LITERARY CRITICISM from The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness from The Well Wrought Urn Cleanth Brooks SCAN FOR T1 empted by the Weird Sisters and urged on by his wife, Macbeth © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. MULTIMEDIA is . . . caught between the irrational and the rational. There is a NOTES sense, of course, in which every man is caught between them. Man must try to predict and plan and control his destiny. That is man’s Mark context clues or indicate fate; and the struggle, if he is to realize himself as a man, cannot be another strategy you used that avoided. The question, of course, which has always interested the helped you determine meaning. tragic dramatist involves the terms on which the struggle is accepted perception (puhr SEHP and the protagonist’s attitude toward fate and toward himself. shuhn) n. Macbeth in his general concern for the future is typical—is Every MEANING: Man. He becomes the typical tragic protagonist when he yields to pride and hybris.1 The occasion for temptation is offered by the unambiguous (uhn am BIHG prophecy of the Weird Sisters. They offer him knowledge which yoo uhs) adj. cannot be arrived at rationally. They offer a key—if only a partial key—to what is otherwise unpredictable. Lady Macbeth, on the other MEANING: hand, by employing a ruthless clarity of perception, by discounting all emotional claims, offers him the promise of bringing about the course of events which he desires. 2 Now, in the middle of the play, though he has not lost confidence and though, as he himself says, there can be no turning back, doubts have begun to arise; and he returns to the Weird Sisters to secure unambiguous answers to his fears. But, pathetically and ironically for Macbeth, in returning to the Weird Sisters, he is really trying to impose rationality on what sets itself forth plainly as irrational: that is, Macbeth would force a rigid control on a future which, by 1. hybris (HY brihs) n. hubris; arrogance. 386 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PAST
definition—by the very fact that the Weird Sisters already know it— NOTES stands beyond his manipulation. © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 3 It is because of his hopes for his own children and his fears of Banquo’s that he has returned to the witches for counsel. It is altogether appropriate, therefore, that two of the apparitions by which their counsel is revealed should be babes, the crowned babe and the bloody babe. 4 For the babe signifies the future which Macbeth would control and cannot control. It is the unpredictable thing itself—as Yeats has put it magnificently, “The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.” It is the one thing that can justify, even in Macbeth’s mind, the murders which he has committed. Earlier in the play, Macbeth had declared that if the deed could “trammel up the consequence,” he would be willing to “jump the life to come.” But he cannot jump the life to come. In his own terms he is betrayed. For it is idle to speak of jumping the life to come if one yearns to found a line of kings. It is the babe that betrays Macbeth—his own babes, most of all. 5 The logic of Macbeth’s distraught mind, thus, forces him to make war on children, a war which in itself reflects his desperation and is a confession of weakness. Macbeth’s ruffians, for example, break into Macduff’s castle and kill his wife and children. The scene in which the innocent child prattles with his mother about his absent father, and then is murdered, is typical Shakespearean “fourth act” pathos.2 But the pathos is not adventitious; the scene ties into the inner symbolism of the play. For the child, in its helplessness, defies the murderers. Its defiance testifies to the force which threatens Macbeth and which Macbeth cannot destroy. 6 But we are not, of course, to placard3 the child as The Future in a rather stiff and mechanical allegory. Macbeth is no such allegory. Shakespeare’s symbols are richer and more flexible than that. The babe signifies not only the future; it symbolizes all those enlarging purposes which make life meaningful, and it symbolizes, furthermore, all those emotional and—to Lady Macbeth—irrational ties which make man more than a machine—which render him human. It signifies preeminently the pity which Macbeth, under Lady Macbeth’s tutelage, would wean himself of as something “unmanly.” Lady Macbeth’s great speeches early in the play become brilliantly ironical when we realize that Shakespeare is using the same symbol for the unpredictable future that he uses for human compassion. Lady Macbeth is willing to go to any length to grasp the future: she would willingly dash out the brains of her own child if it stood in her way to that future. But this is to repudiate the future, for the child is its symbol. 7 Shakespeare does not, of course, limit himself to the symbolism of the child: he makes use of other symbols of growth and development, notably that of the plant. And this plant symbolism patterns itself to 2. pathos (PAY thohs) n. quality that arouses feelings of pity, sympathy, sorrow, or compassion. 3. placard (PLAK ahrd) v. display. from The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness 387
NOTES reflect the development of the play. For example, Banquo says to the Weird Sisters, early in the play: © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not, Speak then to me. . . . A little later, on welcoming Macbeth, Duncan says to him: I have begun to plant thee, and will labor To make thee full of growing. After the murder of Duncan, Macbeth falls into the same metaphor when he comes to resolve on Banquo’s death. The Weird Sisters, he reflects, had hailed Banquo as . . . father to a line of kings. Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown, And put a barren scepter in my gripe. . . . Late in the play, Macbeth sees himself as the winter-stricken tree: I have liv’d long enough: my way of life Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf. . . . 8 The plant symbolism, then, supplements the child symbolism. At points it merges with it, as when Macbeth ponders bitterly that he has damned himself To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings! And, in at least one brilliant example, the plant symbolism unites with the clothes symbolism. It is a crowning irony that one of the Weird Sisters’ prophecies on which Macbeth has staked his hopes is fulfilled when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. For, in a sense, Macbeth is here hoist on his own petard. Macbeth, who has invoked night to “Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,” and who has, again and again, used the “false face” to “hide what the false heart doth know,” here has the trick turned against him. But the garment which cloaks the avengers is the living green of nature itself, and nature seems, to the startled eyes of his sentinels, to be rising up against him. 9 But it is the babe, the child, that dominates the symbolism. Most fittingly, the last of the prophecies in which Macbeth has placed his confidence, concerns the child: and Macbeth comes to know the final worst when Macduff declares to him that he was not “born of woman” but was from his “mother’s womb / Untimely ripp’d.” The babe here has defied even the thing which one feels may reasonably be predicted of him—his time of birth. With Macduff’s pronouncement, the unpredictable has broken through the last shred of the net of calculation. The future cannot be trammeled up.4 The naked babe confronts Macbeth to pronounce his doom. 4. trammeled up restrained. 388 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PAST
10 The passage with which we began this essay, then, is an integral NOTES part of a larger context, and of a very rich context: © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, hors’d Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. 11 Pity is like the naked babe, the most sensitive and helpless thing; yet, almost as soon as the comparison is announced, the symbol of weakness begins to turn into a symbol of strength; for the babe, though newborn, is pictured as “Striding the blast” like an elemental force—like “heaven’s cherubim, hors’d / Upon the sightless couriers of the air.” We can give an answer to the question put earlier: is Pity like the human and helpless babe, or powerful as the angel that rides the winds? It is both; and it is strong because of its very weakness. The paradox is inherent in the situation itself; and it is the paradox that will destroy the overbrittle rationalism on which Macbeth founds his career. 12 For what will it avail Macbeth to cover the deed with the blanket of the dark if the elemental forces that ride the winds will blow the horrid deed in every eye? And what will it avail Macbeth to clothe himself in “manliness”—to become bloody, bold, and resolute—if he is to find himself again and again, viewing his bloody work through the “eye of childhood / That fears a painted devil“? Certainly, the final and climactic appearance of the babe symbol merges all the contradictory elements of the symbol. For, with Macduff’s statement about his birth, the naked babe rises before Macbeth as not only the future that eludes calculation but as avenging angel as well. 13 The clothed daggers and the naked babe—mechanism and life— instrument and end—death and birth—that which should be left bare and clean and that which should be clothed and warmed— these are facets of two of the great symbols which run throughout the play. They are not the only symbols, to be sure; they are not the most obvious symbols: darkness and blood appear more often. But with a flexibility which must amaze the reader, the image of the garment and the image of the babe are so used as to encompass an astonishingly large area of the total situation. And between them— the naked babe, essential humanity, humanity stripped down to the naked thing itself, and yet as various as the future—and the various garbs which humanity assumes, the robes of honor, the hypocrite’s disguise, the inhuman “manliness” with which Macbeth endeavors to cover up his essential humanity—between them, they furnish Shakespeare with his most subtle and ironically telling instruments. ❧ from The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness 389
