UNIT 6 Finding Home

Nation, Exile, Dominion

UNIT INTRODUCTION PEER-GROUP LEARNING

VIDEO: The British Empire Sets Its COMPARE ACROSS GENRES

Sights West. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 788 HISTORY

MENTOR TEXT: EXPOSITORY MODEL from A History of the English
Home Away From Home. . . . . . . . . . . . 792 Church and People
Bede,
translated by Leo Sherley-Price . . . . . . . . 849
WHOLE-CLASS LEARNING
MEDIA: ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE
from History of Jamaica
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Encyclopaedia Britannica. . . . . . . . . . . . . 857
Focus Period: 1901–Present
A Changing World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 798 POETRY COLLECTION 1
COMPARE WITHIN GENRE The Seafarer
ESSAY translated by Burton Raffel. . . . . . . . . . . . 864
Back to My Own Country: MEDIA CONNECTION: The Seafarer
An Essay Dover Beach
Andrea Levy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 803 Matthew Arnold. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 868

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ESSAY
Escape From the Old Country
Shooting an Elephant Adrienne Su. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 870
George Orwell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 817 POETRY COLLECTION 2
The Widow at Windsor
Rudyard Kipling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 878
From Lucy: Englan’ Lady
James Berry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 880

PERFORMANCE TASK
WRITING PROCESS
Write a Formal Research Report. . . . . 830 PERFORMANCE TASK
TIMED WRITING SPEAKING AND LISTENING
Write an Expository Essay. . . . . . . . . . 842 Deliver a Digital Presentation. . . . . . . 886

xviii
 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

PERFORMANCE-BASED
INDEPENDENT LEARNING
ASSESSMENT
DRAMATIC SPEECH | POETRY Expository Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 892
St. Crispin’s Day Speech Writing and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 894
from Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii
William Shakespeare
Home Thoughts, From Abroad UNIT REFLECTION
Robert Browning
Reflect On the Unit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 895
NOVEL EXCERPT
from The Buried Giant
Kazuo Ishiguro

SHORT STORY
My Old Home
Lu Hsun BOOK
ESSAY
Go ONLINE
for all lessons
CLUB
from Writing as an Act of Hope The selections
Isabel Allende AUDIO below align to this
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unit.
VIDEO
CLASSIC
My Ántonia
NOTEBOOK
Willa Cather
ANNOTATE CONTEMPORARY
Persepolis:
DOWNLOAD The Story of a
Childhood
INTERACTIVITY Marjane Satrapi

These selections are available on Realize.

These activities include items in

SAT/ACT format.
SHARE YOUR INDEPENDENT LEARNING
These activities include timed
Share • Learn • Reflect. . . . . . . . . . . . . 891 writing practice.

xix
 6
UNIT

Finding Home
Nation, Exile, Dominion

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DISCUSS NOTEBOOK
FIRST How do you define "home" when
WATCH your nation is a global empire?
THE VIDEO
Write your response before sharing your ideas.
ONLINE

The British Empire Sets

Its Sights West

AUDIO NOTEBOOK DOWNLOAD

Go ONLINE
VIDEO ANNOTATE INTERACTIVITY
for all lessons

788
 UNIT 6 INTRODUCTION
MENTOR TEXT:
ESSENTIAL QUESTION EXPOSITORY MODEL
Home Away
What does it mean to call a place From Home

home?
WHOLE-CLASS PEER-GROUP INDEPENDENT
LEARNING LEARNING LEARNING

HISTORICAL COMPARE ACROSS GENRES DRAMATIC SPEECH /

PERSPECTIVES POETRY
Focus Period: 1901–Present HISTORY St. Crispin’s Day
A Changing World fromA History of the Speech
from Henry V, Act IV,
English Church and
Scene iii
People
COMPARE WITHIN GENRE William Shakespeare
Bede, translated by Leo
Sherley-Price
ESSAY Home Thoughts,
Back to My Own MEDIA: ENCYCLOPEDIA From Abroad
Country: An Essay ARTICLE Robert Browning
Andrea Levy History of
from
Jamaica NOVEL EXCERPT
Encyclopaedia Britannica fromThe Buried
ESSAY
Giant
Shooting an Kazuo Ishiguro
POETRY COLLECTION 1
Elephant
George Orwell The Seafarer
translated by Burton Raffel SHORT STORY

MEDIA CONNECTION: My Old Home

Lu Hsun
The Seafarer

Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold ESSAY
fromWriting as an
Escape From the Act of Hope
Old Country Isabel Allende
Adrienne Su

POETRY COLLECTION 2
The Widow at
Windsor
Rudyard Kipling
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From Lucy: Englan’

Lady
James Berry

PERFORMANCE TASK PERFORMANCE TASK SHARE YOUR INDEPENDENT LEARNING

WRITING PROCESS SPEAKING AND LISTENING Share • Learn • Reflect
Write a Formal Research Report Deliver a Digital Presentation
TIMED WRITING
Write an Expository Essay

PERFORMANCE-BASED ASSESSMENT UNIT REFLECTION

Expository Essay Goals • Texts • Essential Question
You will write an essay in response to the Essential Question:
What does it mean to call a place home?

789
UNIT 6 INTRODUCTION
VIDEO

Unit Goals INTERACTIVITY

Throughout the unit, you will deepen your understanding of the meaning of
home by reading, writing, speaking, listening, and presenting. These goals will
help you succeed on the Unit Performance-Based Assessment.

■ SET GOALS On a chart like the one shown, use a scale of 1 to 5 to rate
how well you meet these goals right now. You will revisit your ratings later
when you reflect on your growth during this unit.

1 2 3 4 5
SC ALE

NOT AT ALL NOT VERY SOMEWHAT VERY EXTREMELY

WELL WELL WELL WELL WELL

ESSENTIAL QUESTION Unit Introduction Unit Reflection

I can read texts that explore the idea
of what it means to call a place home
and can develop my own perspective.
READING Unit Introduction Unit Reflection
I can understand and use academic
vocabulary related to expository
texts.

I can recognize and analyze elements

of different literary styles and periods,
including essays, encyclopedia
articles, poetry, and fiction.

I can read a selection of my choice

independently and make meaningful
connections to my own life as well as
other texts and ideas.

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WRITING Unit Introduction Unit Reflection
I can write a focused and structured
expository essay in response to a
thematic question.

I can complete Timed Writing tasks

with confidence.
SPEAKING AND LISTENING Unit Introduction Unit Reflection
B.E.S.T.
I can collaborate, listen actively,
12.V.1.1: Integrate academic
vocabulary appropriate to grade build on others’ ideas, and
level in speaking and writing. communicate effectively.
12.V.1.2: Apply knowledge of
etymology, derivations, and I can prepare and deliver an effective
commonly used foreign phrases digital presentation.
to determine meanings of words
and phrases in grade-level
content.

790 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

NOTEBOOK

Academic Vocabulary: Expository Text INTERACTIVITY

Academic terms can help you read, write, and discuss with more precision.
When you are writing about and discussing literature, start by stating your
ideas in familiar words. Then, think about the concepts you are expressing and
the academic terms that apply to them. Use those terms as you develop your
responses. Here are five academic words that will be useful to you in this unit.

■ PRACTICE Complete the chart in your notebook.

1. Review each word, its root, and the mentor sentences.
2. With a partner, read the words and mentor sentences aloud. As you
listen, predict the meaning of each word.
3. List at least two related words for each word.

■ WRITE Use at least one of the Academic Vocabulary words in

response to this question: In what ways might a library, stadium,
theater, or fire station be a home?

WORD MENTOR SENTENCES PREDICT MEANING RELATED WORDS

migrate 1. Some animal species, including migration;
monarch butterflies, migrate migratory;
LATIN ROOT: thousands of miles every year. immigrate; emigrate
-migr-
2. With so many linked devices, it is
“move”; “shift”
easy to migrate documents from one
environment to another.

modify 1. The weather forecast called for snow,

so I had to modify my plan to pack
LATIN ROOT: shorts and sandals.
-mod-
2. Your research may lead you to modify
“measure”
your thesis or even change it completely.

requisite 1. To graduate on time, you must complete

the requisite number of credits.
LATIN ROOT:
2. If you plan to be an expert in
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-quis-
nineteenth-century British literature,
“ask”; “seek”
that novel is requisite reading.

reiterate 1. I plan to offer a new vision and will not

just reiterate the same old ideas.
LATIN ROOT:
2. Ina gets bored when I reiterate that
-iter-
story, but Brad loves the repetition.
“again”

implication 1. The council did not anticipate the

implication of the new law, especially
LATIN ROOT: as it affects school funding.
-plic- / -ply-
2. One implication of her success as a
“fold”
medical student is that she’ll be a
great doctor.

Unit Introduction 791

UNIT 6 INTRODUCTION

MENTOR TEXT

This selection is an example of an

expository text, a type of writing in
which the author examines concepts
through the careful selection,
organization, and analysis of
information. You will write in this
mode for the Performance-Based
Assessment at the end of this unit.

Home Away
■ READ As you read, look at
how information is shared. Identify
information to help you answer this
question: How does the writer introduce
and develop a thesis about changing
perspectives on the idea of “home”?
From Home
AUDIO
1

L eaving one’s home to live elsewhere is one of humanity’s oldest

stories. Ever since people first began to settle in small villages,
some of us have been pulled in the opposite direction, drawn toward
ANNOTATE
life in new lands. Sometimes, we were fleeing danger; sometimes,
Audio and annotation tools are by moving we faced new dangers. In all cases, our restlessness gave
available for every text in this us new perspectives on the meaning of home. As Mark Twain wrote:
program.
“Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot
be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all
one’s lifetime.”1
2 In the modern world, we are more mobile than ever. According to
a United Nations report, there were nearly 191 million international
immigrants worldwide in 2005. That represents about 3% of the
world’s population.2 Despite these massive numbers, each
person’s experience of immigration can still feel unique and,
often, challenging.
3 For example, new immigrants may struggle with language
difficulties. Most people can speak and read the language of their Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
country of origin. That sense of ease in a language may disappear in
the adopted country. A language gap can make even ordinary chores
a challenge. One might struggle to understand a receipt, to get on the
right bus, or to read an ad. On a deeper level, language barriers may
leave new immigrants feeling isolated, cut off from jobs, education,
and even friendships.
4 Culture shock is another hurdle that new immigrants may face.
Culture shock is a feeling of disorientation or alienation when
one encounters the customs of another society. It can range from

1. Twain, Mark. The Innocents Abroad. Vol. 1, Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1879, p. 333.
2. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division.
International Migration Report 2006: A Global Assessment. United Nations, 2009,
pp. 5–6.

792 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

discomfort with new foods to a sense that certain behaviors are

inappropriate. For example, in the United States it’s considered
proper to politely confront a co-worker with whom one is having
problems. Asking a superior to intercede may be seen as a breach
of trust or an inability to handle one’s own problems. By contrast,
in Japan, people generally avoid direct confrontation. An unhappy
employee may readily ask a superior to speak to a co-worker on his
or her behalf.
5 Gestures, facial expressions, and greetings can also be culturally
specific. For example, in the United States, it is considered normal
to smile at or say hello to a stranger one passes on the sidewalk.
However, in Russia, most people do not smile at or greet strangers;
they reserve outward signs of friendliness for friends and family.
6 Language and cultural barriers may make the prospect of feeling
at home in a new country seem impossible to new immigrants.
However, as the centuries have shown, human beings are resilient.
We learn the languages of our adopted countries, often contributing
words from the language we brought with us. We embrace or reshape
the values of our adopted countries. Foods that were once foreign
become part of the larger culture’s culinary vocabulary. We build new
senses of home. Perhaps, as our global mobility continues to increase,
our sense of home will expand to include not just our immediate
neighborhoods, but also the planet itself. ❧

WORD NETWORK FOR FINDING HOME

INTERACTIVITY

Vocabulary A Word Network is a

collection of words related to a topic.
As you read the unit selections,
identify words related to the idea of isolated | alienated
finding a home, and add them to
your Word Network. For example,
customs | culture FINDING
you might begin by adding words
HOME
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from the Mentor Text, such as

isolated, customs, and foreign. For
foreign | indigenous
each word you add, add a related
word, such as a synonym or an
antonym. Continue to add words as
you complete this unit.

Refer to the Word Network Model in

the Tool Kit at the back of this book.

Home Away From Home 793

UNIT 6 INTRODUCTION
INTERACTIVITY

Summary NOTEBOOK

Write a summary of “Home Away From Home.” Remember that a summary

is a concise, complete, objective overview of a text. It should not include details from
outside of the text or commentary. Apply these strategies to summarize the text.

1. Convey the essential meaning of the text. Include only the most important
ideas and supporting details.
2. Maintain the logical order and meaning of the original text. Use a chart
like the one shown to note ideas from the beginning, middle, and end of
the text.

BEGINNING MIDDLE END

3. Write your summary in several complete sentences, keeping an objective

perspective. Don’t include your opinions or analysis.

Icebreaker
Home, Sweet Home
There are numerous clichés that reflect the importance of home: Home is where the
heart is. Home is where you hang your hat. There’s no place like home. Think about
what home means to you and how you would express that feeling in words.

How would you describe the concept of home?

• With a small group, brainstorm words that describe what home means. Use a
graphic organizer like the one shown to capture your group’s ideas.
• Use these words to create a single statement that articulates the feeling that
home inspires.

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Home is…

• Share your group’s statement with the class. Then, as a class, discuss which
statement might one day become a cliché through popularity and overuse.
B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.2.1: Read and
comprehend grade-level
complex texts proficiently.
12.R.3: Reading Across
Genres | Paraphrasing and
Summarizing
12.C.1: Communicating
Through Writing
12.C.2: Communicating Orally

794 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

QuickWrite NOTEBOOK

Consider class discussions, presentations, the video, and the Mentor Text as you
think about the Essential Question.

ESSENTIAL QUESTION:
What does it mean to call a place home?
• Record your first thoughts about the Essential Question in your notebook.

• Work to develop your ideas as thoroughly as you can and to describe the
reasons you feel and think as you do.

• Remember that there are no right or wrong responses. You are simply exploring
your own understanding of the topic at this point in the unit.

• At the end of the unit, you will respond to the Essential Question again and
see how your perspective has changed.

EQ NOTES
INTERACTIVITY

Read and Analyze Across Literary Periods The selections in this

program represent literature from a variety of cultures and literary periods.
As you explore these selections, record your insights and list details from
the texts that support them. Taking notes as you go will help you clarify
your thinking, gather relevant information, and be ready to respond to the
Essential Question in a more formal way at the end of each unit.

PRACTICE Fill in a chart like the one shown as you explore the
selections and complete the activities in this unit.

MY INSIGHTS /
TITLE TEXT EVIDENCE / INFORMATION
ANALYSES
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Refer to the EQ Notes Model in the

Tool Kit at the back of this book.

Unit Introduction 795

 WHOLE-CLASS LEARNING

ESSENTIAL QUESTION

What does it mean to call

a place home?
Is home simply the place that is most familiar to us or where
our friends or family also live? Can we feel at home in a
country where we are seen as different or as not belonging?
The selections you will read in this unit consider the qualities
that either make a place a home or keep it from being
one. You will work with your whole class to explore the
idea of home.

VIDEO

Whole-Class Learning Strategies INTERACTIVITY

Throughout your life—in school, in your community, and in your career—you’ll

continue to learn and work in large-group environments.

Review these strategies and the actions you can take to practice them as you
work with your whole class. Add ideas of your own for each step. Get ready to
use these strategies during Whole-Class Learning.

STRATEGY ACTION PLAN

Listen actively • Eliminate distraction; for example, put your phone away.
• Consider the speaker’s full message before giving
your own response.
•

Clarify by asking • If you’re confused, other people probably are, too.

questions Ask a question to help your whole class.

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• If you see that you are guessing, ask a question instead.
•

Monitor • Recognize the information you already know. Be

understanding ready to build on it.
• Ask for help if you are struggling.
•

Interact and share • Share your ideas and answer questions, even if you’re
ideas not completely sure.
• Build on the ideas of others by adding details or
making a connection.
•

796 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 CONTENTS
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
Focus Period: 1901–Present
A Changing World
Cataclysmic events—two world wars, the Russian
Revolution, and the collapse of the British Empire—
fundamentally transformed England in the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries. These events led writers—
both those with traditional British ancestry and
those who are the children of colonial subjects—to
question what “home” really means.

COMPARE WITHIN GENRE

ESSAY

Back to My Own Country:

An Essay
Andrea Levy

How is an awkward trip on an English bus

connected to the colonial history of Jamaica?

ESSAY

Shooting an Elephant
George Orwell

A rogue elephant presents a serious problem for

a colonial policeman in Burma.
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PERFORMANCE TASK: WRITING PROCESS • TIMED WRITING

Write a Formal Research Report
The Whole-Class readings demonstrate how an individual’s personal sense of home
can be influenced by social issues, the passage of time, and even the strands of
history. After reading, you will write a research report on the concept of finding
home, as expressed in literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Write an Expository Essay

Build your timed-writing skills.

Whole-Class Learning 797

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES • FOCUS PERIOD: 1901–PRESENT

TIMELINE 1917: Russia Czar is

overthrown; Bolsheviks,
1927: United States
Charles Lindbergh
1940: Winston Churchill
becomes prime minister.
1901: Queen Victoria dies; led by Lenin, seize power. flies solo to Paris.
Edward VII becomes king.

