thing thatwould sometimes break the illusion and set the years moving. In thoseother summertimes all motors were inboard; and when they were at alittle distance, the noise they made was a sedative, an ingredient ofsummer sleep. They were one-cylinder and two-cylinder engines, andsome were make-and-break and some were jump-spark, but they allmade a sleepy sound across the lake. The one-lungers throbbed andfluttered, and the twin-cyhnder ones purred and purred, and that was aquiet sound, too. But now the campers all had outboards. In the day-time, in the hot mornings, these motors made a petulant, irritablesound; at night, in the still evening when the afterglow lit the water,they whined about one's ears like mosquitoes. My boy loved our rentedoutboard, and his great desire was to achieve single-handed masteryover it, and authority, and he soon learned the trick of choldng it a lit-tle (but not too much), and the adjustment of the needle valve. Watch-ing him I would remember the things you could do with the oldone-cylinder engine with the heavy flywheel, how you could have iteating out of your hand if you got really close to it spiritually. Motor-boats in those days didn't have clutches, and you would make a land-ing by shutting off the motor at the proper time and coasting in with adead rudder. But there was a way of reversing them, if you learned thetrick, by cutting the switch and putting it on again exactly on the finaldying revolution of the flywheel, so that it would kick back againstcompression and begin reversing. Approaching a dock in a strong fol-lowing breeze, it was difficult to slow up sufficiently by the ordinarycoasting method, and if a boy felt he had complete mastery over hismotor, he was tempted to keep it running beyond its time and thenreverse it a few feet from the dock. It took a cool nerve, because if you

craclding light against the dark, aiid the gods grinning and licldng 'tlieirchops in the hills. Afterward the calm, the rain steadily rustling in thecalm lake, the'return of light and hope and spirits, and the campersrunning out in joy and relief to go swimming in the rain, their brightcries perpetuating the deatlilessjolce ahout how they were getting sim-ply drenched, and the children screaming with delight at the new sen-sation of bathing in the rain, and the joke about getting drenchedlinldng the generations in a strong indestructible chain. And the come-dian who waded in carrying an umbrella.

When the 'others went swimming, my son said he was going in,too. He pulled his dripping trunks from the line where they had hungall through the shower and wrung them out. Languidly, and with, nothought of going in, I watched him, his hard little body, skinny andbare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small,soggy, icy garment. As he buckled the swollen belt, suddenly my groinfelt the chill of death.

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CHAPTER 1 • AN INTRODUCTION TO RHETORIC

Pathos

Without question, Gehiig's speech gains power with its appeal to pathos, or emo-tion. Although writing that relies exdusiyely on emotional appeals is rarely effec-tive in the long term, choosing language (such as figurative language or personalanecdotes) that engages the emotions of the audience can add an importantdimension. Obviously, Gehrig uses the first person (I) hecause he is spealdngabout himself, but he also chooses a sequence of words with strong positive con-notations: greatest, wonderful, honored, grand, blessing. He uses one image —tower of strength — that may not seem very original but strilces the right note. It isa well-iaiown description that lais audience understands — in fact, they probablyhave used it themselves.

Although an argument that appeals only to the emotions is by definitionwealt — it's generally propaganclistic hi purpose and more polemical thaxL per-suasive— an effective speaker or writer understands the power of evoldngan audience's emotions. Emotional appeals usually include vivid, concrete de-scription and figurative language. In addition, visual elements often carry astrong emotional appeal. A strildng photograph, for example, may strengtlien anargunient. Advertisers certainly malce tlie most of photos and otlier visual imagesto entice or persuade audiences.