LITERARY CRITICISM from Macbeth from Shakespeare’s Language Frank Kermode SCAN FOR L1 ooking at it from a distance, we can see that the distinctive character MULTIMEDIA of the language of Macbeth is largely dictated by its structure. From NOTES the first suggestion of a plot on Duncan’s life until his murder, the play exists in a world of nightmare doubt and decision: to kill or not to kill. As Thomas de Quincey expressed it in his superb essay “On the Knocking © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. at the Gate in Macbeth,” the knocking makes it known “that the reaction has commenced, the human has made its reflex upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them.”1 Or one could cite Brutus’s soliloquy in Julius Caesar: Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. (II.i.63–65) 2 The action before the murder is situated in this “interim” (Macbeth himself uses the word in I.iii.154), and the verse is designed to match 1. The essay first appeared in the London Magazine for October 1823 and has often been reprinted. 390 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PAST
© Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. the terrible and uncertain decisions that occupy it. The play as a NOTES whole is greatly preoccupied with time; the Show of Kings itself covers many generations, and there is lasting concern about lineal Mark context clues or indicate descendants, Macbeth fearing that whereas he has no prospect of another strategy you used that dynastic successors, Banquo has—a difference underlined by the helped you determine meaning. Weird Sisters. The way to succeed Duncan was to kill him; the way to idiosyncratic (ihd ee uh sihn prevent the succession of Banquo’s heirs was to kill both Banquo and KRAT ihk) adj. Fleance. In both cases it was necessary to consider interference with MEANING: the future as the Sisters foresaw it. So, in the early part of the play, the verse is full of equivocations about the present and the future, as forecast by the gnomic sayings of the Three Sisters. 3 Their opening lines represent a new departure, for they tell us nothing directly about the subject of the play, speaking only of the future as perceived from the present. “When shall we three meet again? / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” offers an apparent choice of weathers that is not a choice at all, which partly prefigures the plight of Macbeth and suggests a vain selection of some aspects of futurity at the expense of others not mentioned—fine weather, for instance. The answer to these questions is “When the hurlyburly’s done, / When the battle’s lost and won.” Hurlies and burlies go together like thunder and lightning, won battles are also lost; so we have false antitheses, ghostly choices, an ironic parody of human powers of prediction. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” is a paradox echoed by Macbeth in the first line he speaks (I.iii.38). In his mouth the words may be taken at face value, as referring to the bad weather on one hand and the pleasures of victory on the other; the Sisters’ use of the idea is darker and more complex. Perhaps what strikes them as fair is what to others would be foul, a crown got by crime, for instance. The paradox is oracular; oracles are traditionally equivocal. Macbeth is a play of prophecy focussed, with great concentration, on the desire to feel the future in the instant, to be transported “beyond the ignorant present.” When Macbeth asks the Sisters, “what are you?” (I.iii.47), their reply is to tell him what he will be. The present is the long interim between thought and act (an interim that disappears when Macbeth decides to let the firstlings of his heart become the firstlings of his hand, “To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done” [IV.i.149]). The first part of the play is set in a time when there is still a gap between the thought and the deed, and its language enacts this dizzying gap. 4 Here, perhaps more than in any other of Shakespeare’s plays, an idiosyncratic rhythm and a lexical habit establish themselves with a sort of hypnotic firmness. “Lost and won,” say the Sisters at the beginning of the first scene: “What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won,” says Duncan at the end of the second, having just before that rhymed “Macbeth” with “death.” These moments of ingrown self-allusion contrast with the old-style rant of the bleeding Sergeant. The scene in which Macbeth and Banquo encounter the Sisters (I.iii) fully exhibits the new and peculiar ambiguous, doubling manner. Are these figures inhabitants of the earth or not? Men or women? Alive or not? They reply with their prophecy: he is already Glamis, will be Cawdor, will be King. from Macbeth 391
NOTES Banquo answers with questions to Macbeth: why does he fear what seems so fair? Then he addresses the Sisters: “Are ye fantastical, or that indeed / Which outwardly ye show?” (53–54). Are you what you appear to be, or mere apparitions? Why do you speak to him and not to me? If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow, and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favors nor your hate. (58–61) 5 Here the rhythms reinforce the return to the original question: What © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. can be known of the future in the present? Him/me, grow/not grow, beg/fear, favors/hate, even when they are not, as it were, necessary, part of the substance, the oppositions and alternatives sound on continually. “Lesser than Macbeth, and greater. / Not so happy, yet much happier. / Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none” (65–67). Macbeth calls the Sisters “imperfect speakers” (70), meaning that what they say is not complete enough to be understood or to satisfy him. But they vanish, leaving their imperfect speeches to be completed according to taste: “Your children shall be kings. You shall be king” (86). The “self-same tune” is now repetitively in our ears. 6 When Ross confirms Macbeth’s appointment as Thane of Cawdor, Banquo’s reaction is to ask, “What, can the devil speak true?” (107). And Macbeth begins the famous sequence of allusions to borrowed or ill-fitting garments: “why do you dress me / In borrowed robes?” (108–109). Banquo repeats the figure almost immediately (144–146). Here these robes, if borrowed, must be on loan from the future, and they confirm a devil’s prophecy, although the fiend as a rule “lies like truth” (V.v.43). Banquo fears that this truth has been told to do harm: “The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray ‘s / In deepest consequence” (I.iii.l24–126). And Macbeth, contemplating a future in which he may have to murder in order to fulfil the prophecy of kingship, speaks a long aside which now completely establishes the rhythm of the interim: This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor. If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings: My thought, whose murther yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is But what is not. (130–42) 392 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PAST
7 The tempting promise of the Sisters, here compacted in the sinister NOTES phrase “supernatural soliciting,” seems good in so far as it began with © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. a now undoubted truth; it seems bad in that the temptation to murder induces in him an unnatural fear and brings up the image of a dead king. These fears arise from something less than the horrors would be if they were actual; yet they are already actual enough to shake him terribly. He is “rapt” (142), his ordinary behaviour forgotten in thoughts of that imagined future action. “[N]othing is / But what is not”—that is, the present is no longer present, the unacted future has occupied its place. These difficult thoughts all turn on the incantatory rhythm of “Cannot be ill; cannot be good,” and of “nothing is / But what is not,” as indeed will much of the verse from this point on until Duncan is dead. 8 More than any other play, Macbeth dwells on this moment of crisis, a moment that seems exempt from the usual movement of time, when the future is crammed into the present. St. Augustine wrote about such a moment, the gap between desire and act. Though he was certain of the end desires, he was “at strife” with himself. The choices to be made were “all meeting together in the same juncture of time.” He said to himself, “Be it done now, be it done now,” but he continued to hesitate between fair and foul, crying, “How long? How long? Tomorrow and tomorrow?”2 This, for Macbeth, as for the saint, is the moment when the soul distends itself to include past and future. Throughout the early scenes we are being prepared for the astonishingly original verse of the great soliloquy in I.vii. . . . 9 . . . On many occasions Shakespeare, needing a simple expression, cannot avoid complicating it . . . as if by an excess of energy, but they should be distinguished from passages in which that energy is fully and properly employed; and one of the greatest of these is Macbeth’s soliloquy at the beginning of I.vii: If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly. If th’ assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease, success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all—here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgment here, that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague th’ inventor. This even-handed justice Commends th’ ingredience of our poison’d chalice To our own lips. He’s here in double trust: First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murtherer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan 2. Confessions, VII, xii (quamdiu, quamdiu, ‘cras et cras’?”). Reading The Tragedy of Macbeth, I find it hard to believe that Shakespeare did not know this work, especially Book XI. from Macbeth 393