1901
1914: Britain enters
World War I. 1918: Women over 1939: Europe Hitler
thirty achieve right to invades Poland;
vote in Great Britain. World War II begins.

A Changing World
Voices of the Period History of the Period
“ If we cast our glance back over the sixty-four years into The Victorian Era When Queen Victoria died in
which was encompassed the reign of Queen Victoria, 1901, she had reigned for more than six decades,
we stand astonished, however familiar we may be longer than any British monarch until Queen
with the facts, at the development of civilization Elizabeth II surpassed that mark in 2015. In the
era that bears Victoria’s name, Britain’s old social
which has taken place during that period. We stand
and political order, which dated back to medieval
astonished at the advance of culture, of wealth, of
times, was transformed into a modern democracy.
legislation, of education, of literature, of the arts and
When Victoria became queen in 1837, Great
sciences, of locomotion by land and by sea, and of
Britain was experiencing dramatic technological
almost every department of human activity.” advances that had begun in the previous century.
—Sir Wilfred Laurier, Rapid industrialization, the growth of cities, and
former Canadian prime minister political reforms were transforming Britain. At the
same time, Britain became a worldwide empire.
“ At eleven o’clock this morning came to an end The period also witnessed the spread of poverty
the cruelest and most terrible War that has ever and great income inequality as well as advances
scourged mankind. I hope we may say that thus, in philosophy and science that threatened long-
this fateful morning, came to an end all wars. ” held beliefs. (Both Karl Marx’s The Communist
Manifesto and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin
—David Lloyd George,
former British prime minister of Species were published during this period.)
Victorians could not escape the fact that on all Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
fronts they were living “in an age of transition.”
“ Only the dead have seen the end of war. ”
—George Santayana, philosopher An Empire Won When Victoria celebrated her
Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the British Empire
stretched around the globe, making it the largest
“ We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may
empire in history. Britain’s flag flew over about a
be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on
quarter of the earth’s land, and the Royal Navy
the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and
controlled all the oceans of the world. The right
in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall of one nation to control others, however, was not
never surrender.    ” universally agreed upon either in Britain or in the
—Winston Churchill, many places subsumed into its empire. By 1922,
former British prime minister

798 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

1941: United States Japan 1955: United States Martin Luther

bombs Pearl Harbor; United 1947: India and Pakistan King, Jr., leads civil rights bus boycott.
States enters World War II. gain independence.

1960
1945: Japan United States
1957: Soviet Union
drops atomic bombs on
1949: China Mao Zedong Sputnik I, first satellite, is
Hiroshima and Nagasaki;
establishes People’s Republic. launched.
World War II ends with
Japanese surrender.

about one-fifth of the world’s population was British soldiers lost their lives. The war and its
under British control. aftermath influenced much of what followed in
the twentieth century.
The War to End All Wars On August 3, 1914,
as Germany invaded Belgium, Sir Edward Grey, In 1916, Irish nationalists, taking advantage of
the British Foreign Secretary, looked over a Britain’s involvement in World War I, staged a
darkening London and said, “The lamps are going rebellion against British rule. The rebellion failed,
out all over Europe; we shall not see them again but its outcome deepened the ill feelings between
in our lifetime.” The next day, Britain declared Britain and Ireland.
war on Germany.
In 1917, German authorities allowed Vladimir
Many predicted the war would be brief. It was Lenin to return to Russia after a ten-year exile.
not. Instead, it lasted four long years. World There, he led the Bolshevik revolution, which
War I cost Britain dearly—more than 700,000 transformed Russia from a czarist empire into a

NOTEBOOK

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Use Text Features Compare the global political power of Britain
in 1900 and today as shown on the two maps. Based on the list of
Nobel Prize winners writing in English, what can you infer about the
prevalence of the English language in former colonies?

Nobel Prize Winners Writing in English

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1907 Rudyard Kipling (Great Britain) 1983 William Golding (Great Britain)
1923 William Butler Yeats (Ireland) 1986 Wole Soyinka (Nigeria)
1925 George Bernard Shaw (Great Britain) 1987 Joseph Brodsky (United States)
1930 Sinclair Lewis (United States) 1991 Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)
1932 John Galsworthy (Great Britain) 1992 Derek Walcott (St. Lucia)
1936 Eugene O’Neill (United States) 1993 Toni Morrison (United States)
1938 Pearl S. Buck (United States) 1995 Seamus Heaney (Ireland)
1948 T. S. Eliot (Great Britain) 2001 V. S. Naipaul (Great Britain)
1949 William Faulkner (United States) 2003 J. M. Coetzee (South Africa)
1950 Bertrand Russell (Great Britain) 2005 Harold Pinter (Great Britain)
1953 Winston Churchill (Great Britain) 2007 Doris Lessing (Great Britain)
1954 Ernest Hemingway (United States) 2013 Alice Munro (Canada)
1962 John Steinbeck (United States) 2016 Bob Dylan (United States)
1969 Samuel Beckett (Ireland) 2017 Kazuo Ishiguro (Great Britain)
1973 Patrick White (Australia) 2020 Louise Glück (United States)
1976 Saul Bellow (United States)

Historical Perspectives 799

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES • FOCUS PERIOD: 1901–PRESENT

TIMELINE 1969: United States 1989: Germany Berlin Wall

comes down; reunification of
Apollo 11 lands on moon.
1961: Germany East and West Germany follows.
Berlin Wall is built.

1960
1964: Vietnam 1979: Margaret Thatcher
American involvement becomes first woman prime
in Vietnam War grows. minister of the United
Kingdom.

Communist state, an event that would have impoverished—and soon to be without its empire
far-reaching effects throughout the twentieth as England’s former colonies, one by one, became
century and beyond. independent countries.
The Treaty of Versailles, which followed World A Time of Recovery During the World War II
War I, had disarmed Germany, stripped it of campaign known as the Blitz, German forces
valuable territory, and imposed harsh reparations bombed English cities over a period of 267 days,
on the German state. Zealous enforcement destroying large sections of London. From
on the part of Great Britain and France led to the ashes, a new London emerged. However,
Germany’s economic collapse. Financial hardship, changes in other parts of the country were
near-anarchy, and a sense of humiliation paved more problematic. The mill and mining country
the way for the rise of Adolf Hitler. The German of the north was no longer the economic heart
people, seething with resentment at their former of the nation as it had once been. Banking and
enemies, were easily swayed by Hitler’s promise to technology, both concentrated in the south,
restore Germany’s pride and rid it of the oppressive took command. Over the following decades, the
effects of the Treaty of Versailles. economic divide between the rusting north and
The enormous death toll during World War I the booming south only continued to grow.
as well as the crippling effects of the Great Pop Culture After 1945, England’s formerly
Depression forced England, once the mightiest conservative, somewhat rigid Victorian culture
nation in the world, into a more passive role in developed into a worldwide center of popular
the 1930s. During this period, Germany rearmed culture. From the Beatles to Carnaby Street, British
and amassed territory in Europe. Japan, perceiving culture swept the globe in “the Swinging Sixties”
Western powers as weak, invaded and occupied and beyond.
much of China. World War I, sometimes called
“the war to end all wars,” was the prelude to yet The New Face of Britain In addition to Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

another global conflict. experiencing an economic divide, postwar Britain

felt the effects of racial and colonial divisions.
The Second World War The aggression of
When British citizens from the former colonies
Germany and Japan led inevitably to World War II.
began to move to England, the nation became
When Hitler’s armies overran Europe, the English
increasingly diverse. At the same time, an increase
initially stood defiantly, but alone, shielded only by
in the proportion of British students in universities
the English Channel and the Royal Air Force.
contributed to innovation and new trends in
By the end of 1941, both the Soviet Union and British culture. The England that celebrated the
the United States had entered the war. Finally, in Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in 2012 was
1945, after nearly six years of struggle, England a different nation from the England of Victoria’s
emerged from the war victorious, battered, and Diamond Jubilee 115 years earlier.

800 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

2015: Queen Elizabeth II

becomes England’s longest-
1991: Eastern Europe
reigning monarch.
Soviet Union is 2004: United Kingdom’s
dissolved. population surpasses 59 million.

Present
2001: United States Hijacked planes crash
into the World Trade Center in New York, the 2012: London hosts
Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field in Olympic Games for
rural Pennsylvania; thousands of lives are lost. the third time.

Literature Selections
Literature of the Focus Period A number of Connections Across Time Reflections on the
the selections in the unit were written during the qualities of home as both a physical place and a
Focus Period and pertain to perceptions of home psychological concept are age-old, as shown in
as both a place and a state of mind. literature of both the past and present.

“Back to My Own Country: An Essay,” from A History of the English Church and
Andrea Levy People, Bede
“Shooting an Elephant,” George Orwell “The Seafarer,” Burton Raffel, translator
from “History of Jamaica,” “Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold
Encyclopaedia Britannica “The Widow at Windsor,” Rudyard Kipling
“Escape From the Old Country,” Adrienne Su “St. Crispin’s Day Speech,”
“From Lucy: Englan’ Lady,” James Berry William Shakespeare
from The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro “Home Thoughts, From Abroad,”
Robert Browning
“My Old Home,” Lu Hsun
from “Writing as an Act of Hope,”
Isabel Allende

SAMPLING OF ADDITIONAL FOCUS PERIOD LITERATURE

Student Edition
UNIT 1 “Faithful Forest,” Alberto Ríos
“Dulce et Decorum Est,” Wilfred Owen “The Lagoon,” Joseph Conrad
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“The Song of the Mud,” Mary Borden UNIT 4

“Defending Nonviolent Resistance,” “The Second Coming,” W. B. Yeats
Mohandas K. Gandhi “Araby,” James Joyce
“Accidental Hero,” Zadie Smith “The Explosion,” Philip Larkin
UNIT 2 “Old Love,” Francesca Beard
from “The Worms of the Earth Against the Lions,” “Dream,” Jorge Luis Borges
Barbara W. Tuchman
“Flowers from the Volcano,” Claribel Alegría
“Shakespeare’s Sister,” Virginia Woolf UNIT 5
“On Seeing England for the First Time,” Jamaica Kincaid from Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
“XXIII” from Midsummer, Derek Walcott “The Madeleine,” Marcel Proust
“The British”/“Who’s Who,” Benjamin Zephaniah “The Most Forgetful Man in the World,” Joshua Foer
UNIT 3 “Some Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison,”
Sonnet II, Edna St. Vincent Millay Nazim Hikmet
from “The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness,” from Time and Free Will, Henri Bergson
Cleanth Brooks from The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
from “Macbeth,” Frank Kermode

Historical Perspectives 801

PREPARE TO READ

Compare Within Genre ESSAY ESSAY

In this lesson, you will read and compare two essays. First,
you will complete the activities for the essay by Andrea Levy.
The work you do on this selection will help prepare you for
your final comparison.
BACK TO MY OWN SHOOTING AN
COUNTRY: AN ESSAY ELEPHANT

About the Author

Back to My Own Country:
An Essay
Concept Vocabulary INTERACTIVITY

You will encounter the following words as you read “Back to My Own
Country: An Essay.” Before reading, note how familiar you are with each
Andrea Levy (1956–2019)
word. Rank the words in order from most familiar (1) to least familiar (6).
was born in London to
parents who had emigrated
from the Caribbean island of WORD YOUR RANKING
Jamaica. Her work—which
assimilate
includes novels, a short-story
collection, and essays—is entitlement
infused with questions about
cultural identity and ethnicity upbringing
in a postcolonial world. She
myriad
won numerous awards for
her writing, including the indigenous
Orange Prize for Fiction and
the Whitbread Award. hybrid

Comprehension Strategy NOTEBOOK

Make Inferences An inference is an educated guess you make about

aspects of a text that a writer hints at but doesn’t state directly. Making
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
inferences as you read deepens your understanding of a text and helps
make details and events more vivid. To make inferences, use text evidence to
support your understanding of what you have read.

EXAMPLE
Passage: Liza remained on the ship’s deck long after all the other
passengers had gone below. As darkness fell, she watched tearfully as
twinkling lights and rocky silhouettes dropped below the horizon.
Possible Inference: From the passage I know that Liza is on a ship,
tearfully watching a place disappear from sight. From these details, I
can infer that Liza has a strong connection to the place she is leaving,
and that she is sad to be sailing away.

B.E.S.T. PRACTICE As you read, connect text evidence with what you already
K12.EE.3.1: Make inferences to know to make inferences that support your understanding of the essay.
support comprehension.

802 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSAY

Back to
My Own Country:
An Essay
Andrea Levy

BACKGROUND CLOSE READ TO

From the early 1500s to the late 1900s, Britain used its superior naval, UNLOCK MEANING
technological, and economic power to colonize and control territories worldwide. 1. Read the text for
At its peak, the British Empire covered more than 13 million square miles and comprehension.
included more than 450 million people. After World War II, independence 2. Go back and respond to
movements transformed the empire. It was replaced with the British the Close-Read notes.
3. Identify other details
Commonwealth, an association of self-ruling nations, of which Jamaica is one.
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in the text you find

interesting. Ask
1

I remember a journey I took on a London bus when I was a young

girl. It was in the early 1960s. The bus was full of people and one
of them was a black man. That was not a common sight in those
your own questions
and draw your own
conclusions.

days. I could tell from his accent that, like my parents, he was from
somewhere in the Caribbean. He was talkative, smiling politely at
people and trying to engage them in chat. But all the other people on
the bus were white and they were looking at him askance.1 Nobody
would be drawn into conversation; they clearly wanted nothing to do
with him. But he carried on trying anyway.
2 I was embarrassed by him, but also overcome with pity for his
hopeless attempt to be friendly on a London bus. I was sure that he
was a nice man and that if those people on the bus could just get to

1. askance (uh SKANS) adv. with suspicion or disapproval.

Back to My Own Country: An Essay 803

 know him then they would like him. My family also came from the
Caribbean. I identified with him. He somehow became my mum
and dad, my sisters, me. But to the other people on the bus he was
more than a stranger, he was an alien. I felt a longing to make some
introductions. I could sense the misunderstandings that were taking
place, but I didn’t know why, or what I could do. The man was
different. He looked different and he sounded different. But how
come people in England did not know him? Why was he, and why
were all black people from Britain’s old empire, so completely alien to
them? This encounter is something I will never forget.
3 The same thing would not happen today in quite that way.
Everyone is used to a mix of cultures and London buses are full of
Londoners from all over the world. But still there are silences and
gaps in our knowledge and understanding. What are the links that
made Britain a natural destination for that Caribbean man on the bus,
50 years ago? How and why did Britain forge those links in the first
place? These are questions that have come to fascinate me, because
they reveal what amounts to a lost history for many of us. It was
certainly lost to me for much of my early life, and it was a loss that
CLOSE READ caused me some problems.
ANNOTATE: Identify details 4 At the time of my bus ride I lived on a council estate 2 in north
in paragraph 4 that show London. I went to a local school. Spoke like a good cockney.3 I played
the author’s “Englishness.” outside with all the white kids who lived around my way—rounders,
skipping, and hide and seek. I ate a lot of sweets. Watched a lot of
QUESTION: How do these
details contrast with the television: Coronation Street, Emergency Ward 10. Loved the Arsenal.
information she provides Hated Tottenham Hotspur.4 I lived the life of an ordinary London
about her parents in working-class girl.
paragraph 5? 5 But my parents had come to this country from Jamaica. And in the
CONCLUDE: What point
area of London where we lived, that made my family very odd. We
is the author making by were immigrants. Outsiders. My dad had been a passenger on the
including these contrasting Empire Windrush 5 ship when it famously sailed into Tilbury in June
details after her bus 1948 and, according to many, changed the face of Britain for ever. My
anecdote? mum came to England on a Jamaica Banana Producer’s boat. It sailed
into West India dock on Guy Fawkes Night 6 in the same year, under a
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shower of fireworks that my mum believed were to welcome her.
6 My dad was an accounting clerk in Jamaica for, among other
companies, Tate & Lyle. My mum was a teacher. They were middle
class. They grew up in large houses. They even had servants. They
came to Britain on British Empire passports in order to find more
opportunities for work and advancement. But once here they
struggled to find good housing. They had to live in one room for

2. council estate housing project.

3. cockney (KOK nee) n. someone from East London, with a distinctive accent.
4. the Arsenal . . . Tottenham Hotspur English soccer teams.
5. Empire Windrush This ship brought thousands of Caribbean men and women to
England after World War II, forming the foundation of the modern African Caribbean
community in England.
6. Guy Fawkes Night Every year on November 5, people across the United Kingdom light
fireworks and bonfires to celebrate the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’s foiled attempt to blow
up the Parliament in London in 1605.