NOTES Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongu’d, against © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. The deep damnation of his taking-off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, And falls on th’ other— (1–28) 10 The passage is famous, and so are some examples of interpretative criticism it has attracted.3 Like St. Augustine, Macbeth has to consider what is implied by his need to do in order to possess what is by that act done. The triple repetition of “done” gives a fairly commonplace, even proverbial saying an intense local force.4 If the murder could of its own power prevent all that follows such a deed, if Duncan’s death could put an end not only to him but to all that would follow it, then at this stationary moment in time he would “jump the life to come,” risk consequences in another life. But paraphrase of this sort entirely misses the force of “surcease, success,” a compaction of language into what has been called a “seesaw rhythm” that is the motto rhythm of the great interim. “Be-all and end-all,” another such compaction, has passed into the common language, yet it seems to be Shakespeare’s coinage. If only time could be made to stop at the desired moment of the future! However, to be and to end are antithetical, they can only contradict each other; time, as Hotspur said in his dying speech, “must have a stop,” though our experience of it does not. The act of murder cannot be an end;5 nothing in time can, in that sense, be “done.” You can’t have hurly without burly, surcease does not imply the end of success (succession). No act is without success in this sense. ❧ 3. For example, Cleanth Brooks, “The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness,” in The Well Wrought Urn (1947). Brooks’s methods are no longer in fashion, and his emphasis on the structural importance of images has often been contested, but if it is valid anywhere it is valid in relation to Macbeth. 4. “The thing that is done is not to do”—M. P. Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England (1950, s.v.). We have not yet done with these repetitions: “Things without all remedy / Should be without regard: what’s done, is done” (III.ii.12); “What’s done cannot be undone” (V.i.65). 5. Hilda Hulme in Explorations in Shakespeare’s Language persuasively suggests that trammel in the third line of the speech, means “to bind up a corpse within a shroud” (pp. 21–22). The word is usually taken to drive from the noun trammel, a fishing or fowling net, a hobble for a horse, or a device for hanging pots over a fire; where the first sense is preferred, the net being a figure for the catching up of “success.” See Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, pp. 49–50. Hulme’s proposal is apt in that a murdered body so bound up would rather vividly symbolise an end, here so much desired. Excerpts from “Macbeth” from Shakespeare’s Language 2000 by Frank Kermode. Copyright © 2000 by Frank Kermode. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. CAUTION: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. 394 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PAST
© Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Comprehension Check Complete the following items after you finish your first read. Review and clarify details with your group. from THE NAKED BABE AND THE CLOAK OF MANLINESS 1. According to Brooks, what is ironic about Macbeth’s returning to the Weird Sisters for answers? 2. In Brooks’s analysis, what are some of the things that the child symbolizes in Macbeth? 3. How does Brooks interpret the Weird Sisters’ last prophecy? from MACBETH 1. How does Kermode define the “interim” of time in which much of Macbeth takes place? 2. What examples of “false antitheses,” or inaccurate opposites, does Kermode cite? 3. How does Kermode characterize the specific language patterns of Macbeth? 4. Notebook Confirm your understanding of the texts by writing a three-sentence summary of each of them. RESEARCH Research to Clarify Choose at least one unfamiliar detail from one of the texts. Briefly research that detail. In what way does the information you learned shed light on an aspect of the essay? from The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness • from Macbeth 395
making meaning Close Read the Text With your group, revisit sections of the texts you marked during your first read. Annotate details that you notice. What questions do you have? What can you conclude? from THE NAKED BABE AND THE Analyze the Text Cite textual evidence CLOAK OF MANLINESS | from to support your answers. MACBETH Notebook Complete the activities. GROUP DISCUSSION 1. Review and Clarify With your group, reread paragraph 3 of the When discussing literary excerpt from Kermode’s “Macbeth.” What meanings does Kermode find criticism, be sure to in the Weird Sisters’ introductory incantation? Do you agree with his distinguish between the interpretation of these lines? Why or why not? critic’s analysis and the original text the critic is 2. Present and Discuss Now, work with your group to share the passages discussing. You will probably from the essays that you found especially important. Take turns presenting want to refer to each critic’s and discussing your passages. views, as well as specific lines from The Tragedy of 3. Essential Question: How do our attitudes toward the past and Macbeth, while you discuss future shape our actions? What have these texts taught you about how these essays. the passage of time affects people’s actions? WORD NETWORK language development © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Add interesting words Concept Vocabulary related to time from the text to your Word Network. perception unambiguous idiosyncratic Standards Why These Words? The three concept vocabulary words are related. Reading Informational Text With your group, discuss the words, and determine what the words have in Determine two or more central common. How do these word choices enhance the impact of the text? ideas of a text and analyze their Practice development over the course of the text, including how they interact and Notebook Use the concept vocabulary words in sentences. In each build on one another to produce sentence, provide context clues that hint at the word’s meaning. a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text. Word Study Language Identify and correctly use patterns of Patterns of Word Changes Affixes usually perform one of two functions. word changes that indicate different Some change a word’s meaning. For example, Brooks points out that meanings or parts of speech. Macbeth seeks unambiguous answers from the Weird Sisters, whereas Kermode emphasizes the ambiguous nature of their language. Adding the prefix un- to ambiguous changes its meaning from “vague” to “certain.” Other affixes change a word’s grammatical function. Brooks describes Lady Macbeth’s “ruthless clarity of perception,” whereas Kermode discusses how the future is “perceived from the present.” Adding the suffix -tion to perceive changes the word from a verb to a noun without affecting its core meaning, “to be aware of something using the senses.” Notebook Analyze four words from these essays. Choose two words in which an affix changes meaning and two in which it changes part of speech. 396 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PAST
essential question: How do our attituedsesesntotiwaalrqd utheestpioasnt: aWndhaftudtuoreessihtatpaekeotuor saucrtvioivnes?? Analyze Craft and Structure PROCESS Analyze Arguments Literary criticism presents a writer’s carefully reasoned When your group identifies analysis of one or more texts. The critic presents a central idea or claim, a central idea, look for at and develops it through a careful, supported explanation. The central least two different kinds of idea must be thoroughly backed up by effective and relevant supporting supporting evidence that evidence, which can include quotations from the original texts and detailed back it up. You might have considerations of the language and themes, as well as references to the work each group member analyze of other literary critics or experts. how one idea is developed and supported. Then, share To identify central ideas, look for topics that receive significant attention your analyses in a group in an essay. The title often points you toward an idea that is fundamental discussion. to the writer’s analysis. For example, in “The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness,” one of Brooks’s central ideas relates to the many ways in which one can interpret the image of the “naked babe” in Macbeth. Practice As a group, complete this chart to analyze the arguments that Brooks and Kermode make. SELECTION CENTRAL IDEAS SUPPORTING EVIDENCE from The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness by Cleanth Brooks from Macbeth by Frank Kermode © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Notebook Answer the questions. 1. Do you find Brooks’s support for his central idea convincing? Why or why not? 2. (a) In your own words, explain Kermode’s idea that the language of Macbeth is rich in a “peculiar ambiguous, doubling manner.” (b) Do you find his support for this idea convincing? Explain. from The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness • from Macbeth 397
Language development from THE NAKED BABE AND THE Conventions and Style CLOAK OF MANLINESS | from MACBETH Quotations Literary critics quote directly from the works they are analyzing in order to orient readers, to emphasize specific points, and to add authority Standards to their arguments. There are two ways to set up quotations: inside Language quotation marks or block quotation. • Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English • Place quotation marks (“) before and after a short quotation. capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing. • When a quotation is longer—usually two or more lines of a drama or • Apply knowledge of language to four or more lines of prose—use a block quotation. Do not place understand how language functions quotation marks. Instead, indent the whole quotation, and introduce it in different contexts, to make with a colon (:). effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when Literary critics may choose to quote the exact language, not only of the reading or listening. works they are analyzing, but also of other critics or writers—for instance, when that language makes a point uniquely or memorably. When they do so, they must include clear attribution, or acknowledgment of the original writer. EXAMPLE USE OF CONVENTION As Thomas de Quincey expressed it in his superb When Kermode uses this short quotation essay “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth,” the from another writer’s work, he places it knocking makes it known “that . . . the re-establishment in quotation marks and includes clear of the goings-on of the world in which we live makes us attribution. profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that has suspended them.” Or one could cite Brutus’s soliloquy in Julius Caesar: When Kermode cites these three lines from Between the acting of a dreadful thing Julius Caesar, he uses a colon and a block And the first motion, all the interim is quotation, rather than quotation marks. He Like a phantasma or a hideous dream (II.i.63–65) also indicates which lines he is quoting. Read It © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 1. R eread the Brooks text, and find an example of attribution through quotation marks and an example of block quotation. 2. Connect to Style Reread paragraph 4 of Brooks’s essay. Mark the word that indicates Brooks’s motivation for quoting Yeats. Write It Notebook Write three sentences in which you make a point about the mood or symbolism in The Tragedy of Macbeth. In one sentence, quote from Shakespeare’s play; in another, quote from the writing of Brooks or Kermode; and in the third, set up a block quotation from one of these three texts. 398 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PAST
EFFECTIVE EXPRESSION Speaking and Listening COLLABORATION Assignment Allow time for panelists to With your group, conduct a panel discussion about The Tragedy of interact, asking one another Macbeth to help your audience interpret the play. Choose one of the questions to clarify or prompts as the focus for your panel. extend ideas. Also, consider planning time for a Q&A Brooks points to Macbeth’s preoccupation with controlling his destiny: session with your audience. “Tempted by the Weird Sisters and urged on by his wife, Macbeth is thus caught between the rational and the irrational. There is a sense, evidence log of course, in which every man is caught between them. Man must try to predict and control his destiny.” Explain and evaluate Brooks’s Before moving on to a analysis of this fundamental theme. new selection, go to your Brooks discusses various symbols in the play—children, plants, and Evidence Log and record clothing. In your view, which of those elements most dramatically what you learned from these captures the play’s central ideas? pieces of literary criticism. Examine each critic’s discussion of lines 21–25 of The Tragedy of Macbeth, Act I, Scene vii: And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. Which interpretation do you think is most compelling? © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Plan Your Panel Most effective panel discussions have a strong moderator Standards who controls the event, making sure that speakers stay on topic and stick Speaking and Listening to their allotted times. Choose a moderator for your group, and plan an • Propel conversations by posing and organization for your panel. After an opening introduction, you might have responding to questions that probe each panelist speak separately, or you might discuss individual topics among reasoning and evidence; ensure a the entire panel. Use an agenda, a list of topics in the order you would like to hearing for a full range of positions discuss them, to plan your panel. on a topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; Rehearse Your Panel Hold a preliminary panel discussion as a group and promote divergent and creative before staging one before an audience. The moderator should keep track perspectives. of how long each panelist speaks, providing prompts if needed to keep the • Respond thoughtfully to diverse panel on schedule. After the the preliminary discussion, each member should perspectives; synthesize comments, offer suggestions on ways to improve the discussion next time, when you claims, and evidence made on hold it in front of an audience. all sides of an issue; resolve contradictions when possible; and determine what additional information or research is required to deepen the investigation or complete the task. from The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness • from Macbeth 399
PERFORMANCE TASK: SPEAKING AND LISTENING FOCUS SOURCES Present an Argument • SONNET 12 Assignment • SONNET 60 You have just read a variety of sonnets as well as literary criticism related • SONNET 73 to the content and language of literature from earlier times. Work with • SONNET 32 your group to develop a presentation in which you state and support a • SONNET 75 position on this question: • from THE NAKED BABE AND Should literature of the past be rewritten in present-day THE CLOAK OF MANLINESS language for today’s readers? • from MACBETH Plan With Your Group Analyze the Text Consider each of the sonnets in turn. Determine which language in the poem might prove troublesome for present-day readers. Then, decide whether or not the language should be updated and, if so, how certain passages might be rewritten. If the language should not be changed, write “no change” in the Revised Language column. Using this analysis, come to a consensus about the question posed in the prompt—yes or no? TITLE TROUBLESOME REVISED LANGUAGE Sonnet 12 LANGUAGE Sonnet 60 STANDARDS Sonnet 73 © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Speaking and Listening • Initiate and participate effectively Sonnet 32 in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners Sonnet 75 on grades 11–12 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’s ideas Our claim: The poetry of the past should/should not be revised into and expressing their own clearly and present-day language for today’s readers because . . . persuasively. • Come to discussions prepared, Gather Evidence Have each group member focus on one sonnet. Scan the having read and researched material sonnet to find specific examples to support the group’s position. Scan the under study; explicitly draw on that literary criticism by Brooks or Kermode to see whether one or both of those preparation by referring to evidence texts might have useful evidence. Decide how to incorporate any revised from texts and other research on language from the chart into your argument. the topic or issue to stimulate a thoughtful, well-reasoned exchange of ideas. • Present information, findings, and supporting evidence, conveying a clear and distinct perspective, such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning, alternative or opposing perspectives are addressed, and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and a range of formal and informal tasks. 400 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PAST
ESSENTIAL QUESTION: How do our attitudes toward the past and future shape our actions? Organize Your Presentation Come together as a group, and share your ideas for each sonnet. Decide on an order of presentation that makes sense. Is there one sonnet that is an especially good example with which to support your claim? You might use that one first, or you might build up to it by presenting weaker examples first. Rehearse With Your Group Practice With Your Group As you deliver your portion of the presentation, use this checklist to evaluate the effectiveness of your group’s first run-through. Then, use your evaluation and these instructions to guide your revision. CONTENT REFERRAL TO TEXT PRESENTATION TECHNIQUES The presentation Passages from The speaker presents and the sonnets are uses eye supports a clear quoted effectively contact and claim. in support of speaks clearly. Each speaker the claim. T he speaker reveals details quotes poetry that Any modernized revisions of the supply evidence fluently and in support of the sonnets help accurately. group’s position. support the claim. Transitions from speaker to speaker are smooth. © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Fine-Tune the Content Make sure that the first speaker presents the STANDARDS group’s position on the question in the prompt so that the connection of Speaking and Listening each speaker’s examples to the claim is clear. • Evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence Improve Referrals to Text To provide clear evidence for your claim, you and rhetoric, assessing the stance, must use ample examples from the texts and from your revisions. If your part premises, links among ideas, word of the presentation seems incomplete, find another example to strengthen it. choice, points of emphasis, and tone used. Brush Up on Your Presentation Techniques Practice reciting the • Present information, findings, and quotations you use until you can easily pronounce all words and sound supporting evidence, conveying a confident in your delivery. clear and distinct perspective and a logical argument, such that listeners Present and Evaluate can follow the line of reasoning, alternative or opposing perspectives As you present with your group, listen to your fellow presenters to see are addressed, and the organization, whether as a whole you have done an adequate job of supporting your development, substance, and claim. Even if other groups disagree with your group, evaluate them on their style are appropriate to purpose, ability to present convincing and well-organized evidence to support their audience, and a range of formal and positions on the question in the prompt. informal tasks. Performance Task: Present an Argument 401
OVERVIEW: INDEPENDENT LEARNING ESSENTIAL QUESTION: How do our attitudes toward the past and future shape our actions? Our interpretation of the past and our feelings about the future contribute to the decisions we make in the present. In this section, you will complete your study of time and how it affects our approach to the world by exploring an additional selection related to the topic. You will then share what you learn with classmates. To choose a text, follow these steps. Look Back Think about the selections you have already studied. Which aspects of the influence of the past and future on our actions do you wish to explore further? Which time period interests you the most? Look Ahead Preview the texts by reading the descriptions. Which one seems most interesting and appealing to you? Look Inside Take a few minutes to scan the text you chose. Choose a different one if this text doesn’t meet your needs. Independent Learning Strategies Throughout your life, in school, in your community, and in your career, you will need to rely on yourself to learn and work on your own. Review these strategies and the actions you can take to practice them during Independent Learning. Add ideas of your own for each category. STRATEGY ACTION PLAN Create a schedule • Understand your goals and deadlines. • Make a plan for what to do each day. • Practice what you • Use first-read and close-read strategies to deepen your understanding. © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. have learned • After you read, evaluate the usefulness of the evidence to help you understand Take notes the topic. • After reading, consult reference sources for background information that can help you clarify meaning. • • Record important ideas and information. • Review your notes before preparing to share with a group. • 402 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PAST SCAN FOR MULTIMEDIA
Choose one selection. Selections are available online only. CONTENTS DRAMA © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. from Oedipus Rex Sophocles, translated by David Grene How does the murder of a king in the past cause a deadly plague in the present? POETRY COLLECTION 2 Ozymandias Percy Bysshe Shelley Why Brownlee Left Paul Muldoon Man’s Short Life and Foolish Ambition Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle Does fame endure through the ages and does it affect the future? MEDIA: GRAPHIC NOVEL from Macbeth: The Graphic Novel William Shakespeare, illustrated by John Haward; script adaptation by John McDonald What are the lasting effects of unchecked political ambition? SHORT STORY The Lagoon Joseph Conrad In an isolated Indonesian rainforest, how does a shocking act of betrayal ripple outward through time? SCIENCE ARTICLEs What’s Your Time Perspective? Jane Collingwood Does Time Pass? Peter Dizikes How does our ability to remember the past and imagine the future affect our success in life? PERFORMANCE-BASED ASSESSMENT PREP Review Evidence for an Argument Complete your Evidence Log for the unit by evaluating what you have learned and synthesizing the information you have recorded. SCAN FOR Overview: Independent Learning 403 MULTIMEDIA