804 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 many years. They had a period of being homeless and then living in
halfway housing where my dad was not allowed to stay with his wife
and his three children. Eventually they were housed in the council
flat7 in Highbury where I was born, and where I grew up.
7 My dad did not have trouble finding work. He was employed by
the Post Office. But my mum was not allowed to use her Jamaican
teaching qualification to teach in England. She needed to retrain. So
she took in sewing throughout my childhood. But she still nursed her
dream of becoming a teacher again.
8 In England, the fabled Mother Country that they had learned
so much about at school in Jamaica, my parents were poor and
working class.
9 They believed that in order to get on in this country they should
live quietly and not make a fuss. They should assimilate and be as assimilate (uh SIHM uh layt)
respectable as they possibly could. Clean the front step every week. v. become like the majority
in a region or country
Go to church on Sundays. Keep their children well dressed and by adopting its customs,
scrubbed behind the ears. viewpoint, character, or
10 On one occasion my mum did not have money to buy food for attitude
our dinner. None at all. She worried that she might be forced into the
humiliation of asking someone, a neighbor perhaps, for a loan. She
walked out into the street praying for a solution, and found a one-
pound note lying on the pavement. In my mum’s eyes that was not a
stroke of luck, that was a strategy.
11 My parents believed that, with no real entitlement to anything, entitlement (ehn TY tuhl
they must accept what this country was willing to give. They were, muhnt) n. expectation; right

after all, immigrants. As long as they didn’t do anything too unusual

that might upset the people of England, then they could get on. My
mum was desperate for my dad to lose his accent and stop saying
“nah man” and “cha” in every sentence. They never discussed
Jamaica with anyone. My mum would get embarrassed if she saw a
black person drawing attention to themselves. It drew attention to
her as well, and she hated that.
12 My family is fair-skinned. In Jamaica this had had a big effect
on my parents’ upbringing, because of the class system, inherited
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upbringing (UHP brihng ihng) n.

from British colonial times, people took the color of your skin very care and training given to a
child while growing up
seriously. My parents had grown up to believe themselves to be of a
higher class than any darker-skinned person. This isolated them from
other black Caribbeans who came to live here—they wanted nothing
to do with them.
13 My mum once told me how, back in Jamaica, her father would
not let her play with children who were darker than her. She said
wistfully, “But I had to, or I would have had no one to play with.”
So when she came to England she was pleased to be bringing
her children up amongst white children. We would always have
lighter-skinned children to play with. I was expected to isolate myself
from darker-skinned people too, and it seemed perfectly normal to
me that the color of your skin was one of the most important things
7. flat n. British English for “apartment.”

Back to My Own Country: An Essay 805

 about you. White people of course never had to think about it. But if
you were not white, well then, how black were you? I accepted all of
this as logical. That was how I would be judged.
14 Light-skinned or not, still we were asked, “When are you going
back to your own country?” “Why are you here?” “Why is your food
so funny?” “Why does your hair stick up?” “Why do you smell?” The
message was that our family was foreign and had no right to be here.
When a member of the far-right group the National Front waved one
of their leaflets in my face and started laughing, I felt I owed them
some sort of apology. I wanted them to like me. It would be years
before I realized I could be angry with them.
15 The racism I encountered was rarely violent, or extreme, but it was
insidious and ever present and it had a profound effect on me. I hated
myself. I was ashamed of my family, and embarrassed that they came
from the Caribbean.
16 In my efforts to be as British as I could be, I was completely
indifferent to Jamaica. None of my friends knew anything about the
Caribbean. They didn’t know where it was, or who lived there, or
why. And they had no curiosity about it beyond asking why black
people were in this country. It was too foreign and therefore not
worth knowing.
17 As I got older my feeling of outsiderness became more marked,
as did the feeling that nothing in my background—my class or my
ethnicity—was really worth having. At art college I encountered
middle-class people for the first time. Proper middle class—
debutantes with ponies, that sort of thing. Keeping those origins of
mine a secret became paramount. Few people at my college knew
I lived on a council estate. Once, when given a lift home, I got my
friends to drop me at the gate of a proper house. I walked up the path
waving them off. Then as soon as they were out of view I walked
back to my flat.
18 I got a degree in textile design and worked as a designer for about
ten minutes before I realised it was not for me. After that I worked for
a brief while as a shop assistant, a dresser at the BBC and the Royal
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Opera House, and a receptionist at a family-planning clinic.
CLOSE READ 19 Then something happened. I was working part-time for a sex-
ANNOTATE: Identify details education project for young people in Islington. One day the staff had
in paragraph 19 that to take part in a racism awareness course. We were asked to split into
describe an incident that two groups, black and white. I walked over to the white side of the
was a rude awakening for room. It was, ironically, where I felt most at home—all my friends,
the author. my boyfriend, my flatmates, were white. But my fellow workers had
QUESTION: Why did this other ideas and I found myself being beckoned over by people on
incident surprise her? the black side. With some hesitation I crossed the floor. It was a rude
awakening. It sent me to bed for a week.
CONCLUDE: For what
reason do you think the
20 By this time I was scared to call myself a black person. I didn’t
author has shared this feel I had the right qualifications. Didn’t you have to have grown up
anecdote with readers? in a “black community”? Didn’t you need to go to the Caribbean a
lot? Didn’t your parents need to be proud of being black? Didn’t my

806 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 friends need to be black? My upbringing was so far removed from all
of that, I felt sure I would be found out as an impostor. I was not part
of the black experience, surely?
21 It was a life-changing moment.
22 Fortunately I had recently enrolled on an afternoon-a-week writing
course at the City Lit in London, just as a hobby. Writing came to
my rescue. The course had an emphasis on writing about what you
know. So, nervously I began to explore what I knew—my family
upbringing and background, and my complicated
relationship with color. Thinking about what I
knew, and exploring my background with words, In fact, I came to see that
began to open it up for me as never before. I soon
came to realize that my experience of growing up every black person’s life, no
in this country was part of what it meant to be matter what it is, is part of
black. All those agonies over skin shade. Those
silences about where we had come from. The the black experience.
shame. The denial. In fact I came to see that every
black person’s life, no matter what it is, is part of
the black experience. Because being black in a majority white country
comes with a myriad of complications and contradictions. It was myriad (MIHR ee uhd) n.
writing that helped me to understand that. uncountably large number;
variety
23 A few months into the course I had the urge to visit Jamaica for
the very first time and stay with the family I had never met. I went
for Christmas. It was an amazing experience. I discovered a family
I had never really known I had. I realised that I meant something to
people who lived on the other side of the world. I met my aunt and
cousins and saw where my mum grew up. I realised for the first time
that I had a background and an ancestry that was fascinating and
worth exploring. Not only that, but I had the means to do it—
through writing.
24 I am now happy to be called a black British writer, and the fiction
I have written has all been about my Caribbean heritage in some way
or another. It is a very rich seam for a writer and it is, quite simply,
the reason that I write. Toni Morrison was once asked if she felt
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constrained by her being seen as a black writer. She replied: “Being

a black woman writer is not a shallow place but a rich place to write
from. It doesn’t limit my imagination; it expands it.” That is how
I feel.
25 The more I began to delve into my Caribbean heritage the more
interesting Britain’s Caribbean story became for me. The story of the
Caribbean is a white story, too, and one that goes back a long way.
The region was right at the very heart of Europe’s early experiments
in colonising the world. In the 1500s it was the Spanish who first
exploited those newly found islands, displacing the indigenous indigenous (ihn DIHJ uh nuhs)
people. The Dutch, the French, and the British came soon after. adj. native to a particular
country or region
The island claimed earliest for Britain was Barbados, in 1625. But
soon Britain was a major coloniser in the region. A whole string of
islands became “British.” Islands that for a long time were seen as

Back to My Own Country: An Essay 807

 our most lucrative overseas possessions. Sugar was the main crop,
as important to Britain then as oil is today. It was planted, harvested,
and processed by the slave labor of black Africans. That slave trade
from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas was the largest
forced migration in human history. Those islands soon became brutal
island-factories helping to fuel and to fund the industrial revolution
in Britain. Huge family fortunes were made. Major cities like Bristol,
Liverpool, and London grew wealthy on the proceeds. The money
that slavery in the Caribbean generated was reinvested in Britain’s
industry and infrastructure. Britain’s empire grew as a result.
26 When British slavery finally ended in 1833, compensation was paid
by the British Government. It amounted to twenty million pounds
(many billions in today’s money). It was paid to the slave owners for
the loss of their property. They were seen as the injured party.
27 But there is more to those Caribbean islands than just the history of
slavery. Many white people went, if not in chains, then under duress:
indentured servants and poor people from all corners of Britain who
were trying to escape hardship at home or to build a new life. Many
were press-ganged sailors, or convict labor. There were Sephardic
Jews from Iberia, merchants from the Middle East and, later,
indentured laborers from India and China. A social mix was created
like in no other place on earth. Creole cultures developed with a
wide range of skin colors that were elaborately classified (mulatto,
quadroon, octoroon, and so on) as a divide-and-rule tactic by the

Jamaican landscape

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808 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 British plantocracy.8 Racial difference and racial value developed
into a “science.” After the end of slavery in the Caribbean the British
continued to rule their islands through a policy of racial apartheid
right up until they finally left in the nineteen sixties.
28 But all this happened three thousand miles away from Britain, and CLOSE READ
as a result it has been possible for it to quietly disappear from British ANNOTATE: Identify the
mainstream history. This is the absence, the gap in knowledge, the sentences in paragraph
amnesia of the British that made the black man on the bus such an 28 that show the main
alien. It is unthinkable that a book on American history could leave contrast the author sees
out plantation slavery in the southern states. But in British history between the teaching
of American and British
books the equivalent is the case, or at least the importance of those
history.
centuries of British slavery in the Caribbean is underplayed. That
British plantation slavery has no lasting legacy for this country is QUESTION: Why is this
absurd, but it is a claim that is made implicitly by this silence. It was contrast so surprising to the
so very long ago, it seems to say, we don’t need to dredge it up. author?
29 I remember what I was taught at school about Britain in the CONCLUDE: What are
Caribbean. I had one lesson on the transatlantic slave trade. We the implications of this
looked at illustrations of slaves in ships. But that was all. I learned “silence” for British
much more about William Wilberforce9 and the campaign for the students studying their
abolition of slavery than anything about the life of a slave. We history?
know more about slavery in the American South than in the British
Caribbean. We are familiar with the struggles of African Americans
from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement. But American
slavery was different from Caribbean slavery. In the Caribbean, slaves
far outnumbered the white owners, and that mix of isolation, fear
and dependency produced very different societies from those of the
American South. America’s story will not do for us. Our legacy of
slavery is unique, and we need to understand what it is.
30 I wrote a novel, The Long Song, set in the time of slavery in the
Caribbean, and when I was promoting the book I had numerous
media interviews. On two separate occasions the interviewers—
bright, university-educated people in each case—admitted to me that
they had not known that Britain had used slaves in the Caribbean.
Slavery they thought had only been in America. Going around the
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country doing readings I was surprised at the ignorance of people

about where the islands were, or of how many of them there were.
Many people I met believed all people from the Caribbean came
from Jamaica.
31 And what of the period after slavery? What about the century of
“racial apartheid” that grew up in the colonial era, the time when
my mum and dad learned to know their racial place and to keep
themselves separate? The history of the black people of the Caribbean
is missing.
32 Apart from being an exotic holiday destination the islands have
now become an irrelevance here. They are no longer wealthy. They
8. plantocracy (plan TOK ruh see) n. plantation owners as a ruling class.
9. William Wilberforce English politician who fought for abolition of the slave trade.

Back to My Own Country: An Essay 809

 are not rich with natural resources. They no longer have the power
they enjoyed when some of the most famous families in Britain were
there. It is too easy to forget what happened and how it has affected
our lives today. But it is as much a part of British history as the
Norman Conquest, or the Tudors.10
33 No one would claim that out of Britain’s many stories of empire
the Caribbean is the most important. But it is one of the earliest, one
of the longest in duration, and certainly one of the most unusual
in terms of population mix and the creation of unique societies. In
other parts of Britain’s old empire, such as India or Africa, we can
debate what fading legacy the British have left, whether it is railways,
bureaucracies, or parliamentary systems. In the Caribbean the legacy
is, in one sense, everything. Not just the towns, the cities, and the
landscape, but the very people themselves; their origins, their ethnic
hybrid (HY brihd) adj. mix, their hybrid cultures, all result from what the British did on
combined from different those islands before they finally left them. And conversely, Britain
sources
growing to become a world power, its attitudes to race, and even how
it sees itself today, these things are in no small part the legacy that
the British Caribbean has left for modern Britain. “The very notion
of Great Britain’s ‘greatness’ is bound up with Empire,” the cultural
theorist Stuart Hall once wrote: “Euro-skepticism and little Englander
nationalism11 could hardly survive if people understood whose sugar
flowed through English blood and rotted English teeth.”
34 What this means of course is that I, and my family, are products
of Britain just as much as the white kids I grew up with in Highbury.
Given Britain’s history in the Caribbean it was almost inevitable that
people like my dad and his fellow passengers on the Windrush would
end up here. They belonged, whether Britain realized it or not. One of
CLOSE READ the consequences of having an empire, of being a cultural hub, is that
ANNOTATE: Identify the world ultimately comes to you. That’s how hubs work.
details in paragraph 35 35 Britons of Caribbean heritage have been in this country in
that describe the “gift” of significant numbers for sixty-five years now. We are three or four
postwar immigration. generations on from the man on the London bus. Immigration to
Britain since the end of the Second World War has been a final,
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QUESTION: Why do you
think the author chose unexpected gift to Britain from its old empire. The benefits that
the word gift as a way the labor and the enterprise of immigrants, like those from the
to represent the postwar Caribbean, have brought to Britain are incalculable. Their ideas, their
history of immigration creativity, and their ways of life have helped turn this country into a
to Britain? What are the sophisticated multi-culture. This windfall of talent and variety is one
connotations of the word of the great unforeseen benefits to Britain.
gift?
36 But there are still countless young Britons today of Afro-Caribbean
CONCLUDE: How would the descent who have as little understanding of their ancestry and
impact of this paragraph have as little evidence of their worth as I did when I was growing
change if the word gift up. And there are countless white Britons who are unaware of the
were replaced with benefit
or asset? 10. t he Norman Conquest, or the Tudors The Norman Conquest was the takeover of
England by invaders from northern France in 1066. The Tudors were highly successful
kings and queens who ruled from the late 1400s to the early 1600s.
11. Euro-skepticism and little Englander nationalism political tendencies associated with
mistrust of the European Union and of foreigners in general.

810 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 histories that bind us together. Britain made the Caribbean that my
parents came from. It provided the people—black and white—who
make up my ancestry. In return my ancestors, through their forced
labor and their enterprise, contributed greatly to the development
of modern Britain. My heritage is Britain’s story, too. It is time to
put the Caribbean back where it belongs—in the main narrative
of British history. ❧
“Back to My Own Country: An Essay” by Andrea Levy, from Six Stories & an Essay. Copyright © 2014 Andrea Levy. Reproduced by
permission of Headline Publishing Group.

BUILD INSIGHT

NOTEBOOK
Comprehension
Answer the questions
1. Reading Check (a) What was the status of the author’s parents when in your notebook.
they were living in Jamaica? (b) How did that status change when they Cite text evidence to
got to England? (c) When Levy was growing up, why was she “indifferent explain and justify your
to Jamaica”? reasoning.

2. Strategy: Make Inferences (a) What inferences did you make while
reading the essay? (b) What, specifically, did these inferences help you
understand?

Analysis
3. (a) What incident does the author describe at the beginning of the essay?
(b) Interpret What is the importance of this opening incident in the essay?

4. (a) How did the author’s family try to assimilate into the white culture?
(b) Make Inferences What does this assimilation suggest about the
family’s beliefs about that culture?

5. (a) Analyze What key difference about education about slavery in Britain
and education about slavery in America does Levy point out? (b) Connect
According to Levy, why is the acknowledgment of history so critical?
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6. Evaluate At the conclusion of her essay, Levy makes the claim that “It is
time to put the Caribbean back where it belongs—in the main narrative of
British history.” What three pieces of evidence do you think most strongly
support Levy’s argument?

7. Analyze Contemporary Literature In what way does the author’s

experience help you understand Britain’s recent history?

EQ NOTES INTERACTIVITY
B.E.S.T.
What does it mean to call a place home? K12.EE.1.1: Cite evidence to explain
and justify reasoning.
What have you learned about the idea of home from reading K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend
this essay? Go to your Essential Question Notes and record your grade-level complex texts proficiently.
observations and thoughts about “Back to My Own Country: An Essay.” K12.EE.3.1: Make inferences to
support comprehension.

Back to My Own Country: An Essay 811

ANALYZE AND INTERPRET

Close Read INTERACTIVITY

The Reading sections of college admissions tests require you to apply close-
reading skills to answer questions about the details and deeper meanings of
texts. Practice with these questions, which are based on “Back to My Own
BACK TO MY OWN COUNTRY: Country: An Essay” by Andrea Levy.
AN ESSAY

PRACTICE Select an answer.

1. Which of the following does Levy most likely believe is true of history?
A. By studying history, people master it, finding the freedom to choose
their own identity.
B. Studying history provides insight into social trends but cannot aid in
understanding oneself.
C. By celebrating the histories of minorities, writers can ensure that no
one is ever oppressed again.
D. Integrating the histories of minorities with mainstream narratives is a
step toward resolving cultural conflicts.

2. As used in paragraph 17, the phrase council estate most likely refers to:
E. high-end luxury apartment buildings.
F. government-subsidized public housing.
G. houses with extensive yards or gardens.
H. homes inherited from a family member.