INDEPENDENT LEARNING Tool Kit First-Read Guide First-Read Guide and Model Annotation Use this page to record your first-read ideas. Selection Title: NOTICE new information or ideas you learn ANNOTATE by marking vocabulary and key about the unit topic as you first read this text. passages you want to revisit. CONNECT ideas within the selection to RESPOND by writing a brief summary of other knowledge, the Essential Question, the selection. and the selections you have read. Use reliable reference material to clarify historical context. © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. STANDARD Reading Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently. 404 UNIT 3 • FACING THE FUTURE, CONFRONTING THE PAST
ESSENTIAL QUESTION: How do our attitudes toward the past and future shape our actions? Close-Read Guide Tool Kit Use this page to record your close-read ideas. Close-Read Guide and Selection Title: Model Annotation Close Read the Text Analyze the Text Revisit sections of the text you marked during Think about the author’s choices of patterns, your first read. Read these sections closely structure, techniques, and ideas included in and annotate what you notice. Ask yourself the text. Select one and record your thoughts questions about the text. What can you about what this choice conveys. conclude? Write down your ideas. © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. QuickWrite Pick a paragraph from the text that grabbed your interest. Explain the power of this passage. STANDARD Reading Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently band proficiently. Overview: Independent Learning 405
Drama from Oedipus Rex Sophocles, Translated by David Grene SCAN FOR About the Playwright MULTIMEDIA Sophocles (496 b.c.–406 b.c.) lived during the golden age of Athens, Greece. A dramatist, artist, and politician, Sophocles’ plays are considered the height of Greek tragedy. His Theban trilogy, Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and Oedipus at Colonus, survives, as do four other plays. Sophocles wrote over 120 plays, all of which won either first or second place at the annual Dionysia, a sacred contest of dramatists. NOTES BACKGROUND © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. In Oedipus the King, Oedipus’ parents learned from an oracle that he would kill his father, Laius, the king of Thebes, and marry his mother, Jocasta. They abandoned him on a mountain, but he was found and adopted. As an adult, Oedipus unwittingly fulfills his fate in his travels. Twenty years after becoming the king of Thebes, and raising four children with Jocasta, he learns the truth and blinds himself in his horror. Oedipus. . . . come—it’s unfit to say what is unfit to do.—I beg of you in God’s name hide me somewhere outside your country, yes, or kill me, or throw me into the sea, to be forever 5 out of your sight. Approach and deign to touch me for all my wretchedness, and do not fear. No man but I can bear my evil doom. Chorus. Here Creon1 comes in fit time to perform or give advice in what you ask of us. 10 Creon is left sole ruler in your stead. 1. Creon Brother of queen Jocasta, whose advice Oedipus has ignored throughout the play until this point. IL1 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • from Oedipus Rex
Oedipus. Creon! Creon! What shall I say to him? NOTES How can I justly hope that he will trust me? In what is past I have been proved towards him an utter liar. [Enter Creon.] 15 Creon. Oedipus, I’ve come not so that I might laugh at you nor taunt you with evil of the past. But if you still are without shame before the face of men reverence at least the flame that gives all life, 20 our Lord the Sun,2 and do not show unveiled to him pollution such that neither land nor holy rain nor light of day can welcome. [To a Servant.] Be quick and take him in. It is most decent that only kin should see and hear the troubles 25 of kin. Oedipus. I beg you, since you’ve torn me from my dreadful expectations and have come in a most noble spirit to a man that has used you vilely3—do a thing for me. 30 I shall speak for your own good, not for my own. Creon. What do you need that you would ask of me? Oedipus. Drive me from here4 with all the speed you can to where I may not hear a human voice. Creon. Be sure, I would have done this had not I 35 wished first of all to learn from the God the course of action I should follow. Oedipus. But his word has been quite clear to let the parricide,5 the sinner, die. © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 40 Creon. Yes, that indeed was said. But in the present need we had best discover what we should do. Oedipus. And will you ask about a man so wretched? 45 Creon. Now even you will trust the God. Oedipus. So. I command you—and will beseech you— to her that lies inside that house6 give burial as you would have it; she is yours and rightly 2. Lord the Sun Apollo, ancient Greek god of the Sun, medicine, and prophecy. 3. vilely (VYL lee) adv. wickedly. 4. Drive me from here The oracle of Apollo had declared that the killer of Laius, former king of Thebes and Oedipus’ father, must be exiled from the city. 5. parricide (PAR uh syd) n. someone who murders his or her father. 6. her that lies inside that house Jocasta, queen of Thebes, Oedipus’ mother and later his wife, killed herself on realizing who he was. UNIT 3 Independent Learning • from Oedipus Rex IL2
NOTES 50 you will perform the rites for her. For me— never let this my father’s city have me living a dweller in it. Leave me live in the mountains where Cithaeron7 is, that’s called my mountain, which my mother and my father 55 while they were living would have made my tomb. So I may die by their decree who sought indeed to kill me. Yet I know this much: no sickness and no other thing will kill me. I would not have been saved from death if not 60 for some strange evil fate. Well, let my fate go where it will. Creon, you need not care about my sons; they’re men and so wherever they are, they will not lack a livelihood. 65 But my two girls—so sad and pitiful— whose table never stood apart from mine, and everything I touched they always shared— O Creon, have a thought for them! And most I wish that you might suffer me to touch them 70 and sorrow with them. [Enter Antigone and Ismene, Oedipus’s two daughters.] O my lord! O true noble Creon! Can I really be touching them, as when I saw? What shall I say? Yes, I can hear them sobbing—my two darlings! 75 and Creon has had pity and has sent me what I loved most? Am I right? Creon. You’re right: it was I gave you this because I knew from old days how you loved them 80 as I see now. Oedipus. God bless you for it, Creon, © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. and may God guard you better on your road than he did me! O children, 85 where are you? Come here, come to my hands, a brother’s hands which turned your father’s eyes, those bright eyes you knew once, to what you see, a father seeing nothing, knowing nothing, begetting you from his own source of life. 90 I weep for you—I cannot see your faces— I weep when I think of the bitterness there will be in your lives, how you must live 7. Cithaeron Greek mountain, where Oedipus was left as a baby to die by Laius and Jocasta. IL3 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • from Oedipus Rex
before the world. At what assemblages NOTES of citizens will you make one? to what 95 gay company will you go and not come home in tears instead of sharing in the holiday? And when you’re ripe for marriage, who will he be, the man who’ll risk to take such infamy as shall cling to my children, to bring hurt 100 on them and those that marry with them? What curse is not there? “Your father killed his father and sowed the seed where he had sprung himself and begot you out of the womb that held him.” These insults you will hear. Then who will marry you? 105 No one, my children; clearly you are doomed to waste away in barrenness unmarried. Son of Menoeceus,8 since you are all the father left these two girls, and we, their parents, both are dead to them—do not allow them wander 110 like beggars, poor and husbandless. They are of your own blood. And do not make them equal with myself in wretchedness; for you can see them now so young, so utterly alone, save for you only. 115 Touch my hand, noble Creon, and say yes. If you were older, children, and were wiser, there’s much advice I’d give you. But as it is, let this be what you pray: give me a life wherever there is opportunity 120 to live, and better life than was my father’s. Creon. Your tears have had enough of scope; now go within the house. Oedipus. I must obey, though bitter of heart. Creon. In season, all is good. © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 125 Oedipus. Do you know on what conditions I obey? Creon. You tell me them, and I shall know them when I hear. Oedipus. That you shall send me out to live away from Thebes. 130 Creon. That gift you must ask of the God. Oedipus. But I’m now hated by the Gods. Creon. So quickly you’ll obtain your prayer. Oedipus. You consent then? Creon. What I do not mean, I do not use to say. 135 Oedipus. Now lead me away from here. 8. Son of Menoeceus Creon. UNIT 3 Independent Learning • from Oedipus Rex IL4
NOTES Creon. Let go the children, then, and come. Oedipus. Do not take them from me. Creon. Do not seek to be master in everything, for the things you mastered did not follow you throughout your 140 life. [As Creon and Oedipus go out.] Chorus. You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,— him who knew the famous riddles9 and was a man most masterful; 145 not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot—see him now and see the breakers10 of misfortune swallow him! Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain. ❧ 9. famous riddles Oedipus became the king of Thebes by solving the riddle of the Sphinx, a monster that terrorized the city until Oedipus outsmarted her. 10. breakers n. waves. © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. IL5 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • from Oedipus Rex