Inquiry and Research NOTEBOOK

Critique the Research Process Research is a recursive process—

researchers need to evaluate and make adjustments to their initial focus and
plan, based on initial results. By critiquing and evaluating their process at
each step, researchers can implement changes, as needed.
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
PRACTICE Conduct research to learn more about the Empire Windrush.
You will share your findings in a brief description, in which you credit your
sources.
B.E.S.T.
12.R.2.2: Evaluate how an author • Identify a research question about the topic, and conduct a preliminary
develops the central idea(s), search for sources. Pause to critique your progress. If you are not finding
identifying how the author could
make the support more effective. what you need, implement changes by narrowing your topic or changing
your search terms.
12.R.2.3: Evaluate an author’s
choices in establishing and achieving • Conclude your initial research, and begin drafting your description.
purpose(s).
Synthesize information from multiple sources, citing each source you
12.R.3.2: Paraphrase content from
grade-level texts. have directly quoted or paraphrased. Then, pause to critique this step of
the research process. Implement any changes that are needed.
12.C.4.1: Conduct research on a
topical issue to answer a question Make a final draft of your description. Then, carefully review it to be sure it is
and synthesize information from a
variety of sources. factually sound and that sources have been cited correctly.

812 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

NOTEBOOK

Literary / Text Elements INTERACTIVITY

Purpose, Audience, and Message An author’s purpose, audience, and

message shape a work in decisive ways, from the author’s choice of style to
his or her choice of details.

• An author’s general purpose, or reason for writing, might be to

persuade, to inform, or to entertain. An author may have more than one
specific purpose. For example, an author might want to inform an
audience about a historical event but also persuade them to adopt a
certain viewpoint of that event.
• An author’s audience consists of his or her intended readers. An
author’s word choice, diction, and tone are tailored to suit and satisfy the
intended audience.
• An author’s message is the central idea or insight he or she seeks to
illuminate and support. Writers can state a message directly, but they
may also imply it through their selection of details. Facts and examples
can help support a message—but so can reflections on personal
experience.

■ PRACTICE Answer the questions and complete the activity.

1. ( a) Infer What is Levy’s purpose in writing paragraphs 23 and 24?
(b) Make Connections In what way do these paragraphs help tie
together her personal narrative in the first part of the essay with her
overview of Caribbean history in the second? (c) Draw Conclusions
What conclusion can you draw about Levy’s general reasons for
writing?

2. (a) Interpret What is Levy’s message about Anglo-Caribbean

history? Cite details from the essay in support. (b) Interpret What is
her message about identity? Support your answer.

3. (a) Analyze Complete a chart like the one shown. For each passage,
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take notes about Levy’s purpose, her message, and details she uses to
appeal to her audience. Then, review your findings.
PURPOSE MESSAGE AUDIENCE
Paragraphs 19–22
Paragraphs 25–27
Paragraphs 28–31
Paragraphs 34–36

(b) Evaluate How effectively does Levy fulfill her purpose(s),

address her audience(s), and convey her message(s)? Cite textual
evidence to support your evaluation.

Back to My Own Country: An Essay 813

STUDY LANGUAGE AND CRAFT

Concept Vocabulary NOTEBOOK

Why These Words? Levy uses the concept vocabulary words to document
encounters between cultures. For example, when the author’s parents arrive
in England from Jamaica, they try to assimilate into a new culture. During the
BACK TO MY OWN COUNTRY: author’s upbringing in predominantly white London, she confronts a myriad
AN ESSAY
of challenges because she is of Afro-Caribbean descent.

assimilate upbringing indigenous

WORD NETWORK
entitlement myriad hybrid
Note words in the text
that are related to the
concept of finding home. PRACTICE Answer the questions.
Add them to your Word 1. List three aspects of cultural conflict that the concept vocabulary helps
Network.
Levy explore.
2. What other words in the essay connect to this concept?
3. What is one way in which a person might be influenced by his or her
upbringing?
4. Why might people fight to protect indigenous plants against other
species?
5. What is one thing to which United States citizens are said to have an
entitlement?
6. Give an example of something hybrid—an animal, a musical style, a
television show. Explain your choice.
7. Where would you expect to see a myriad of artworks? Explain.
8. What is one way a student might try to assimilate into a new school?

Word Study NOTEBOOK

Spelling Patterns: The Long i Sound The long i sound, which is found in
the concept vocabulary words entitlement and hybrid, is often spelled using
one of the following patterns: Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

• in certain multisyllable words, just the letter i is needed to create the long i
sound, as in the words silent, item, final
• the pattern i_e, as in the words wife, tile, bribe
• the pattern igh, as in the words night, high, sight
• the letter y, as in the words type, sky, hyphen
B.E.S.T.
12.R.1.1: Evaluate how key elements • the pattern ie, as in the words fried, spied, tie
enhance or add layers of meaning
PRACTICE Rewrite the following words in your notebook, correcting any
and/or style in a literary text and
explain the functional significance of incorrect spellings. Use a dictionary to check your work.
those elements in interpreting the text.
12.C.3.1: Follow the rules of standard hidrogen whyne magnify
English grammar, punctuation,
capitalization, and spelling appropriate nitemare twilight dinamic
to grade level.

814 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Author’s Craft NOTEBOOK

Diction and Syntax Diction, syntax, tone, and voice all contribute to the
effectiveness of a text. Analyzing the techniques an
author uses to develop a
Diction is a writer’s choice of words. A writer’s diction may be formal, unique voice is an important
informal, humorous, poetic, and so on. Using diction, writers can convey step in determining the
effects of the author’s style—
tone, or an attitude toward the subject or audience.
and how it contributes to the
overall effectiveness or
Syntax is the way words are organized. For example, simple syntax is created
beauty of a text.
by using standard subject-verb order and basic sentence structures. More
ornate or flowery syntax is created by deviating from typical sentence
structures and by elongating sentences.

Diction and syntax help create voice, the distinctive “sound” of words on a
page. Voice lets readers perceive a personality “behind” the written words. A
writer’s voice might be energetic, breathless, hesitant, ponderous, and so on.

Here are examples from “Back to My Own Country.”

EXAMPLE ANALYSIS EFFECTIVENESS OF TEXT?

I remember a journey I Levy’s diction here is simple. Simple diction helps establish a trustworthy
took on a London bus Although her syntax is voice. Multiple clauses build context into Levy’s
when I was a young girl. straightforward, the sentence does sentence—she is remembering, reflecting.
(paragraph 1) contain multiple clauses.

Spoke like a good Levy makes a choice about Levy’s choice establishes a conversational tone
cockney. (paragraph 4) syntax—she uses a sentence and makes her voice more lively.
fragment.

Didn’t you have to have Levy frames her point—“I Levy’s syntax helps the reader “hear” Levy’s
grown up in a “black thought to be truly black you had whirl of confusion when forced to reassess her
community”? to grow up in a so-called black racial identity.
(paragraph 20) community”—in the syntactical
form of a question.
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PRACTICE Answer the questions.

1. (a) Analyze Describe Levy’s diction and tone in this sentence from
paragraph 17: “Proper middle class—debutantes with ponies, that
sort of thing.” (b) Contrast Explain the contrast with the diction
and tone in the first sentence of the paragraph. (c) Evaluate Does
her choice in each case add to the effectiveness of the text? Explain. EQ NOTES
2. (a) Analyze Find two paragraphs in which Levy asks questions for Before moving on to a
effect, and explain the intended effect in each case. (b) Evaluate new selection, go to your
Explain how those questions add to the effectiveness of the text. Essential Question Notes
and record any additional
3. (a) Contrast Contrast Levy’s diction and syntax in paragraph 3 with
thoughts or observations
her diction and syntax in paragraph 4. (b) Evaluate Does her choice
you may have about
to vary diction and syntax add to the effectiveness of the text? Explain.
“Back to My Own
Country: An Essay.”

Back to My Own Country: An Essay 815

PREPARE TO READ

Compare Within Genre ESSAY ESSAY

You will now read George Orwell’s essay “Shooting an

Elephant.” After you have completed the activities, you will
compare the two essays in this section.

BACK TO MY OWN SHOOTING AN

COUNTRY: AN ESSAY ELEPHANT

About the Author

Shooting an Elephant
Concept Vocabulary INTERACTIVITY

You will encounter the following words as you read “Shooting an Elephant.”
Before reading, note how familiar you are with each word. Then, rank the
words in order from most familiar (1) to least familiar (6).
George Orwell (1903–1950)
is the pen name of Eric Arthur WORD YOUR RANKING
Blair, who was born in India
to British parents working imperialism
as civil servants. Though
supplant
Orwell is recognized as a
brilliant critic and essayist, despotic
he is best known for two of
his novels, Animal Farm and conventionalized
Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both
resolute
books explore the threat
that totalitarianism posed to pretext
twentieth-century society.
In Nineteen Eighty-Four, for
example, he shows how a
Comprehension Strategy NOTEBOOK
government with total control
over people’s lives can distort Make Connections When you make connections to society, you
information to the point at analyze relationships between ideas in the text and the world around you.
which words no longer have For example, you may notice similarities between your society and the culture
meaning. depicted in a text. Making connections can help you better understand why

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people in a text act or react in certain ways.

• Do elements of the society described in this text remind me of anything

I have experienced?
• Do I know of other places in the world with a society like the one in
the text?
• Does my understanding of the society in the text change how I view my
own society?

PRACTICE As you read, note connections you make to society, as well

as how they support and deepen your understanding of the essay.

B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend
grade-level complex texts proficiently.

816 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSAY

Shooting an Elephant
George Orwell

BACKGROUND CLOSE READ TO

Seeking more territory for its rapidly expanding empire, Great Britain UNLOCK MEANING
1. Read the text for
launched three wars during the nineteenth century to conquer Burma,
comprehension.
which is a country in southeast Asia now known as Myanmar. The Burmese 2. Go back and respond to
never fully accepted British rule, and they finally regained independence in the Close-Read notes.
1948. This essay was written in 1936, during the time that the British Raj, 3. Identify other details
or rule, controlled Burma with an iron fist. in the text you find
interesting. Ask your
own questions and draw
1

I n Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers

of people—the only time in my life that I have been important
enough for this to happen to me. I was subdivisional police officer
your own conclusions.

of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European

feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a
European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would
probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an
obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.
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When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the

referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled
with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end
the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere,
the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly
on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all.
There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them
seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer
at Europeans.
2 All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had
imperialism (ihm PEER
already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing
ee uhl ihz uhm) n. policy
and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. of one nation’s taking
Theoretically—and secretly, of course—I was all for the Burmese control over another
and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was in order to exploit its
people and resources
doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a for its own benefit

Shooting an Elephant 817

CLOSE READ job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The
ANNOTATE: In paragraph 2, wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups,
identify sentences that the gray, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks
show Orwell’s feelings about of the men who had been flogged with bamboos—all these oppressed
the British and Burmese. me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into
QUESTION: What does the perspective. I was young and ill educated and I had had to think out
use of descriptions such as my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman
oppressors and evil-spirited in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying,
little beasts show about still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger
Orwell’s conflicting feelings?
empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck
CONCLUDE: Why does the between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the
author choose to be so evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With
brutally honest about his one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj1 as an unbreakable
thoughts? tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum,2 upon the
will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest
supplant (suh PLANT) v. joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s
replace one thing with guts. Feelings like these are the normal byproducts of imperialism;
another
ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.
3 One day something happened which in a roundabout way was
enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better
glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism—the
despotic (dehs POT ihk) adj. real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning
in an oppressive manner the subinspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me
typical of a tyrant or
dictator
up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar.
Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what
I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got onto a
pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old .44 Winchester and much
too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful
in terrorem.3 Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me
about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant,
but a tame one which had gone “must.”4 It had been chained up, as
tame elephants always are when their attack of “must” is due, but on
the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout,5
the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had
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set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now
twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had
suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no
weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed
somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit stalls
and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van
and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned
the van over and inflicted violences upon it.
4 The Burmese subinspector and some Indian constables were waiting
for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very
1. Raj (rahj) rule.
2. in saecula saeculorum (ihn SEE koo luh see koo LAWR uhm) “forever and ever” (Latin).
3. in terrorem “for terror” (Latin).
4. must into a dangerous, frenzied state.
5. mahout (muh HOOT) n. elephant keeper and rider.

818 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palm CLOSE READ
leaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, ANNOTATE: In paragraph 4,
stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the identify details that describe
people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get the events that are taking
any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story place.
always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to QUESTION: Does a police
the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that officer encountering
the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in conflicting stories of an
another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant. I had event seem unusual to you?
Why, or why not?
almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when
we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud scandalized cry CONCLUDE: What do the
of “Go away, child! Go away this instant!” and an old woman with a author’s descriptions reveal
switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently shooing about the gulf between
away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed, clicking Orwell the British police
officer and the Burmese
their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the
people he’s meant to
children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man’s
protect?
dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian6
coolie,7 almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes.
The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round
the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his
back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and
the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and
a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified
and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud,
the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression
of unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look
peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction
of the great beast’s foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as
one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to
a friend’s house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle. I had already sent
back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it
smelled the elephant.
5 The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five
cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us
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that the elephant was in the paddy fields8 below, only a few hundred
yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of
the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen
the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the
elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when
he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he
was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an
English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely
uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant—I had merely
sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary—and it is always
unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill,

6. Dravidian (druh VIHD ee uhn) belonging to a group of people inhabiting southern India.
7. coolie n. laborer; an offensive term that is no longer used.
8. paddy fields rice fields.

Shooting an Elephant 819

 looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an
ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom,
when you got away from the huts, there was a metaled road9 and
beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across,
not yet plowed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse
grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his
left side toward us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd’s
approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against
his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth.
6 I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with
perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to
shoot a working elephant—it is comparable to destroying a huge and
costly piece of machinery—and obviously one ought not to do it if it
can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the
elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I
think now that his attack of “must” was already passing off; in which
case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout
came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to
shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make
sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.
CLOSE READ 7 But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed
ANNOTATE: In paragraph 7, me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing
identify adjectives that every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side.
Orwell uses to describe his I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes—faces all
mission.
happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant
QUESTION: How do these was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a
adjectives reflect the way conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the
Orwell seems to feel about magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And
his role? suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all.
CONCLUDE: Why does The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their
Orwell seem to lack firm two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at
conviction regarding any this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first
action he might take? grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion
in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in
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front of the unarmed native crowd—seemingly the leading actor
of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to
and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this
moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom
that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the
conventionalized (kuhn VEHN conventionalized figure of a sahib.10 For it is the condition of his rule
turned into
shuhn uh lyzd) adj.
that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and
something predictable and
expected so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him.
He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the
elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle.
resolute (REHZ uh loot) adj. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to
determined; firm know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle

9. metaled road road in which the pavement is reinforced with metal strips.
10. sahib (SAH ihb) a European gentleman on the Indian subcontinent.

820 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to
trail feebly away, having done nothing—no, that was impossible. The
crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life
in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.
8 But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating
his bunch of grass against his knees with that preoccupied
grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would
be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about
killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted
to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides,
there was the beast’s owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was
worth at least a hundred pounds, dead, he would only be worth the
value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly.
I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been
there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been
behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if
you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.
9 It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up
to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior.
If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me it would be
safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that
I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and CLOSE READ
the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. ANNOTATE: In paragraph 9,
If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as identify the details of
Orwell’s plan.
much chance as a toad under a steamroller. But even then I was not
thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow QUESTION: How do the
faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was details and practicality of
not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been Orwell’s initial plan contrast
alone. A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of “natives”; and with what he knows he’s
going to end up doing?
so, in general, he isn’t frightened. The sole thought in my mind was
that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would CONCLUDE: What larger
see me pursued, caught, trampled on, and reduced to a grinning observation about life does
corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite Orwell seem to be making
by sharing this information?
probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do. There
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was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine
and lay down on the road to get a better aim.
10 The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of
people who see the theater curtain go up at last, breathed from
innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun, after
all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights.
I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot
to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought,
therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at
his ear-hole; actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking
the brain would be further forward.
11 When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the
kick—one never does when a shot goes home—but I heard the
devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in

Shooting an Elephant 821

 too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get
there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant.
He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered.
He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though
the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without
knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time—it
might have been five seconds, I dare say—he sagged flabbily to his
knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility11 seemed to have
settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years
old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not
collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood
weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third
time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of
it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from
his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind
legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge
rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted,
for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly toward
me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.
12 I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me across the
mud. It was obvious that the elephant would never rise again, but
he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with long
rattling gasps, his great mound of a side painfully rising and falling.
His mouth was wide open—I could see far down into caverns of pale
pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing
did not weaken. Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot
where I thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him
like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk
CLOSE READ when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a
ANNOTATE: In pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some
paragraph 14, identify world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him
people’s responses to the further. I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It
killing of the elephant. seemed dreadful to see the great beast lying there, powerless to move
and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
QUESTION: Why does
Orwell include these varying back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and
points of view in the final down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured
paragraph of the essay? gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.
13 In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard
CONCLUDE: What idea
about life does the final
later that it took him half an hour to die. Burmans were bringing
sentence of the essay dahs12 and baskets even before I left, and I was told they had stripped
suggest? his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.
14 Afterward, of course, there were endless discussions about the
shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only
an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the
right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its
owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans opinion was divided.

11. senility (suh NIHL uh tee) n. mental deterioration due to old age.
12. dahs (dahz) knives.

822 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 The older men said I was right, the younger men said it was a shame
to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was
worth more than any Coringhee13 coolie. And afterward I was very
glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right
and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often pretext (PREE tehkst) n.
wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely plausible but false reason
to avoid looking a fool. ❧
13. Coringhee (kawr IHNG gee) Southern Indian.

BUILD INSIGHT

NOTEBOOK
Comprehension
Answer the questions
1. Reading Check (a) Why is Orwell asked to “do something about” in your notebook.
the elephant? (b) How does Orwell’s position force him into a situation Cite text evidence to
that he would rather avoid? (c) Why does Orwell finally decide to explain and justify your
shoot the elephant despite its gentle appearance? reasoning.

2. Strategy: Make Connections What does the situation with the elephant
make Orwell realize about the British imperialist mission in Burma?

Analysis
3. (a) What are several ways in which the Burmese disrespect Orwell?
(b) How does Orwell respond to this disrespect? (c) Analyze What do
the Burmans’ actions reveal about their attitude toward British rule, and
what does Orwell’s response show about his feelings?

4. (a) Interpret What does Orwell mean when he says, “a story always
sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of
the events the vaguer it becomes”? (b) Analyze In what way does that
paradoxical statement reveal a truth about life?
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

5. Make Judgments What reason does Orwell give for killing the
elephant? Do you find his reason legitimate? Why, or why not?

6. Analyze Modernist Literature Orwell speaks of the British Empire as

being in a state of decay. How true does Orwell’s statement prove to be?

EQ NOTES INTERACTIVITY

B.E.S.T.
What does it mean to call a place home?
K12.EE.1.1: Cite evidence to explain
What have you learned about the idea of home from reading and justify reasoning.
this essay? Go to your Essential Question Notes and record your K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend
observations and thoughts about “Shooting an Elephant.” grade-level complex texts proficiently.

Shooting an Elephant 823

ANALYZE AND INTERPRET

Close Read INTERACTIVITY

The Reading sections of college admissions tests require you to apply close-
reading skills to answer questions about the details and deeper meanings
of texts. Practice with these questions, which are based on “Shooting an
SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT Elephant” by George Orwell.

PRACTICE Select an answer.

1. It can reasonably be inferred from the text that in Orwell’s day,

A) many Burmese resented rule by the British.
B) the British were tightening control over Burma.
C) the Burmese people were on the verge of revolt.
D) British police officers all came from the upper classes.

2. Based on the text, choose the most accurate characterization of Orwell.

A) endlessly self-pitying in his complaints
B) unflinchingly honest in his dealings with others
C) witheringly scornful in his critique of society
D) sternly self-righteous in his outrage at injustice

3. As used in paragraph 4, the word quarter means

A) dissection.
B) building.
C) area.
D) house.

Inquiry and Research NOTEBOOK

Formal Inquiry When conducting a formal inquiry, a writer creates a plan Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
for research by developing questions. Questions for formal inquiry must
address a topic that is complex enough to deserve serious study and
attention. The questions also should have an appropriate scope: neither too
narrow to sustain interest nor so broad as to be unmanageable.
B.E.S.T.
12.R.1.1: Evaluate how key elements
enhance or add layers of meaning and/ PRACTICE Develop two or three research questions as a basis for a
or style in a literary text and explain formal inquiry about Myanmar (the country formerly known as Burma)—its
the functional significance of those
elements in interpreting the text. culture, its history, or its present circumstances. Review your questions to
ensure that they address a topic complex enough for formal inquiry. Revise
12.R.1.3: Evaluate the development
of character perspective, including your questions as needed. Then, conduct research to find two or three
conflicting perspectives. sources to help you answer the questions. Write a summary of your findings,
12.C.4.1: Conduct research on a synthesizing information from multiple sources.
topical issue to answer a question
and synthesize information from a
variety of sources.

824 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Literary / Text Elements NOTEBOOK

KEY CONCEPT

Modernist Literature
Readers typically expect
Moral Dilemma and Motivation Narratives are driven by characters’ stories to revolve around a
motivations and behaviors. In Orwell’s narrative essay “Shooting an hero, or main character they
Elephant,” the narrator—Orwell himself—faces a moral dilemma and can cheer on. They expect a
explores his own motivations, behaviors, and the consequences of his climax, or moment of greatest
actions. A moral dilemma is an internal conflict caused by a character’s excitement, when the
outcome of the conflict is
conflicting perspectives on a situation—a clash between the character’s
determined, and a resolution,
competing values. The options for action have no good outcome and involve in which the conflict
some measure of sacrifice: Each possible avenue of resolution is problematic. concludes. Many stories offer
twists on these expectations,
In any narrative that presents a moral dilemma, a character’s or narrator’s but Orwell’s narrative essay
motivations lead to choices, actions, and reactions—which are the events of methodically thwarts each
the plot. The motivations that lead to actions also contribute to the expression one. It offers a hero who
knows he is making the wrong
of the narrative’s themes, or deeper meanings. Consider the example:
decision, a climax that is
painful to read about, and a
EXAMPLE resolution that resolves
Situation: While racing to a hospital to fulfill a promise to her dying nothing.
mother, a woman witnesses a bad bus crash.

MORAL DILEMMA: CHARACTER BEHAVIOR/

WHAT DO I DO? PLOT EVENT POSSIBLE THEME
Motivation: Save lives Choice/Decision: Stop to Our duty is to help
and perform help the crash victims; those who can be
community service? sacrifice saying goodbye helped.
OR to mother.

Motivation: Fulfill a Choice/Decision: Keep Keeping promises is

promise and duty as a driving to hospital to more important than
daughter? fulfill promise to mother; anything.
regret forever not helping
people in need.

■ PRACTICE Answer the questions.

Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

1. (a) In paragraph 1, what does Orwell reveal about his position in the
community he serves? (b) Interpret What irony about Orwell’s
situation is revealed in paragraph 2?
2. (a) Analyze What moral dilemma arises in the course of the narrative?
(b) Analyze What conflicting perspectives, values, or priorities lead to
this moral dilemma? (c) Evaluate Does Orwell develop this moral
dilemma effectively—would you feel similarly conflicted, or do you
think the correct course of action is clear? Explain.
3. (a) Analyze What underlying motivation leads Orwell to resolve the
moral dilemma and take definite action? (b) Make a Judgment Did
Orwell make the right choice? Why, or why not?
4. (a) Interpret What themes emerge at the story’s end? (b) Evaluate
If Orwell had chosen to take a different action, would the narrative’s
plot have been resolved in a more satisfactory way? Why, or why not?

Shooting an Elephant 825

STUDY LANGUAGE AND CRAFT

Concept Vocabulary NOTEBOOK

Why These Words? Orwell uses these concept vocabulary words to

explore power relations between the Burmese and their British rulers.

SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT imperialism supplant despotic

conventionalized resolute pretext
WORD NETWORK
Note words in the text PRACTICE Answer the questions.
that are related to the 1. Which concept vocabulary words does Orwell use to analyze the
concept of finding home.
oppressive nature of power? Which does he use to analyze its theatrical
Add them to your Word
nature? Explain.
Network.
2. What other words in the selection connect to this concept?
3. What are some characteristics of a despotic regime?
4. In what circumstances might a person use illness as a pretext?
5. Who is likeliest to benefit under imperialism?
6. Give an example of a situation in which it is necessary to be resolute.
Explain your choice.
7. Why might a conventionalized image of a person in a certain role not
be accurate?
8. How is a star athlete likely to feel if a teammate tries to supplant him
or her?

Word Study NOTEBOOK

Word Origins and Connotation A word’s etymology, or history, includes

both its origins and the ways in which its denotations and connotations have
changed over time. The word imperialism comes from the Latin word
imperium, meaning “command” or “empire.” The word despotic comes
from the Greek word despotēs, meaning “master” or “lord.” While imperium
and despotēs originally had neutral or perhaps mixed associations, Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
imperialism and despotic have come to have strong negative connotations.

PRACTICE Complete the activities.

1. Write whether each of the following words from the selection has a
positive or negative connotation: perplexing, oppressors, imposed,
B.E.S.T.
tyranny, prostrate. Using a dictionary, determine each word’s Latin or
12.R.1.1: Evaluate how key elements
enhance or add layers of meaning Greek origin—the word from which it derives.
and/or style in a literary text and 2. Choose three more words from “Shooting an Elephant,” and tell whether
explain the functional significance of
those elements in interpreting the text. they have positive or negative connotations. Verify your evaluations using
12.V.1.2: Apply knowledge of
a college-level dictionary.
etymology, derivations, and
commonly used foreign phrases to
determine meanings of words and
phrases in grade-level content.

826 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Author’s Craft NOTEBOOK

Author’s Use of Language Voice is the “sound” of a writer’s words on

the page—chatty or sincere, dramatic or sarcastic. A writer’s voice shapes
readers’ perceptions of both the writer and the topic. To create voice, Orwell
uses diction, or word choice, shifting between different types of words to
achieve particular purposes, as shown in the following examples. The result is
a voice that many find direct, honest, and humane.

• Conversational vs. Rhetorical Orwell’s voice in “Shooting an Elephant” is

rarely far from conversational, inspiring readers’ trust. To make a key point
memorably, however, he may use language closer to a speechmaker’s.
 Conversational: Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful.

 Rhetorical: I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns
tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.

• Formal vs. Informal Orwell sometimes resorts to informal usages,

especially to convey feeling. Occasionally, he will use formal language to
convey (and perhaps mock) seriousness.
Informal: No one had the guts to raise a riot. . . .

 Formal: . . . something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon

the will of prostrate peoples. . . .

• Concrete vs. Abstract Orwell turns to concrete, precise language to make

descriptions vivid. Alternatively, he uses abstract language when needed to
analyze a situation.
 Concrete/Precise: . . . soggy from the first rains and dotted with
coarse grass.

Abstract: . . . it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant.

READ Review the essay. Find additional examples of types of diction from
the essay, and label them.
WRITE Write a paragraph in which you analyze and evaluate Orwell’s use
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

of diction to create his distinct voice.

EQ NOTES
• First, analyze Orwell’s voice, explaining how the various types of diction he
uses contribute to it. Before moving on to a
new selection, go to your
• Then, evaluate Orwell’s voice, analyzing specific cases in which his word Essential Question Notes
choices affect readers’ perceptions of him or his subject. Is Orwell’s voice and record any additional
effective in these cases—engaging, moving, persuasive? Is it “honest”— thoughts or observations
suited to expressing the truth of experience, rather than inflating, masking, you may have about
or distorting it? “Shooting an Elephant.”
Support your evaluations with text evidence.

Shooting an Elephant 827

COMPARE WITHIN GENRE
INTERACTIVITY

Writing to Compare NOTEBOOK

Both Levy’s and Orwell’s essays focus on broad cultural and political
issues, but their insights are directly grounded in personal experience.
As a result, each writer represents a distinctive perspective, or viewpoint.

BACK TO MY OWN COUNTRY: ASSIGNMENT

AN ESSAY
Write a comparison-and-contrast essay in which you compare the
two essays, “Back to My Own Country: An Essay” and “Shooting an
Elephant.” Explore the two authors’ perspectives as they confront
truths about colonialism and its effects on their lives. Be sure to
compare and evaluate these specific elements as you proceed:
• author’s message, or central idea
• author’s perspective
SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT
• author’s voice

Gather Details
Identify Messages Begin by reviewing the texts and summarizing the main
points. With what specific topic is each writer concerned? In general, what
attitude does he or she take? What judgments does he or she make?

Identify Perspectives Take notes on the biographical circumstances that

help shape each writer’s experiences and perspective, referring to the essays
themselves and the accompanying background information. Cite the text in
which you found each detail. Make sure to note the key memory or episode
from which each essay is written.

EXAMPLE
Biographical Detail: Levy is of Afro-Caribbean descent (paragraphs
1, 12)—but she socialized mainly with whites (paragraphs 13, 19).
Impact on Experience: Levy has experienced racism firsthand
(paragraph 15). At the same time, race wasn’t a clear “given” for her—
she does not immediately identify herself as black (paragraphs 19, 20).
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Identify Voice Look for and note examples of language in each essay that
helps establish voice—specific words, sentences, or longer passages that let
you clearly “hear” what the writer “sounds like.”

Capture your notes in a chart like this one. Then, synthesize your findings to
come up with a fresh insight. Reveal that insight in your thesis statement,
and plan to support that statement in your essay.
B.E.S.T.
12.R.2.2: Evaluate how an author
BACK TO MY OWN COUNTRY SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT
develops the central idea(s),
identifying how the author could Author’s Message: Author’s Message:
make the support more effective.
Perspective: Perspective:
12.C.1.4: Write an in-depth analysis
of complex texts using logical
Voice: Voice:
organization and appropriate tone Synthesis:
and voice, demonstrating a thorough
understanding of the subject. My Thesis Statement:

828 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Focus Your Comparison

Identify Important Points A focused comparison concentrates on the
most essential ideas, avoiding irrelevant points. Make a list of the most
significant points of comparison between the perspective, message, and
voice in each essay. Focus on similarities and differences that are connected
by a common theme or topic.

EXAMPLE COMPARISONS

UNFOCUSED FOCUSED
Similarities: Both writers are British. Similarities: Both writers critique the
Differences: Levy is a woman, and consequences of British imperialism
Orwell is a man. Orwell serves as a by examining their own experiences.
police officer; Levy is mainly a writer. Differences: Levy speaks as a
descendant of the colonized, Orwell
as a former colonial official.

Organize Ideas Choose one of these logical organizational structures:

• Organize by category: First, compare the perspective in each work, then
the message, and finally the voice.
• Organize by text: Discuss the perspective, message, and voice, first in
one text and then in the other.
Draft your essay, following your chosen organizational structure and citing
text evidence.

Develop Ideas
Provide Original Commentary To ensure readers see and understand the
similarities and differences you have identified, provide original
commentary—your own interpretations and explanations of the texts.

MODEL: ORIGINAL COMMENTARY

Like Levy, Orwell has few resources to help him understand his situation. The writer provides
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

He confesses the confusion and ignorance that hampered his efforts to commentary that interprets
the quotation and relates it to
comprehend: “I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my
the point under discussion.
problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East.”
Like the “silences and gaps in our knowledge and understanding” that Levy
encounters, “the utter silence” imposed on Orwell ultimately must be broken The writer offers support by
in the interest of true understanding. quoting from the text.

Compare Within Genre 829

PERFORMANCE TASK

Write a Formal Research Report

A research report is a type of expository text in which a writer synthesizes
research from outside sources with his or her own critical thinking and
analysis to answer a research question.
KEY CONCEPT
ASSIGNMENT
All the elements of your
report should work together. Write a focused, well-structured, and coherent research report based
• A focused research report on a research question that you develop related to the concept of
uses evidence strategically finding home, as expressed in British literature of the twentieth and
to develop a main idea. twenty-first centuries. Consider the following broad topics to begin
• A well-structured research your inquiry:
report presents a logical
progression of ideas and
• exploration of the life and work of a British writer, such as George
evidence. Orwell or Doris Lessing, who spent many years living abroad
• A coherent research report • exploration of the life and work of a writer—such as Andrea Levy,
synthesizes information Jamaica Kincaid, or Derek Walcott—from a former British colony
from a variety of sources to
develop a clear idea from
• exploration of the complexities of defining a national British
beginning to end. literature in the postcolonial era

ELEMENTS OF RESEARCH WRITING

PURPOSE
  answer a specific question using evidence and ideas
to
gathered from research
WRITING GALLERY
CHARACTERISTICS
Visit the Writing Gallery
to watch video tutorials. a clear
  thesis
information
  gathered from varied sources
strong
  supporting evidence, including facts, specific details,
and pertinent examples
commentary
  and explanations that demonstrate thorough Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
understanding of the subject
citations
  that follow an accepted format, including a Works
Cited list or bibliography
precise
  and appropriate word choices
 tone and voice that are appropriate for academic writing
B.E.S.T.
12.C.1.4: Write an in-depth command
  of standard English conventions
analysis of complex texts using
logical organization and appropriate
tone and voice, demonstrating a STRUCTURE
thorough understanding of the a logical
  organizational structure that includes an introduction
subject.
and a conclusion
12.C.4.1: Conduct research on a
topical issue to answer a question a coherent
  progression of ideas supported by evidence
and synthesize information from a
variety of sources.

830 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Take a Closer Look at the Assignment NOTEBOOK

Before you draft, be sure you understand the broad topic as AUDIENCE
well as your intended audience and purpose. Use the questions
Always keep your audience, or
shown here to guide you.
intended readers, in mind.
• Define technical or specialized
language that your readers might
1. What is the assignment asking me to do (in my own words)?
not be familiar with or immediately
Do any key words give me details about content or
understand.
structure?
• Provide background information
that your audience needs to fully
understand your topic and ideas.

2. Does the assignment mention a specific audience? If not,

PURPOSE
who do I think my audience is or should be?
A focused purpose, or reason
for writing, will help you convey
information and ideas more clearly.
• Vague Purpose: In this research
3. Does the assignment specify my purpose for writing? If not, report, I will examine some of James
what is my purpose? What do I hope to get out of this Berry’s poetry.
writing task?
• Focused Purpose: In this research
report, I will explore how James
Berry’s poetry reflects his Jamaican
roots and the tension between black
immigrants and British society.
4. (a) Does the assignment ask me to use specific types of
sources? If not, what kinds of sources might I need?
SOURCES
Use a variety of sources to make
your research report accurate and
(b) Where will I find the evidence that I need? What interesting:
evidence—including facts, examples, or other • Primary Sources: firsthand
information—can I pull in from my EQ Notes? What accounts of events, such as diaries,
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

original research could be useful? letters, or oral histories

• Secondary Sources: sources
that discuss information originally
presented in primary sources;
includes articles, reference-book
5. Does the assignment ask me to organize ideas and entries, and biographies
information in a certain way? If “yes,” what type of
• Original Research: information you
organizational structure does it require? If “no,” what kind gather from interviews, polls, or other
of organizational structure might be appropriate for my research tools you develop yourself
topic, purpose, and audience?