Poetry Ozymandias Percy Bysshe Shelley Meet the Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), another Romantic SCAN FOR poet, would have inherited a seat in Parliament but MULTIMEDIA broke off relations with his father while in college. He began writing poetry seriously at age 19. A friend of numerous writers, he later married Mary Godwin, who as Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Not yet 30 years old, Shelley drowned at sea while sailing a boat in a storm. BACKGROUND The Ozymandias of Shelley’s poem is based on thirteenth century b.c.e. Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. (“Ozymandias” was his name in Greek.) According to an ancient story, one of the colossal statues he sponsored was inscribed with this boast: “I am Ozymandias, king of kings; if anyone wishes to know what I am and where I lie, let him surpass me in some of my exploits.” © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. I met a traveler from an antique land NOTES Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage1 lies, whose frown, 5 And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 10 “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away. 1. visage (VIHZ ihj) n. face. UNIT 3 Independent Learning • Ozymandias IL6
Poetry Why Brownlee Left Paul Muldoon Meet the Poet SCAN FOR P aul Muldoon (b. 1951) is an Irish poet, editor, critic, MULTIMEDIA translator, and professor of poetry. He has published 12 major poetry collections, as well as many smaller collections, works of criticism, books for children, song lyrics, and dramas for radio and television. Muldoon has received many awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize. His work has been translated into 20 languages. BACKGROUND This selection is the titular poem of the collection Why Brownlee Left, published in 1980. Critics applauded the technical skill, dry wit, and careful use of language in his poetry. In this poem, Muldoon describes the disappearance of an Irish farmer. NOTES Why Brownlee left, and where he went, Is a mystery even now. For if a man should have been content © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. It was him; two acres of barley, 5 One of potatoes, four bullocks,1 A milker, a slated2 farmhouse. He was last seen going out to plow On a March morning, bright and early. By noon Brownlee was famous; 10 They had found all abandoned, with The last rig3 unbroken, his pair of black Horses, like man and wife, Shifting their weight from foot to Foot, and gazing into the future. “Why Brownlee Left” from Poems: 1968-1998 by Paul Muldoon. Copyright © 2001 by Paul Muldoon. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. 1. bullocks (BUL uhks) n. young bulls that cannot breed 2. slated adj. roofed with slate. 3. rig n. assembly of parts, in this case those tying the horses to the plow. IL7 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • Why Brownlee Left
Poetry Man’s Short Life and Foolish Ambition Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle Meet the Poet SCAN FOR MULTIMEDIA Margaret Lucas Cavendish (1623–1673) wrote prolifically and under her own name during a time when most women writers wrote anonymously. An English philosopher, poet, scientist, playwright, and early science-fiction writer, Cavendish engaged with other luminaries of the Scientific Revolution and the nascent Age of Reason. Her philosophy included an early argument against the existence of an intangible soul separate from the body and brain. © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. BACKGROUND NOTES Cavendish’s poetry often served as a vehicle for her intellectual interests and pursuits. In this case, the poem is informed by her understanding of intelligence as a material process not involving any soul or other immortal, immaterial component. In gardens sweet each flower mark did I, How they did spring, bud, blow, wither and die. With that, contemplating of man’s short stay, Saw man like to those flowers pass away. 5 Yet built he houses, thick and strong and high, As if he’d live to all Eternity. Hoards up a mass of wealth, yet cannot fill His empty mind, but covet will he still. To gain or keep, such falsehood will he use! 10 Wrong, right or truth—no base1 ways will refuse. 1. base adj. immoral, wrong. UNIT 3 Independent Learning • Man’s Short Life and Foolish Ambition IL8
NOTES I would not blame him could he death out keep, Or ease his pains or be secure of sleep: Or buy Heaven’s mansions—like the gods become, And with his gold rule stars and moon and sun: 15 Command the winds to blow, seas to obey, Level their waves and make their breezes stay. But he no power hath unless to die, And care in life is only misery. This care is but a word, an empty sound, 20 Wherein there is no soul nor substance found; Yet as his heir he makes it to inherit, And all he has he leaves unto this spirit. To get this Child of Fame and this bare word, He fears no dangers, neither fire nor sword: 25 All horrid pains and death he will endure, Or any thing can he but fame procure. O man, O man, what high ambition grows Within his brain, and yet how low he goes! To be contented only with a sound, 30 Wherein is neither peace nor life nor body found. © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. IL9 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • Man’s Short Life and Foolish Ambition
GRAPHIC NOVEL from About the Authors SCAN FOR MULTIMEDIA © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. N early 400 years after his death, William Shakespeare (1564–1616) remains the most influential writer in the English language. His characters are known by name around the world. This graphic novel adaptation of Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Macbeth, as told by John McDonald, was produced by Jon Haward (illustrations), Nigel Dobbyn (coloring and lettering), and Gary Erskine (inking). BACKGROUND Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted to film, novels, audio plays, and many other forms of media. Often this is done to make the playwright’s works accessible to a modern audience. This selection depicts Macbeth’s return to the three witches in order to learn more about his future. UNIT 3 Independent Learning • from Macbeth: The Graphic Novel IL10
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33 34 © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 36 35 IL19 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • from Macbeth: The Graphic Novel
© Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 37 38 39 40 41 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • from Macbeth: The Graphic Novel IL20
Short Story The Lagoon Joseph Conrad SCAN FOR About the Author MULTIMEDIA Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was one of the most distinguished English-language novelists of his age, despite learning English as a third language after Polish and French. An orphan at 11 and a refugee at 16, Conrad spent years traveling around the world as a sailor, and used sea-voyages and countries he had visited as the basis for his deeply introspective fiction. His work deals with self-discovery and exploration of the hidden depths of the self. NOTES BACKGROUND © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Between 1883 and 1888, Conrad sailed the Malay Archipelago—a group of Pacific islands that includes the Philippines and Indonesia—in British merchant ships. He used the knowledge he acquired of the region—of its language, landscape, and customs—to enrich his seafaring tales. It is likely that Captain William Lingard, revered as a spellbinding storyteller among sailors of the Malay settlements, was the model for Marlowe, who appears as the narrator of several Conrad stories. T1 he white man, leaning with both arms over the roof of the little house in the stern of the boat, said to the steersman— 2 “We will pass the night in Arsat’s clearing. It is late.” 3 The Malay1 only grunted, and went on looking fixedly at the river. The white man rested his chin on his crossed arms and gazed at the wake of the boat. At the end of the straight avenue of forests cut by the intense glitter of the river, the sun appeared unclouded and dazzling, poised low over the water that shone smoothly like a band of metal. The forests, somber and dull, stood 1. Malay (muh LAY) native of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia. IL21 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • The Lagoon
motionless and silent on each side of the broad stream. At the foot NOTES of big, towering trees trunkless nipa palms rose from the mud of © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. the bank, in bunches of leaves enormous and heavy, that hung unstirring over the brown swirl of eddies. In the stillness of the air every tree, every leaf, every bough, every tendril of creeper, and every petal of minute blossoms seemed to have been bewitched into an immobility perfect and final. Nothing moved on the river but the eight paddles that rose flashing regularly, dipped together with a single splash; while the steersman swept right and left with a periodic and sudden flourish of his blade describing a glinting semicircle above his head. The churned-up water frothed alongside with a confused murmur. And the white man’s canoe, advancing up stream in the short-lived disturbance of its own making, seemed to enter the portals2 of a land from which the very memory of motion had forever departed. 4 The white man, turning his back upon the setting sun, looked along the empty and broad expanse of the sea-reach. For the last three miles of its course the wandering, hesitating river, as if enticed irresistibly by the freedom of an open horizon, flows straight into the sea, flows straight to the east—to the east that harbors both light and darkness. Astern of the boat the repeated call of some bird, a cry discordant and feeble, skipped along over the smooth water and lost itself, before it could reach the other shore, in the breathless silence of the world. 5 The steersman dug his paddle into the stream, and held hard with stiffened arms, his body thrown forward. The water gurgled aloud; and suddenly the long straight reach seemed to pivot on its center, the forests swung in a semicircle, and the slanting beams of sunset touched the broadside of the canoe with a fiery glow, throwing the slender and distorted shadows of its crew upon the streaked glitter of the river. The white man turned to look ahead. The course of the boat had been altered at right-angles to the stream, and the carved dragonhead of its prow was pointing now at a gap in the fringing bushes of the bank. It glided through, brushing the overhanging twigs, and disappeared from the river like some slim and amphibious creature leaving the water for its lair in the forests. 6 The narrow creek was like a ditch: tortuous, fabulously deep; filled with gloom under the thin strip of pure and shining blue of the heaven. Immense trees soared up, invisible behind the festooned draperies of creepers. Here and there, near the glistening blackness of the water, a twisted root of some tall tree showed amongst the tracery of small ferns, black and dull, writhing and motionless, like an arrested snake. The short words of the paddlers reverberated loudly between the thick and somber 2. portals n. doors. UNIT 3 Independent Learning • The Lagoon IL22