Performance Task: Write a Formal Research Report 831

PERFORMANCE TASK

Planning and Prewriting INTERACTIVITY

Complete one or more of these activities to choose a focused topic and

develop several preliminary research questions that reflect your purpose and
audience.

Develop Questions for Formal Inquiry

Freewrite Choose one of the suggested broad topics or come up with a
broad topic of your own that relates to both British literature and the unit
theme of finding home. Write freely for 5–7 minutes about aspects of the
topic that interest you. Don’t worry about spelling and grammar or even
writing in complete sentences. Just allow your ideas to flow as you focus
your attention on the topic.
• When time is up, review what you wrote.
• Identify details, phrases, or ideas in your text that interest you.
• Recast the details, phrases, or ideas as “how” or “why” questions. For
example, if your freewrite includes details about a particular author, you
might write a question like this: How did Andrea Levy’s attitude toward
British literature and culture evolve over the course of her career?
Repeat this process as many times as necessary to get your ideas out and
recast them as questions.
Quick Online Search Very often, you can narrow in on a topic and
research question by conducting an initial inquiry. This is a quick online
search that will help you learn enough about a subject to figure out what
else you want to know.
• As you scan sources, take notes about ideas, situations, and people
that stand out.
• Use your notes to find a possible focus for your research.
Check Background Knowledge You may know more about a topic
than you realize. Complete this activity to separate what you already know
and identify what you’d like to learn.
• Using a chart like the one shown, write down what you already know Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
about the broad topic. Then, identify the ideas or topics you want to
learn more about.
• After you’ve filled in the chart, choose one or two items from the
“What I Want to Learn” column that best suit your audience, purpose
for writing, and context. Rewrite the items as “how” or “why”
questions that you might use as the basis for further research.

WHAT DO I KNOW? WHAT I WANT TO LEARN

B.E.S.T.
12.C.1.4: Write an in-depth
analysis of complex texts using
logical organization and
appropriate tone and voice,
demonstrating a thorough
understanding of the subject.

832 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Develop and Revise a Research Plan NOTEBOOK

The question you choose to explore provides the foundation for

your research process and plan. Follow these steps to refine
your question and plan your work.
A. Write Your Research Question Review the preliminary
questions you generated and choose the one that most
strongly engages your curiosity. Write it in your notebook.
B. Examine Your Research Question Test the quality of your
research question with the action steps shown in the chart.
If necessary, modify your question.

MODIFY THE RESEARCH QUESTION

EVALUATE TAKE ACTION

Complexity
Can I answer the If you can, your question is not complex
question with a enough. Review your prewriting activities and
simple “yes” or “no”? look for nuances that will help you add depth.

Clarity
Does the question If not, choose words that are more specific. For
clearly say what I example, you might replace the word change
mean? with evolve, develop, or refine.

Significance

Does this question Your question should be interesting to you. If

matter to me? it’s not, modify your question. RESEARCH PLAN
To develop and revise a research plan,
Scope consider your resources and deadlines.
Can I find enough Do some preliminary research to test your • Identify Resources: List the
information from a question. resources that are available to you—
variety of sources • If sources are hard to find, broaden your for example, Internet sites, libraries,
to develop a question. local organizations, or a nearby
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

thesis? college or university. Also, decide

• If there is a vast amount of available
information, narrow your question. whether you will listen to podcasts
or other media, or interview an
expert—such as a teacher or college
C. Develop Your Research Plan Once you are satisfied with
professor.
your question, develop your research plan. An effective
research plan lists the resources you need and the deadlines • Set Milestones: Make a schedule
you have to meet. that includes specific deadlines.
For example, if your research tasks
D. Revise Your Research Plan Your research plan is a type of include visiting a library and listening
prediction—it indicates the kinds of activities and deadlines to a podcast, allocate time to each
you anticipate will work. As you implement the plan, task. Make sure that the dates you
evaluate it. If necessary, revise your plan, perhaps changing set will get you to your final deadline
deadlines, deleting sources that don’t work, and adding on time.
those that will be more effective in getting you to your goal.

Performance Task: Write a Formal Research Report 833

PERFORMANCE TASK

Planning and Prewriting INTERACTIVITY

TRACK AND ORGANIZE Gather your research sources from the school or local library, reputable online
SOURCES sites, and local experts, such as English or history teachers.
To use source materials
ethically and avoid A. Locate Varied and Relevant Sources
plagiarism, take notes in Varied Sources Using evidence from a variety of sources shows that you have
an organized way. For thoroughly explored a topic and have even considered perspectives that
each source you consult, challenge your own position or thesis. Make sure to consult a range of primary
record the relevant and secondary sources. In addition, you may decide that original research—
content and citation such as interviews you conduct yourself—will yield valuable evidence.
information. Here are
some ways to keep track: Relevant Sources Not every source you find will be relevant. A relevant
• Use notecards. source provides information that speaks directly to your research question. To
evaluate a source’s relevance, make use of text features: Scan the table of
• Use computer software contents (noting relevant chapter or section titles), the index (searching for
or apps. key terms), and any appendices the source might have. If the content seems
• Use other digital tools, relevant, read the text more closely, keeping the following questions in mind.
such as screen shots • How can I use the source? For example, will it provide background
and bookmarks.
information, a pertinent example, or evidence to support a specific
Choose a logical way point? Will it help define a concept or explain a situation that is
to organize your notes. important to my topic?
For example, you might
• How does the source relate to other information I’ve found? For
arrange by source or
example, will it confirm another author’s ideas? Will it add depth or
by topic.
interesting facts to the discussion? Will it present an alternative point of
view?
Use a chart like the one shown to list your sources and confirm that they are
varied and relevant.

Source Tracker

TYPE RELEVANCE
SOURCE TITLE PRIMARY OR SECONDARY? HOW IS THIS SOURCE USEFUL?

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B.E.S.T.
12.R.2.1: Evaluate the structure(s) and features in texts, identifying how the author could make the text(s) more effective; 12.C.1.4: Write an in-depth
analysis of complex texts using logical organization and appropriate tone and voice, demonstrating a thorough understanding of the subject;
12.C.4.1: Conduct research on a topical issue to answer a question and synthesize information from a variety of sources.

834 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

NOTEBOOK
B. Examine Sources
EVALUATE ONLINE SOURCES
Use these guidelines to examine each source on your list. Then,
add or delete sources, as necessary. Use online sites with caution; some
are reliable, but many are not. Follow
Guidelines for Examining Sources these guidelines to choose:
Credibility A credible source is trustworthy. It supports • Sites published by colleges and
positions with verifiable evidence. Credible sources display universities (.edu), government
these qualities: agencies (.gov), certain nonprofit
• The author has credentials as an expert. He or she is a organizations (.org), and highly
respected voice. regarded news organizations are
most likely credible.
• The publisher has a reputation for integrity, fact- • Other sources (.com; personal
checking, and sound scholarship. sites) need to be approached with
• Both the author and the publisher are open about their care. They may be authoritative,
opinions on issues. well cited, and credible, or just the
opposite. If they are not credible,
Bias A biased source expresses prejudice either for or against they may still be useful, perhaps as
something. Avoid using biased sources, or do not use them examples of false or skewed ideas.
uncritically. An unbiased source has these qualities: • Always use more than one source to
• The author does not have an agenda; he or she is not confirm information.
writing to hurt or help a particular person or group.
• The language is not unjustifiably positive or negative. CRITIQUE THE RESEARCH PROCESS
• The author considers all facts even if they contradict his Pause to judge your process so far. If
or her views. you’re stuck, you may need to modify
your research question or alter your
• The discussion does not oversimplify an issue. plan.
Faulty Reasoning Logical fallacies are uses of language • Modify Your Question: If you’re
and reasoning that are fundamentally flawed. Examine sources overwhelmed by information, your
for faulty reasoning; if you find fallacies, avoid the source. Here question is too broad. Make it more
are two fallacies to consider: focused. If you’re finding too few
useful sources, your question is too
Straw Man: distortion of a position in order to make it easier
narrow. Broaden it.
to criticize; creates an illusion that an argument has been
• Revise or Refocus Your Research
addressed
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Plan: If you’re struggling with your

Position: Too much screen time is risky. We should limit schedule, don’t panic. Set aside
kids’ gaming. time to refocus and reorganize. Try
listing smaller steps you can take
Straw Man: Video games should be banned? But many
to achieve larger goals. If you’re
people enjoy them!
struggling with resources, get
Non-sequitur: Latin for “does not follow”; a conclusion that advice. Try brainstorming for new
can’t be derived logically from the premise or evidence ideas with a peer, parent, teacher,
or librarian.
Statement: She wrote great poems about her native
Jamaica. She should receive a humanitarian award.

Performance Task: Write a Formal Research Report 835

PERFORMANCE TASK

Drafting NOTEBOOK

Now that you’ve completed your research, synthesize the information you’ve
found, and then organize and write a first draft. Use specific details when
explaining how your research informed your ideas.
Write Your Thesis KEY CONCEPT

Your thesis is a concise statement of your main idea. The purpose of your To synthesize, consider
report is to expand upon that statement, demonstrating its validity with what you have learned
examples, related ideas, supporting details, and in-depth commentary. from various sources, and
formulate a thesis statement
Thesis: By combining Western poetic forms with Japanese settings, the that reveals your newfound
poet shows that home is not any one land, but the world entire. insight.

Choose Logical Organizational Structures

To choose the best structure for your report, consider your topic, thesis, and
findings and determine the types of logical relationships you want to emphasize.
Also, take into account your audience and your purpose for writing. Then,
structure your report logically, in the way that most clearly presents your
evidence and thinking. You may choose one overall structure and use other
structures to support it.

STRUCTURE DEFINITION
Chronological Discuss events in the order in which they occurred.

Cause/Effect Analyze the causes and/or effects of an event.

Problem/Solution Identify a specific problem and present a solution.

Parts to Whole Relate elements of a single event or topic to a whole.

Order of Importance Present your support from most to least or least to most important.

Compare and Contrast Discuss similarities and differences between two topics.

■ WRITE Make an outline that reflects the ELABORATIVE TECHNIQUES

organizational structures you chose. Set up a
As you draft, use various types of elaboration
logical progression of ideas and note the evidence
to synthesize researched information with your
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you will integrate to support each point.
own ideas.
• Paraphrase Use your own words to convey
information from a source (citing the source
appropriately).
• Examples Give specific examples that support
broader ideas or general statements.
• Commentary Offer your own insights and
explanations, based on your findings.

B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.5.1: Use the accepted rules governing a specific format to create quality work; 12.R.3.2: Paraphrase content from grade-level texts;
12.C.1.4: Write an in-depth analysis of complex texts using logical organization and appropriate tone and voice, demonstrating a thorough
understanding of the subject; 12.C.4.1: Conduct research on a topical issue to answer a question and synthesize information from a variety of sources.

836 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Create Coherence NOTEBOOK

You can include information from sources in many ethical ways. Begin by deciding
how you will use specific pieces of evidence. Then, add transitions (words that
connect ideas) to create coherence both within and across paragraphs.

USE SOURCE MATERIALS ETHICALLY

USE OF SOURCE EXAMPLES IN-TEXT CITATIONS

Direct Quotation: source’s “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of Place in-text citations in
exact words, set off in quotation men and things cannot be acquired by parentheses.
marks vegetating in one little corner of the earth • In general, cite the
all one’s lifetime” (Twain 333). author’s name and the
page number.
Paraphrase: restatement of As Twain observes, a broad view of people
and things cannot be gained by staying in • However, if you have
another’s ideas in your own
one place for a lifetime (333). mentioned the author’s
words
name in the text, cite only
the page number.
Summary: brief statement of Twain devotes several paragraphs to a
the main ideas and details of discussion of the virtues of travel (333–334). • If the author is unknown,
a text cite a short version of the
title and the page number.
• If the source lacks page
When to Cite Information numbers, cite only the
author’s name or a short
Use source materials ethically. If you’re not sure whether a citation is needed, title.
err on the side of caution and create a citation. Otherwise, you risk
plagiarizing, or using someone else’s words and ideas as your own.
• Citation Not Needed: your own ideas; common knowledge
• Citation Needed: direct quote, paraphrase, or summary of someone
else’s idea; specialized information
When you finish drafting, provide full information about your sources in a
Works Cited list at the end of your report. Follow the style of the format your
teacher prefers.

■ WRITE Draft a paragraph using information COMMON KNOWLEDGE / SPECIALIZED INFORMATION

from one or two sources, some of which
You don’t need to cite common knowledge, but you
you quote directly and some of which you
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must cite specialized terms and ideas.

paraphrase. Use well-chosen transitions and
correct in-text citations. • Common Knowledge: facts most people know
EXAMPLE: An author’s work often reflects his or her
life circumstances.
• Specialized Information: facts, concepts, and
ideas known only by experts or those who have
studied a subject in depth
EXAMPLE: His poems evoke haiku—precise, pointed
insights—cast onto a London landscape.

Performance Task: Write a Formal Research Report 837

PERFORMANCE TASK

Revising ANNOTATE PEER REVIEW

Work with a peer to improve
Now that you have a first draft of your research report, revise it to be sure each other’s drafts. Either
that you use information strategically to develop and support your thesis. upload your writing to
When you revise, you look at your writing in a new light, checking for the an online collaboration
following elements: tool or print out a copy
to share. Then, take turns
Purpose / Clarity: sharpness, focus, and precision of your ideas reading each other’s reports
and marking suggested
Development of Ideas: strong thesis supported by relevant information
revisions. Use the Revising
Organization / Structure: strategic choice of structures that create a elements shown here to
logical progression of ideas and evidence guide your collaboration.
Language and Style: effective use of tone, diction, and syntax that allow
your unique voice to emerge:
• Tone: attitude that is engaging for readers and appropriate for the task
• Diction: precise word choices, including accurate use of academic
vocabulary, such as the words you learned earlier in this unit (migrate,
modify, requisite, reiterate, implication)
• Syntax: pleasing variety and arrangement of sentences

Read Like a Writer

Review the revisions made to the Mentor Text. Then, answer the questions in
the white boxes.

MENTOR TEXT

from Home Away From Home

Culture shock is another hurdle that new

immigrants may face. Culture shock is a feeling Why do you think the author
of disorientation or alienation when one encounters added this sentence?
the customs of another society. It can range from

discomfort with new foods to a sense that certain behaviors are The writer added a transition to
inappropriate. This is true across all cultures. For example, in clarify the relationship of this
sentence to the preceding one.
In the United States it’s considered proper to politely confront a
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co-worker with whom one is having problems. Asking a superior
to intercede may be seen as a breach of trust or an inability to
handle one’s own problems. By contrast, in Japan, people generally Why do you think the author
avoid direct confrontation. An unhappy employee may readily ask a added this contrasting example?
superior to speak to a co-worker on his or her behalf.

B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.6.1: Use appropriate voice and tone when speaking or writing; 12.C.1.5: Improve writing by considering feedback from adults, peers, and/or
online editing tools, revising to enhance purpose, clarity, structure, and style; 12.V.1.1: Integrate academic vocabulary appropriate to grade level in
speaking and writing.

838 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Take a Closer Look at Your Draft

Now, revise your draft. Use the Revision Guide for Research Writing to
evaluate and strengthen your report.

REVISION GUIDE FOR RESEARCH WRITING

EVALUATE TAKE ACTION

Purpose / Clarity
Is my thesis clear? Is my Read your thesis to a partner and ask him or her to explain it back to you.
purpose for writing evident to Does your partner understand the point you want to make? If the thesis is
my audience? unclear, restate it in simpler terms or focus it more specifically.

Development of Ideas
Have I balanced researched Mark researched information with one color and mark your own ideas with
information with my own ideas? another color. Then, add more sourced information or original ideas as
needed.

Have I relied too much on one If you have overused a single source, add variety.
source? • Review your source list and integrate relevant evidence from one or more
additional sources.
• Do more research, using sources you may have overlooked. Then, replace
existing details with new evidence.

Organization / Style
Does every paragraph Place a check mark next to each paragraph that clearly contributes to your
contribute to my thesis? thesis. If a paragraph is not checked, revise to strengthen the connection or
delete the paragraph.

Do all the sentences within each Delete any sentence that is off point or revise it to clarify the connection to
paragraph help to develop a the main idea of the paragraph.
main idea?

Does my conclusion connect to Compare your conclusion with your introduction. Do they both refer to the
my introduction? same essential idea? If not, modify to make the connection stronger or more
obvious.

Language and Style

Replace any words and phrases that are too casual with more formal or
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Is my tone suitable for a

research report in an academic academic terms.
context?

Is my word choice precise? Review your draft and mark any vague words, such as nice, bad, or important.
Replace those words with more precise choices such as valuable, atrocious, or
paramount that make your ideas more focused and exact.

Have I explained any specialized Identify any technical or other specialized language you have used. Add
terms? definitions or provide context for those terms.