NOTES walls of vegetation. Darkness oozed out from between the trees, through the tangled maze of the creepers, from behind the great fantastic and unstirring leaves; the darkness, mysterious and © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. invincible; the darkness scented and poisonous of impenetrable forests. 7 The men poled in the shoaling3 water. The creek broadened, opening out into a wide sweep of a stagnant lagoon. The forests receded from the marshy bank, leaving a level strip of bright green, reedy grass to frame the reflected blueness of the sky. A fleecy pink cloud drifted high above, trailing the delicate coloring of its image under the floating leaves and the silvery blossoms of the lotus. A little house, perched on high piles, appeared black in the distance. Near it, two tall nibong palms, that seemed to have come out of the forests in the background, leaned slightly over the ragged roof, with a suggestion of sad tenderness and care in the droop of their leafy and soaring heads. 8 The steersman, pointing with his paddle, said, “Arsat is there. I see his canoe fast between the piles.” 9 The polers ran along the sides of the boat glancing over their shoulders at the end of the day’s journey. They would have preferred to spend the night somewhere else than on this lagoon of weird aspect and ghostly reputation. Moreover, they disliked Arsat, first as a stranger, and also because he who repairs a ruined house, and dwells in it, proclaims that he is not afraid to live amongst the spirits that haunt the places abandoned by mankind. Such a man can disturb the course of fate by glances or words; while his familiar ghosts are not easy to propitiate by casual wayfarers upon whom they long to wreak the malice of their human master. White men care not for such things, being unbelievers and in league with the Father of Evil, who leads them unharmed through the invisible dangers of this world. To the warnings of the righteous they oppose an offensive pretense of disbelief. What is there to be done? 10 So they thought, throwing their weight on the end of their long poles. The big canoe glided on swiftly, noiselessly, and smoothly, toward Arsat’s clearing, till, in a great rattling of poles thrown down, and the loud murmurs of “Allah4 be praised!” it came with a gentle knock against the crooked piles below the house. 11 The boatmen with uplifted faces shouted discordantly, “Arsat! O Arsat!” Nobody came. The white man began to climb the rude ladder giving access to the bamboo platform before the house. The juragan5 of the boat said sulkily, “We will cook in the sampan6 and sleep on the water.” 3. shoaling (SHOHL ihng) adj. shallow. 4. Allah (AH luh) Muslim name for God. 5. juragan (joo ruh GAHN) captain or master. 6. sampan (SAM pan) small flat-bottom wed boat with a cabin formed by mats. IL23 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • The Lagoon
12 “Pass my blankets and the basket,” said the white man curtly. NOTES 13 He knelt on the edge of the platform to receive the bundle. Then © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. the boat shoved off, and the white man, standing up, confronted Arsat, who had come out through the low door of his hut. He was a man young, powerful, with a broad chest and muscular arms. He had nothing on but his sarong.7 His head was bare. His big, soft eyes stared eagerly at the white man, but his voice and demeanor were composed as he asked, without any words of greeting— 14 “Have you medicine, Tuan?”8 15 “No,” said the visitor in a startled tone. “No. Why? Is there sickness in the house?” 16 “Enter and see,” replied Arsat, in the same calm manner, and turning short round, passed again through the small doorway. The white man, dropping his bundles, followed. 17 In the dim light of the dwelling he made out on a couch of bamboos a woman stretched on her back under a broad sheet of red cotton cloth. She lay still, as if dead; but her big eyes, wide open, glittered in the gloom, staring upward at the slender rafters, motionless and unseeing. She was in a high fever, and evidently unconscious. Her cheeks were sunk slightly, her lips were partly open, and on the young face there was the ominous and fixed 7. sarong (suh RAWNG) long, brightly colored strip of cloth worn like a skirt. 8. Tuan (tu AHN) Malayan honorific similar to “Sir.” UNIT 3 Independent Learning • The Lagoon IL24
NOTES expression—the absorbed, contemplating expression of the unconscious who are going to die. The two men stood looking down at her in silence. © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 18 “Has she been long ill?” asked the traveler. 19 “I have not slept for five nights,” answered the Malay, in a deliberate tone. “At first she heard voices calling her from the water and struggled against me who held her. But since the sun of today rose she hears nothing—she hears not me. She sees nothing. She sees not me—me!” 20 He remained silent for a minute, then asked softly— 21 “Tuan, will she die?” 22 “I fear so,” said the white man sorrowfully. He had known Arsat years ago, in a far country in times of trouble and danger, when no friendship is to be despised. And since his Malay friend had come unexpectedly to dwell in the hut on the lagoon with a strange woman, he had slept many times there, in his journeys up and down the river. He liked the man who knew how to keep faith in council and how to fight without fear by the side of his white friend. He liked him—not so much perhaps as a man likes his favorite dog—but still he liked him well enough to help and ask no questions, to think sometimes vaguely and hazily in the midst of his own pursuits, about the lonely man and the long-haired woman with audacious face and triumphant eyes, who lived together by the forests—alone and feared. 23 The white man came out of the hut in time to see the enormous conflagration of sunset put out by the swift and stealthy shadows that, rising like a black and impalpable vapor above the treetops, spread over the heaven, extinguishing the crimson glow of floating clouds and the red brilliance of departing daylight. In a few moments all the stars came out above the intense blackness of the earth, and the great lagoon gleaming suddenly with reflected lights resembled an oval patch of night sky flung down into the hopeless and abysmal night of the wilderness. The white man had some supper out of the basket, then collecting a few sticks that lay about the platform, made up a small fire, not for warmth, but for the sake of the smoke, which would keep off the mosquitos. He wrapped himself in his blankets and sat with his back against the reed wall of the house, smoking thoughtfully. 24 Arsat came through the doorway with noiseless steps and squatted down by the fire. The white man moved his outstretched legs a little. 25 “She breathes,” said Arsat in a low voice, anticipating the expected question. “She breathes and burns as if with a great fire. She speaks not; she hears not—and burns!” He paused for a moment, then asked in a quiet, incurious tone— 26 “Tuan . . . will she die?” IL25 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • The Lagoon
27 The white man moved his shoulders uneasily, and muttered in NOTES a hesitating manner— © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. 28 “If such is her fate.” 29 “No, Tuan,” said Arsat calmly. “If such is my fate. I hear, I see, I wait. I remember . . . Tuan, do you remember the old days? Do you remember my brother?” 30 “Yes,” said the white man. The Malay rose suddenly and went in. The other, sitting still outside, could hear the voice in the hut. Arsat said: “Hear me! Speak!” His words were succeeded by a complete silence. “O Diamelen!” he cried suddenly. After that cry there was a deep sigh. Arsat came out and sank down again in his old place. 31 They sat in silence before the fire. There was no sound within the house, there was no sound near them; but far away on the lagoon they could hear the voices of the boatmen ringing fitful and distinct on the calm water. The fire in the bows of the sampan shone faintly in the distance with a hazy red glow. Then it died out. The voices ceased. The land and the water slept invisible, unstirring and mute. It was as though there had been nothing left in the world but the glitter of stars streaming, ceaseless and vain, through the black stillness of the night. 32 The white man gazed straight before him into the darkness with wide-open eyes. The fear and fascination, the inspiration and the wonder of death—of death near, unavoidable, and unseen, soothed the unrest of his race and stirred the most indistinct, the most intimate of his thoughts. The ever-ready suspicion of evil, the gnawing suspicion that lurks in our hearts, flowed out into the stillness round him—into the stillness profound and dumb, and made it appear untrustworthy and infamous, like the placid and impenetrable mask of an unjustifiable violence. In that fleeting and powerful disturbance of his being the earth enfolded in the starlight peace became a shadowy country of inhuman strife, a battlefield of phantoms terrible and charming, august9 or ignoble,10 struggling ardently for the possession of our helpless hearts. An unquiet and mysterious country of inextinguishable desires and fears. 33 A plaintive murmur rose in the night; a murmur saddening and startling, as if the great solitudes of surrounding woods had tried to whisper into his ear the wisdom of their immense and lofty indifference. Sounds hesitating and vague floated in the air round him, shaped themselves slowly into words; and at last flowed on gently in a murmuring stream of soft and monotonous sentences. He stirred like a man waking up and changed his position slightly. 9. august (aw GUHST) adj. worthy of great respect; inspiring awe. 10. ignoble (ihg NOH buhl) adj. dishonorable. UNIT 3 Independent Learning • The Lagoon IL26
NOTES Arsat, motionless and shadowy, sitting with bowed head under the stars, was speaking in a low and dreamy tone— 34 “. . . for where can we lay down the heaviness of our trouble © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. but in a friend’s heart? A man must speak of war and of love. You, Tuan, know what war is, and you have seen me in time of danger seek death as other men seek life! A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!” 35 “I remember,” said the white man quietly. Arsat went on with mournful composure— 36 “Therefore I shall speak to you of love. Speak in the night. Speak before both night and love are gone—and the eye of day looks upon my sorrow and my shame; upon my blackened face; upon my burnt-up heart.” 37 A sigh, short and faint, marked an almost imperceptible pause, and then his words flowed on, without a stir, without a gesture. 38 “After the time of trouble and war was over and you went away from my country in the pursuit of your desires, which we, men of the islands, cannot understand, I and my brother became again, as we had been before, the sword bearers of the Ruler. You know we were men of family, belonging to a ruling race, and more fit than any to carry on our right shoulder the emblem of power. And in the time of prosperity Si Dendring11 showed us favor, as we, in time of sorrow, had showed to him the faithfulness of our courage. It was a time of peace. A time of deer hunts and cock fights; of idle talks and foolish squabbles between men whose bellies are full and weapons are rusty. But the sower watched the young rice shoots grow up without fear, and the traders came and went, departed lean and returned fat into the river of peace. They brought news too. Brought lies and truth mixed together, so that no man knew when to rejoice and when to be sorry. We heard from them about you also. They had seen you here and had seen you there. And I was glad to hear, for I remembered the stirring times, and I always remembered you, Tuan, till the time came when my eyes could see nothing in the past, because they had looked upon the one who is dying there—in the house.” 39 He stopped to exclaim in an intense whisper, “O Mara bahia! O Calamity!” then went on speaking a little louder. 40 “There’s no worse enemy and no better friend than a brother, Tuan, for one brother knows another, and in perfect knowledge is strength for good or evil. I loved my brother. I went to him and 11. Si Dendring country in which the story occurs; monarchy of the country. IL27 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • The Lagoon
told him that I could see nothing but one face, hear nothing but NOTES one voice. He told me: ‘Open your heart so that she can see what © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. is in it—and wait. Patience is wisdom. Inchi Midah may die or our Ruler may throw off his fear of a woman!’ . . . I waited! . . . You remember the lady with the veiled face, Tuan, and the fear of our Ruler before her cunning and temper. And if she wanted her servant, what could I do? But I fed the hunger of my heart on short glances and stealthy words. I loitered on the path to the bath houses in the daytime, and when the sun had fallen behind the forest I crept along the jasmine hedges of the women’s courtyard. Unseeing, we spoke to one another through the scent of flowers, through the veil of leaves, through the blades of long grass that stood still before our lips; so great was our prudence, so faint was the murmur of our great longing. The time passed swiftly . . . and there were whispers amongst women—and our enemies watched—my brother was gloomy, and I began to think of killing and of a fierce death. . . . We are of a people who take what they want—like you whites. There is a time when a man should forget loyalty and respect. Might and authority are given to rulers, but to all men is given love and strength and courage. My brother said, ‘You shall take her from their midst. We are two who are like one.’ And I answered, ‘Let it be soon, for I find no warmth in sunlight that does not shine upon her.’ Our time came when the Ruler and all the great people went to the mouth of the river to fish by torchlight. There were hundreds of boats, and on the white sand, between the water and the forests, dwellings of leaves were built for the households of the Rajahs.12 The smoke of cooking fires was like a blue mist of the evening, and many voices rang in it joyfully. While they were making the boats ready to beat up the fish, my brother came to me and said, ‘Tonight!’ I looked to my weapons, and when the time came our canoe took its place in the circle of boats carrying the torches. The lights blazed on the water, but behind the boats there was darkness. When the shouting began and the excitement made them like mad we dropped out. The water swallowed our fire, and we floated back to the shore that was dark with only here and there the glimmer of embers. We could hear the talk of slave girls amongst the sheds. Then we found a place deserted and silent. We waited there. She came. She came running along the shore, rapid and leaving no trace, like a leaf driven by the wind into the sea. My brother said gloomily, ‘Go and take her; carry her into our boat.’ I lifted her in my arms. 12. Rajahs (RAH juhz) Malayan chiefs. UNIT 3 Independent Learning • The Lagoon IL28
NOTES She panted. Her heart was beating against my breast. I said, ‘I take you from those people. You came to the cry of my heart, but my arms take you into my boat against the will of the great!’ ‘It is © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. right,’ said my brother. ‘We are men who take what we want and can hold it against many. We should have taken her in daylight.’ I said, ‘Let us be off’; for since she was in my boat I began to think of our Ruler’s many men. ‘Yes. Let us be off,’ said my brother. ‘We are cast out and this boat is our country now—and the sea is our refuge.’ He lingered with his foot on the shore, and I entreated him to hasten, for I remembered the strokes of her heart against my breast and thought that two men cannot withstand a hundred. We left, paddling downstream close to the bank; and as we passed by the creek where they were fishing, the great shouting had ceased, but the murmur of voices was loud like the humming of insects flying at noonday. The boats floated, clustered together, in the red light of torches, under a black roof of smoke; and men talked of their sport. Men that boasted, and praised, and jeered— men that would have been our friends in the morning, but on that night were already our enemies. We paddled swiftly past. We had no more friends in the country of our birth. She sat in the middle of the canoe with covered face; silent as she is now; unseeing as she is now—and I had no regret at what I was leaving because I could hear her breathing close to me—as I can hear her now.” 41 He paused, listened with his ear turned to the doorway, then shook his head and went on. 42 “My brother wanted to shout the cry of challenge—one cry only—to let the people know we were freeborn robbers who trusted our arms and the great sea. And again I begged him in the name of our love to be silent. Could I not hear her breathing close to me? I knew the pursuit would come quick enough. My brother loved me. He dipped his paddle without a splash. He only said, ‘There is half a man in you now—the other half is in that woman. I can wait. When you are a whole man again, you will come back with me here to shout defiance. We are sons of the same mother.’ I made no answer. All my strength and all my spirit were in my hands that held the paddle—for I longed to be with her in a safe place beyond the reach of men’s anger and of women’s spite. My love was so great, that I thought it could guide me to a country where death was unknown, if I could only escape from Inchi Midah’s fury and from our Ruler’s sword. We paddled with haste, breathing through our teeth. The blades bit deep into the smooth water. We passed out of the river; we flew in clear channels amongst the shallows. We skirted the black coast; we skirted the IL29 UNIT 3 Independent Learning • The Lagoon
sand beaches where the sea speaks in whispers to the land; and NOTES the gleam of white sand flashed back past our boat, so swiftly © Pearson Education, Inc., or its affiliates. All rights reserved. she ran upon the water. We spoke not. Only once I said, ‘Sleep, Diamelen, for soon you may want all your strength.’ I heard the sweetness of her voice, but I never turned my head. The sun rose and still we went on. Water fell from my face like rain from a cloud. We flew in the light and heat. I never looked back, but I knew that my brother’s eyes, behind me, were looking steadily ahead, for the boat went as straight as a bushman’s dart, when it leaves the end of the sumpitan.13 There was no better paddler, no better steersman than my brother. Many times, together, we had won races in that canoe. But we never had put out our strength as we did then—then, when for the last time we paddled together! There was no braver or stronger man in our country than my brother. I could not spare the strength to turn my head and look at him, every moment I heard the hiss of his breath getting louder behind me. Still he did not speak. The sun was high. The heat clung to my back like a flame of fire. My ribs were ready to burst, but I could no longer get enough air into my chest. And then I felt I must cry out with my last breath. ‘Let us rest!’ . . . ‘Good!’ he answered; and his voice was firm. He was strong. He was brave. He knew not fear and no fatigue . . . My brother!” 43 A murmur powerful and gentle, a murmur vast and faint; the murmur of trembling leaves, of stirring boughs, ran through the tangled depths of the forests, ran over the starry smoothness of the lagoon, and the water between the piles lapped the slimy timber once with a sudden splash. A breath of warm air touched the two men’s faces and passed on with a mournful sound—a breath loud and short like an uneasy sigh of the dreaming earth. 44 Arsat went on in an even, low voice: 45 “We ran our canoe on the white beach of a little bay close to a long tongue of land that seemed to bar our road; a long wooded cape going far into the sea. My brother knew that place. Beyond the cape a river has its entrance, and through the jungle of that land there is a narrow path. We made a fire and cooked rice. Then we lay down to sleep on the soft sand in the shade of our canoe, while she watched. No sooner had I closed my eyes than I heard her cry of alarm. We leaped up. The sun was halfway down the sky already, and coming in sight in the opening of the bay we saw a prau14 manned by many paddlers. We knew it at once; it was one of our Rajah’s praus. They were watching the shore, and saw us. They beat the gong, and turned the head of the prau into the bay. I felt my heart become weak within my breast. Diamelen sat on the sand and covered her face. There was no escape by sea. 13. sumpitan (SUHM puh tuhn) Malayan blowgun that shoots poisoned darts. 14. prau (prow) swift Malayan boat with a large sail. UNIT 3 Independent Learning • The Lagoon IL30
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