Have I used a variety of sentence If you have used many short, simple sentences in series, combine some to
structures and lengths to create complex, compound, and compound-complex sentences. If you have
maintain an effective flow of used mainly longer sentences, break some down into shorter sentences.
ideas? Consider using a very short sentence for emphasis.

Performance Task: Write a Formal Research Report 839

PERFORMANCE TASK
NOTEBOOK

Editing ANNOTATE

Cohesive writing is free of grammatical errors and follows standard English

conventions. Reread your draft, and edit to create a cohesive research report.

Read Like a Writer

Notice how the writer of the Mentor Text edited an early draft. Then, follow the
directions in the white box.

MENTOR TEXT

from Home Away From Home

For example, new immigrants may struggle with

Most people can speak and read
The writer fixed an inappropriate
language difficulties. The language of their country of
use of passive voice.
the language of their country of origin.
origin can be read by most people in their country
of origin. That sense of ease in a language may disappear in the
adopted country. A language gap can make even ordinary chores a The writer corrected an error in
challenge. One might struggle understanding to understand a receipt, parallelism.

to get on the right bus, or to read an ad. On a deeper level, language

barriers may leave new immigrants feeling isolated, cut off from jobs; Find and correct a sentence that
has punctuation errors.
education; and even friendships.

Focus on Sentences
EDITING TIPS
Active and Passive Voice Verbs have two voices, active and passive. In
the active voice, a verb’s subject performs the action. In the passive 1. Mark the subject and
voice, the verb’s subject receives the action. verb in each sentence. Is
the subject receiving or
EXAMPLES doing the action?
Active Voice: James Berry wrote the poem. 2. If the subject is receiving
the action, decide
Passive Voice: The poem was written by James Berry. whether passive voice

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is appropriate. If it isn’t,
rewrite to make the
In general, active voice is the better choice because it makes writing livelier subject perform the
and more precise. Passive voice is fine when you want to emphasize the action action.
more than the actor, or you cannot identify the person doing the action.

■ PRACTICE Rewrite the paragraph to use active and passive voice

appropriately. Then, check your own draft for appropriate use of active and
passive voice.

The poem “From Lucy: Englan’ Lady” was written by James Berry. My high
school textbook contained it. I read it when I was a senior and it was loved by
me. The textbook contained a picture of Queen Elizabeth as a young woman.

B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.5.1: Use the accepted rules governing a specific format to create quality work; 12.C.2.1: Present information orally, with a logical
organization, coherent focus, and credible evidence while employing effective rhetorical devices where appropriate; 12.C.3.1: Follow the rules of
standard English grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling appropriate to grade level.

840 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

EDITING TIP
Rules for Proper Citation NOTEBOOK

Works Cited List A Works Cited list is just what the name suggests—a list You sometimes see Latin
abbreviations in citations
of all the sources you cite in your report. The rules shown here represent lists. The term et al.
MLA style formatting. means “and others” and
indicates some less active
• Capitalization of Titles: Don’t capitalize articles (a, an, the),
contributors have been
prepositions, or conjunctions unless they are the first words in a title. omitted from a long list. The
Book Title: The Imaginary Ocean and Other Poems terms ibid. (“in the same
place”) and op. cit. (“work
Magazine Article Title: “At Sea with Derek Walcott” cited”) refer the reader to
• Punctuation of Author Names: earlier notes. Check a style
guide to make sure you
Full-Length Book, Single Author: Salinas, Della. The Imaginary Ocean are using and punctuating
and Other Poems. Coastal Books, 2016. such scholarly abbreviations
Full-Length Book, Multiple Authors: Landson, Daniel, and Jayne Sky. correctly in your Works
Cited list.
Stories of Apartment Six. Jane Street Books, 2004.
• Formatting Titles: Place the titles of shorter texts—for example, short
stories, articles, poems, songs, or episodes of a show—in quotation
marks. Set the titles of full-length works in italics.
Shorter Work: Kahan, Davida. “A Conversation with Memories.”
Archipelago Quarterly, 19 Aug. 2015, pp. 12–14.
Full-Length Work: Halimar, Joy. Killing the Story. Water Buffalo Press, 1995.

■ PRACTICE Use the information shown here to write a correct

citation for this source. Be sure to check that you have spelled names
and titles correctly.

Information: Magazine Article

Title of Article: Finding Natasha
Title of Publication: Selections from the Azimuth
Date of Publication: September 5, 2004
Author: Clara Makarova
Publisher: Forgetful Publications
Pages: 22–28
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Publishing and Presenting

Deliver an Oral Presentation Use your report as the basis for an oral
presentation that you will deliver to the class. Keep these tips in mind as you
modify your report for presentation:

• Follow the overarching logical structure of your written report. Make

only minor adjustments needed for clarity.
• Maintain a coherent focus. Cover all of the most important ideas in your
written report, including your most convincing, credible evidence.
• Use rhetorical devices, such as parallelism, to communicate your ideas in
a way that is memorable and easy to follow.

Performance Task: Write a Formal Research Report 841

TEST PRACTICE

Timed Writing: NOTEBOOK

Expository Essay
KEY CONCEPT
Achieving Focus, Structure, and Coherence
All the elements of your
When a prompt asks you to provide information and analysis about a topic or an
expository essay should work
together. idea, it is directing you to write an expository essay. Use the steps shown to
• A focused expository write a focused, well-structured, and coherent essay in response to the prompt.
essay stays centered on The amount of time allotted for timed writing tests varies. The time estimates
the main point. shown here can help you practice timed writing within a single class period. Your
• A well-structured teacher will tell you how much time you have to complete the assignment.
expository essay organizes
ideas and evidence in a ASSIGNMENT
logical order.
Read the following quotation.
• A coherent expository
essay is unified, developing
the audience’s knowledge “Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is
of the topic sentence by home.”
sentence and paragraph by
paragraph. —Matsuo Bashō

Think about this statement carefully. In what ways can a day be a

journey? And how can such a journey be a home? Write a focused,
well-structured, and coherent expository essay in which you explain
your thinking on these questions. In your essay, develop an engaging
idea and show depth of thought by using informative details,
examples, and commentary to support your explanations. As you
write, maintain a tone and voice that are both engaging and
appropriate for academic writing.

STEP 1: READ [3–5 MINUTES]

To write an essay that is focused, well structured, and coherent, you must
understand the assignment thoroughly. Even though the clock is ticking,
read the assignment more than once. Identify key words and be sure you

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know exactly what they mean.

■ PRACTICE In the boxed quotation, one key word is home, which can
have both literal and figurative or symbolic meanings.
1. What are some other key words in the quotation?
2. Which words in the assignment tell you what you need to include in
your essay?

STEP 2: THINK [10 MINUTES]

Use a quick prewriting strategy, such as freewriting or listing, to generate
ideas. Choose the strongest idea—the one you find most engaging—as the
basis for your thesis statement. Then, jot down specific details and examples
that connect to your main idea. Explore connections to real life, literature,
media, or history to use as supporting evidence.

842 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

STEP 3: DRAFT [20–25 MINUTES]

Keep the timed-writing context of this essay in mind and choose a logical
organizational structure that is straightforward and simple to execute—for
example, a single-paragraph introduction that states a clear thesis; several
body paragraphs; and a conclusion that restates your thesis in a memorable
way.
The main idea that you develop through this structure should be engaging.
An engaging idea is one that is interesting, reflects depth of thought, and
shows confidence in your views. Use the following elaborative techniques to
develop an engaging idea that demonstrates the richness and depth of your
thinking:
• Details: Incorporate images, references to texts, precise descriptions,
and well-chosen vocabulary to support and develop your thesis.

• Examples: Include descriptions of scenarios or situations, anecdotes,

and brief explanations that illustrate your points. Examples help readers
understand the consequences or implications of broader ideas.

• Commentary: Clearly express your own ideas and insights about the
topic. Use your commentary to draw connections between your ideas
and the evidence you use to support them. Remember that one of your
purposes for writing this essay is to present and explain information.
Demonstrate the depth of your thinking by sharing your perspective.

■ WRITE Now, write your essay, paying attention to the time remaining.
You don’t need to write a set number of paragraphs. Be sure your audience,
or readers, can follow your train of thought.

STEP 4: REVIEW [5 MINUTES]

Leave enough time to check your work. Ask yourself questions such as these
to confirm that your essay is focused, well structured, and coherent.
• Focused: Have I responded precisely to the prompt? Are my ideas
specific and connected logically? Does my explanation stay on point?
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• Well-structured: Does my essay have a clear introduction, body, and

conclusion? Do I present details, examples, and commentary in a logical
sequence?
• Coherent: Do I state my main idea clearly and directly? Does every
sentence contribute to that main idea? Do I use accurate, well-chosen
transitional words and phrases to connect evidence and ideas? Does the
beginning of the essay link seamlessly and logically to the end?
Make any revisions that are necessary. Then, proofread and correct any
spelling or conventions errors you find. B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.6.1: Use appropriate voice
and tone when speaking or writing.
12.C.1.4: Write an in-depth analysis
of complex texts using logical
organization and appropriate tone
and voice, demonstrating a thorough
understanding of the subject.

Performance Task: Test Practice 843

 PEER-GROUP LEARNING

ESSENTIAL QUESTION

What does it mean to

call a place home?
When we think of home, is it a country, a city or town,
a house or an apartment, or even a single room that is
clearest in our minds and feelings? Is home a group of
people, or is it a place? As you read these selections,
consider the different ideas of home that each selection
conveys. You will work in a group to continue exploring
the idea of home.

VIDEO

Peer-Group Learning Strategies INTERACTIVITY

Throughout your life—in school, in your community, and in your career—you will
continue to learn and work with others.

Review these strategies and the actions you can use to practice them. Add ideas
of your own for each category. Get ready to use these strategies during Peer-
Group Learning.

STRATEGY ACTION PLAN COLLABORATION

Prepare • Complete your assignments so that you are prepared CENTER
for group work. Visit the Collaboration
Center for video
• Organize your thinking so that you can contribute to
tutorials on working
your group’s discussion.
in groups.
•

Participate fully • Make eye contact to signal that you are listening and
taking in what is being said.
• Use text evidence.

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•

Support others • Build off ideas from others in your group.

• Invite others who have not yet spoken to do so.
•

Clarify • Paraphrase the ideas of others to be sure that your

understanding is correct.
• Ask follow-up questions.
•

844 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 CONTENTS COMPARE ACROSS GENRES
HISTORY

from A History of the English Church

and People
Bede, translated by Leo Sherley-Price

This early history of Albion—the land we now call England—

helped to create a national identity.

MEDIA: ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE

from History of Jamaica

Encyclopaedia Britannica

The story of Jamaica, once a British colony and

now a country, is full of drama.

POETRY COLLECTION 1

The Seafarer translated by Burton Raffel

 MEDIA CONNECTION: The Seafarer

Dover Beach Matthew Arnold
Escape From the Old Country Adrienne Su
The world can be a lonely place for travelers far from home.

POETRY COLLECTION 2

The Widow at Windsor Rudyard Kipling

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From Lucy: Englan’ Lady James Berry

Is royalty the peak of freedom or a prison?

PERFORMANCE TASK: SPEAKING AND LISTENING

Deliver a Digital Presentation
The Peer-Group readings feature people writing about home as both a place and a
state of mind. After reading, your group will deliver a digital presentation about the
qualities that develop our perceptions of home.

Peer-Group Learning 845

 PEER-GROUP LEARNING

Collaborate With Your Group

1. Participate in a Discussion
In your group, discuss the following question:
Which is more important: an external home or an internal
sense of home?
As you exchange ideas, listen actively and build on one another’s ideas.
Work to come to a consensus, or shared understanding, that takes multiple
points of view into account.

2. Make Decisions
Apply these strategies to make sure your work in this section engages every
member of your group and establishes a true give-and-take.
• Tolerate a Range of Positions: Discuss the process by which you will
make decisions about your goals and organization. Make sure your
voice is heard by staying engaged and expressing your ideas; likewise,
give your group members the respectful hearing you want for yourself,
tolerating or accepting a range of positions and points of view. You
may not agree on every detail, but make sure you are confident that
your decision-making process is a group effort that satisfies most, if not
all, of everyone’s requirements.
• Tolerate Ambiguity: Recognize that any project involves unknowns—
steps you can’t fully plan because you don’t have all the information you
need. For example, it may be impossible to know how much time a given
task will take, or whether a particular research source will be available.
As you strive to make good decisions, recognize that you can’t anticipate
every possibility. Tolerate, or accept, such ambiguity, or lack of complete
clarity. Be flexible and open to a variety of solutions when obstacles arise.

3. Create a Communication Plan

Decide how you want to communicate with one another. For example, you
might want to use a social media group, group texts, or email. Make sure
everyone in the group is aware of the plan and has the technology needed
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to participate.

Make a Schedule INTERACTIVITY

Find out the due dates for the Peer-Group activities. Then, preview the texts
and activities with your group, and make a schedule for completing the tasks.

SELECTION ACTIVITIES DUE DATE

from A History of the English Church and People

from History of Jamaica

Poetry Collection 1

Poetry Collection 2

846 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Respond to the Texts

1. Reflect on Your Responses
Literature prompts a variety of different responses in readers—and that
When you discuss and
can make peer-group work fun and meaningful. At the same time, it can analyze literature with your
be challenging to collaborate with people whose outlooks are different group, you will likely find
from your own. Recognize that each person’s ideas reflect his or her own that everyone doesn’t always
background, interests, skills, and values—and these may create differences agree. When that happens,
of opinion. Rather than dismiss these differences, reflect on your own try these strategies:
responses in light of them to try to learn something new. For example, you • Let the evidence do
the talking. List facts,
might ask yourself the following questions:
details, examples, and
• What details triggered my response, and why? other text evidence for
each interpretation. Is one
• How are my responses similar to those of other group members? How list much longer than the
are they different? What do these similarities and differences reveal? others?
• Let the majority rule.
After discussing the
2. Adjust Your Responses evidence, take a vote. Do
Being open to other people’s ideas and reflecting on your own may lead people clearly favor one
analysis over others?
you to adjust your initial responses. Be clear about your own thinking, but
• Agree to disagree. It’s not
don’t be afraid to adjust your responses if a peer presents valid, convincing
always necessary or even
evidence. Use these strategies to help you determine if you should consider possible to reach consensus.
adjusting your response: Set a time limit on efforts to
reach consensus and then
• In your own words, restate the key reasons and evidence others use to
move on.
support their responses.
• Ask yourself: Are the reasons and evidence valid? Is there enough
evidence to be convincing? Does it change my understanding or spark
a new idea?
• If you answer “yes” to one or more of these questions, consider
adjusting your response by modifying or adding to your initial ideas.
If you decide to adjust your response, share your thinking. Your thought
process may be instructive for everyone in the group.

3. Respond With Appropriate Register and Purposeful Tone

Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Responses to literature range from informal conversations to formal

written analyses and critiques. Regardless of the form of the response, it is
important to use an appropriate register and purposeful tone.
• Tone: In a written text, tone refers to the author’s attitude toward the
subject. In speech, tone refers to the emotional quality of the person’s
voice—for example, aggressive, loving, sarcastic, or amused.
• Register: The level of formality with which you speak or write is
called language register. Register can range from extremely formal to
conversational or intimate.
B.E.S.T.
When speaking and writing in an academic setting, it is important to adjust
K12.EE.4.1: Use appropriate
your register and tone to suit your purpose. For example, when delivering a collaborative techniques and active
research presentation you will use a formal register and purposely academic listening skills when engaging in
tone; when you are engaging in a book club discussion, you will use a discussions in a variety of situations.
conversational register and a purposely informal tone. K12.EE.6.1: Use appropriate voice
and tone when speaking or writing.

Peer-Group Learning 847

PREPARE TO READ

Compare Across Genres HISTORY MEDIA | ENCYCLOPEDIA

ARTICLE
In this lesson, you will compare an eighth-century history
with a modern-day digital encyclopedia entry. First, read the
excerpt from A History of the English Church and People and
complete the activities. Then, move on to the encyclopedia
from A HISTORY OF THE from HISTORY OF
article. The work you do with your group on this title will ENGLISH CHURCH AND JAMAICA
help prepare you for the comparing task. PEOPLE

About the Author

from A History of the English
Church and People
Concept Vocabulary
As you read the excerpt from A History of the English Church and People,
you will encounter these words.
Bede (673–735) was born
near the Monastery of
St. Peter and St. Paul at breadth   abounding   innumerable
Jarrow in Northumbria, now
northeast England. He was
Familiar Word Parts To find the meaning of an unfamiliar word, look for
sent to live in the monastery
familiar word parts, such as roots, prefixes, or suffixes.
at the age of seven, was
ordained a deacon at
nineteen, and became a Unfamiliar Word: It extends 800 miles northward . . . except where a
priest at thirty. Bede rarely left number of promontories stretch farther. . . .
the monastery and followed a Familiar Word Parts: The prefix pro-, as in propel and project, often
strict daily schedule of prayer, means “forward.” The root -mont- looks as though it is related to the
study, teaching, and writing.
words mount and mountain.
During his lifetime, he
completed more than 60 Possible Meaning: Promontories, then, may be tall land formations that
books on religious and jut forward in some way.
scientific topics, most of
which have survived to the PRACTICE As you read, apply your knowledge of familiar word parts and
current day. other vocabulary strategies to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words.

Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Comprehension Strategy NOTEBOOK

Monitor Comprehension As you read a text, monitor comprehension

and make adjustments when your understanding breaks down. Pause to make
sure you fully understand the ideas and details in the text. If something is
unclear, annotate the text or take notes to help clarify your understanding.

B.E.S.T. • When you encounter a confusing passage, identify the details that are
K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend unclear to you. Consider whether the details and ideas that you understand
grade-level complex texts proficiently. can help clarify the ones you don’t.
12.V.1.3: Apply knowledge of context
• Note page numbers, specific passages or quotations, and background
clues, figurative language, word
relationships, reference materials, information that may give you additional insights.
and/or background knowledge to
determine the connotative and
denotative meaning of words and PRACTICE As you read this historical text, monitor your comprehension.
phrases, appropriate to grade level. If your understanding breaks down, make adjustments to get back on track.

848 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 HISTORY

from
A History of the
English Church
and People
Bede
translated by
Leo Sherley-Price

BACKGROUND UNLOCK WORD

Although the majority of people in Bede’s day were illiterate, and written MEANINGS
records were scarce, Bede had access to books and documents, as well as
The pronunciation and
contact with other learned monks, through his monastery. Using these part of speech for each
sources, he was able to write a history of Britain. Bede hoped to reach a of the vocabulary
larger world of readers for his work—the Church to which he belonged and words appear in the
the Roman civilization in which it participated. Bede wrote his account of side notes. In your
Britain for such readers, starting with the basics. notebook, write the
meaning of each word.
The Situation of Britain and Ireland: Their Earliest Inhabitants
1

B ritain, formerly known as Albion, is an island in the ocean, facing

between north and west, and lying at a considerable distance
Use familiar word parts or
apply another strategy to
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

help you determine the

from the coasts of Germany, Gaul, and Spain, which together form meanings of concept
the greater part of Europe. It extends 800 miles northwards, and vocabulary.

is 200 in breadth, except where a number of promontories stretch breadth (brehdth) n.

farther, the coastline round which extends to 3,675 miles. To the south
lies Belgic Gaul,1 from the nearest shore of which travelers can see the
city known as Rutubi Portus, which the English have corrupted to
Reptacestir.2 The distance from there across the sea to Gessoriacum,3
the nearest coast of the Morini, is 50 miles or, as some write it, 450
furlongs.4 On the opposite side of Britain, which lies open to the

1. Belgic Gaul France.

2. Reptacestir Richborough, part of the city of Sandwich.
3. Gessoriacum Boulogne, France.
4. furlongs n. units for measuring distance; a furlong is equal to one eighth of a mile.

from A History of the English Church and People 849

 boundless ocean, lie the isles of the Orcades.5 Britain is rich in grain
Use familiar word parts or apply
another strategy to help you
and timber; it has good pasturage for cattle and draft animals,6 and
determine the meanings of concept vines are cultivated in various localities. There are many land and sea
vocabulary. birds of various species, and it is well known for its plentiful springs
abounding (uh BOWND ihng) adj. and rivers abounding in fish. There are salmon and eel fisheries,
while seals, dolphins, and sometimes whales are caught. There are
also many varieties of shellfish, such as mussels, in which are often
found excellent pearls of several colors: red, purple, violet, and green,
but mainly white. Cockles7 are abundant, and a beautiful scarlet dye
is extracted from them, which remains unfaded by sunshine or rain;
indeed, the older the cloth, the more beautiful its color. The country
has both salt and hot springs, and the waters flowing from them
provide hot baths, in which the people bathe separately according
to age and sex. As Saint Basil says: “Water receives its heat when it
flows across certain metals, and becomes hot, and even scalding.”
The land has rich veins of many metals, including copper, iron,
lead, and silver. There is also much black jet8 of fine quality, which
sparkles in firelight. When burned, it drives away snakes, and, like
amber, when it is warmed by friction, it clings to whatever is applied
to it. In old times, the country had twenty-eight noble cities, and
innumerable (ih NOO muhr uh innumerable castles, all of which were guarded by walls, towers, and
buhl) adj. barred gates.
2 Since Britain lies far north toward the pole, the nights are short
in summer, and at midnight it is hard to tell whether the evening
twilight still lingers or whether dawn is approaching; for in these
northern latitudes the sun does not remain long below the horizon at
night. Consequently both summer days and winter nights are long,
and when the sun withdraws southwards, the winter nights last
eighteen hours. In Armenia,9 Macedonia,10 and Italy, and other
countries of that latitude, the longest day lasts only fifteen hours
and the shortest nine.
3 At the present time there are in Britain, in harmony with the five
books of the divine law, five languages and four nations—English,
British, Scots, and Picts. All of these have their own language, but all
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
are united in their study of God’s truth by the fifth, Latin, which has
become a common medium through the study of the scriptures. The
original inhabitants of the island were the Britons, from whom it
takes its name, and who, according to tradition, crossed into Britain
from Armorica,11 and occupied the southern parts. When they had
spread northwards and possessed the greater part of the islands, it is

5. Orcades Orkney Isles.

6. draft animals animals used for pulling loads.
7. Cockles n. edible shellfish with two heart-shaped shells.
8. jet n. type of coal.
9. Armenia region between the Black and the Caspian seas, now divided between the
nations of Armenia and Turkey.
10. Macedonia region in the eastern Mediterranean, now divided among Greece, Bulgaria,
Albania, Serbia, Kosovo, and the Republic of Macedonia.
11. Armorica Brittany, France.

850 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 said that some Picts from Scythia12 put to sea in a few long ships and
were driven by storms around the coasts of Britain, arriving at length
on the north coast of Ireland. Here they found the nation of the Scots,
from whom they asked permission to settle, but their request was
refused. Ireland is the largest island after Britain, and lies to the west.
It is shorter than Britain to the north, but extends far beyond it to the
south towards the northern coasts of Spain, although a wide sea
separates them. These Pictish seafarers, as I have said, asked for a
grant of land to make a settlement. The Scots replied that there was
not room for them both, but said: “We can give you good advice.
There is another island not far to the east, which we often see in the
distance on clear days. Go and settle there if you wish; should you
meet resistance, we will come to your help.” So the Picts crossed into
Britain, and began to settle in the north of the island, since the Britons
were in possession of the south. Having no women with them, these
Picts asked wives of the Scots, who consented on condition that,
when any dispute arose, they should choose a king from the female
royal line rather than the male. This custom continues among the
Picts to this day. As time went on, Britain received a third nation, that
of the Scots, who migrated from Ireland under their chieftain Reuda,
and by a combination of force and treaty, obtained from the Picts the
settlements that they still hold. From the name of this chieftain, they
are still known as Dalreudians, for in their tongue dal means a
division.
4 Ireland is broader than Britain, and its mild and healthy climate is
superior. Snow rarely lies longer than three days, so that there is no
need to store hay in summer for winter use or to build stables for
beasts. There are no reptiles, and no snake can exist there, for
although often brought over from Britain, as soon as the ship nears
land, they breathe its scented air and die. In fact, almost everything in
this isle enjoys immunity to poison, and I have heard that folk
suffering from snakebite have drunk water in which scrapings from
the leaves of books from Ireland had been steeped, and that this
remedy checked the spreading poison and reduced the swelling. The
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

island abounds in milk and honey, and there is no lack of vines, fish,
and birds, while deer and goats are widely hunted. It is the original
home of the Scots, who, as already mentioned, later migrated and
joined the Britons and Picts in Britain. There is a very extensive arm
of the sea, which originally formed the boundary between the Britons
and the Picts. This runs inland from the west for a great distance as
far as the strongly fortified British city of Alcuith.13 It was to the
northern shores of this firth14 that the Scots came and established
their new homeland. ❧

12. Scythia ancient region in southeastern Europe.

13. Alcuith Dumbarton, Scotland.
14. firth n. narrow arm of the sea.

from A History of the English Church and People 851

BUILD INSIGHT

NOTEBOOK Response
Work on your own to 1. Personal Connections How do you think literate Britons of Bede’s time
answer the questions may have felt when reading this account? How have you felt when
in your notebook. Cite reading descriptions of the place where you live?
text evidence to
explain and justify your
reasoning.
Comprehension
2. Reading Check (a) How does Britain’s latitude, or distance from the
equator, affect the lengths of days and nights throughout the year?
(b) Into what nations is Britain divided at the time Bede is writing his
history? (c) What claim does Bede make about reptiles in Ireland?

3. Strategy: Monitor Comprehension Identify a part of the text that

prompted you to take notes on ideas or details that were unclear. How did
annotating the text help you clarify information?

WORKING
AS A GROUP
Analysis and Discussion
With your group, discuss 4. (a) What background does Bede give about British scarlet dye?
your responses to the (b) Make Inferences What does this information suggest about the
Analysis and Discussion lifestyle or economy of the country at the time? Explain.
questions.
• Listen actively to one
another’s ideas and be 5. (a) Who were the Picts? (b) Where did the Picts end up settling, and why?
receptive to different (c) Analyze What does the deal they struck with the Scots reveal about
views. the social values both groups believed were important? Explain.
• Use clear, respectful
language to respond
6. (a) Analyze In what way does Latin unite England? (b) Interpret
appropriately.
According to Bede, what factor is most important in uniting people and
• If necessary, modify
giving them a common identity?
your speaking style;
for example, rephrase
comments the group 7. Analyze Anglo-Saxon Literature In what ways do you think Britain’s
finds unclear. remote location may have influenced the choices Bede made in describing
it? Explain. Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.1.1: Cite evidence to explain
8. Get Ready for Close Reading Choose a passage from the text that you
and justify reasoning. find especially interesting or important. You’ll discuss the passage with
K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend your group during Close-Read activities.
grade-level complex texts proficiently.
K12.EE.3.1: Make inferences to
support comprehension.
EQ NOTES INTERACTIVITY
K12.EE.4.1: Use appropriate
collaborative techniques and active
listening skills when engaging in What does it mean to call a place home?
discussions in a variety of situations. What have you learned about the idea of home from reading this
12.V.1.2: Apply knowledge of text? Go to your Essential Question Notes and record your
etymology, derivations, and
observations and thoughts about the excerpt from A History of the
commonly used foreign phrases to
determine meanings of words and English Church and People.
phrases in grade-level content.

852 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ANALYZE AND INTERPRET

Close Read
PRACTICE Complete the following activities. Use text evidence to
support your responses.
1. P
 resent and Discuss To engage in a meaningful discussion with your from A HISTORY OF THE
group, share the passages from the text that you found especially ENGLISH CHURCH AND PEOPLE
interesting. Discuss what you noticed, the questions you had, and the
conclusions you reached. You might focus on these points:
• Paragraph 1: Discuss the portrait of Britain Bede begins to paint in his
description of the country’s geography.
• Paragraph 3: Discuss how—and why—Bede weaves together facts and
narratives.
2. Reflect on Your Learning What new ideas or insights did you uncover
during your discussion of the texts?

LANGUAGE STUDY

Concept Vocabulary NOTEBOOK

Why These Words? The concept vocabulary words are related.

WORD NETWORK

breadth   abounding   innumerable Note words in the text

that are related to the
concept of finding home.
PRACTICE Add them to your Word
Network.
1. With your group, discuss what the words have in common, and add
another word that fits the category. Write your ideas.
2. Confirm your understanding of the vocabulary words by using all three in
a short paragraph about a place you once visited.
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Word Study NOTEBOOK

Anglo-Saxon Suffix: -th The Anglo-Saxon suffix -th is used to form nouns from
adjectives. Sometimes, the length or quality of the vowel in the base word changes
when -th is added, as in wide/width, long/length, broad/breadth. In other cases,
the vowel is unaffected, as in warm/warmth.

PRACTICE The word sloth is related to the base word slow. Using your
knowledge of -th, infer the meaning and part of speech of sloth. Then, check
your inferences in a dictionary.

from A History of the English Church and People 853

ANALYZE AND INTERPRET

Literary / Text Elements NOTEBOOK

Text Structure and Purpose Historical writing gives an account of past

events that is based on evidence, such as eyewitness reports or documents of
the time. Historians organize their accounts using a variety of text structures,
from A HISTORY OF THE as needed to meet their purpose. Here are examples:
ENGLISH CHURCH AND PEOPLE

TEXT STRUCTURE EXAMPLE PURPOSE

description presenting information in sections, to discuss the geography and resources of
grouped by topic or central idea Britain, then the climate, and so on

chronological order telling events in the order to inform readers of the origins of Britain
of their occurrence

spatial order describing a place or an object to describe the geography of Britain

from top to bottom, north to south, and so on

enumeration listing related items, people, to inform readers of the various peoples living
events, and so on in Britain

compare-and-contrast organization explaining to explain ways in which the disparate peoples

similarities and differences in Britain are alike and different

A historian’s choice of text structure and details reflects his or her vision of
history. Is history the story of great leaders or of social forces? A collection
of fascinating traditions or of hard facts? Bede’s vision of history—and his
purpose for writing—reflects the beliefs and interests of his day, shaped by
the Church and the legacy of Roman civilization.

PRACTICE Answer items 1–4 individually. Complete item 5 as a group.

1. Evaluate In the first part of paragraph 1, Bede employs spatial

organization. In what way does this text structure suit his purpose?
2. (a) Interpret What main impression does Bede’s description of
Britain’s resources in paragraph 1 create? (b) Evaluate Identify the
text structures he uses, and evaluate whether they support this main Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

impression.

B.E.S.T. 3. (a) Analyze Identify Bede’s main purpose and main text structure in
K12.EE.5.1: Use the accepted rules paragraph 3. (b) Evaluate In what ways does this text structure suit
governing a specific format to create his purpose? (c) Analyze Identify two cases in the paragraph in
quality work.
which he departs from his main structure. What purpose do these
12.R.2.1: Evaluate the structure(s)
digressions serve?
and features in texts, identifying how
the author could make the text(s) 4. Draw Conclusions In paragraph 3, Bede comments about the Latin
more effective.
language. In paragraph 4, he reports a legend about a snakebite remedy.
12.R.2.3: Evaluate an author’s
choices in establishing and achieving
What conclusion about his purpose can you draw from these details?
purpose(s).
5. Draw Conclusions List the various types of details Bede includes,
12.C.3.1: Follow the rules of standard the text structures he uses, and the ways in which they reflect and
English grammar, punctuation,
capitalization, and spelling appropriate help him achieve specific purposes. Then, draw conclusions about
to grade level. Bede’s vision of what counts as history.

854 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 STUDY LANGUAGE AND CRAFT

NOTEBOOK

Conventions and Style INTERACTIVITY

KEY CONCEPT
Punctuation in Series Writers can use punctuation to clarify the
Serial commas can increase
relationships between words and phrases within a sentence. For example,
the clarity of your writing.
commas are used along with a conjunction to join two independent clauses. Consider this sentence
Commas are also used to separate items in a series. without a serial comma:
“The reporter interviewed
Many writers use the serial comma (also known as the series comma and Marcel, a librarian and a
the Oxford comma) immediately before the coordinating conjunction tennis player.” Did the
(usually and, or, or nor) in a series of three or more terms. The serial comma reporter interview one
is a matter of style, not a universal rule of English punctuation. Some person, Marcel, who
happens to be a librarian
newspapers and other sources do not require the use of serial commas. and a tennis player? Or did
she interview three separate
This sentence from the excerpt from A History of the English Church and people? Consistent use
People shows an example of a series punctuated with a serial comma. of the serial comma helps
eliminate this ambiguity.
There are salmon and eel fisheries, while seals, dolphins, and
sometimes whales are caught. (paragraph 1)

Style Guide You may need to consult a style guide or other reference when
deciding whether or not to use serial commas in your writing. Teachers,
editors, or publishers for whom you are writing will provide information
about their preferred style.

READ Work individually to complete a chart like the one shown. First,
identify the serial commas and the words they separate in the two examples
given. Then, add two additional examples of serial commas in Bede’s writing.

EXAMPLE WORDS SEPARATED BY SERIAL COMMA

The land has rich veins of many metals, including copper, iron,
lead, and silver. (paragraph 1)

In old times, the country had twenty-eight noble cities, and

innumerable castles, all of which were guarded by walls,
towers, and barred gates. (paragraph 1)
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

EDIT Complete the activities.

1. Write a paragraph in which you describe the most interesting details you
read in Bede’s history. Include at least two sets of items in a series and
punctuate them using a series comma.
2. Consult a digital or print style guide. Note whether your draft follows its
recommendations regarding punctuating items in a series. If your draft
does not use the suggested approach, edit it to follow the rules.
3. Exchange drafts with a partner and check each other’s use of punctuation.
Then, discuss the advantages or disadvantages of using the serial comma,
based on what you learn in this activity.
from A History of the English Church and People 855
PREPARE TO READ

Compare Across Genres HISTORY ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE

The encyclopedia entry you are about to read comes from

the Encyclopaedia Britannica website. After reading and
exploring this selection, you will compare Bede’s historical
writing about Britain with contemporary historians’ writings
from A HISTORY OF THE from HISTORY OF
about Jamaica. ENGLISH CHURCH . . . JAMAICA

About the Source

from History of Jamaica
The Encyclopaedia
Britannica first appeared in
1768 and has been revised
Media Vocabulary: Text Features
and enhanced through 15 The terms listed here refer to some of the text features you will encounter when
editions. It was originally the you read digital encyclopedia articles. As you read and analyze the text, evaluate
product of a printer and the use of these features, considering the specific purpose each one serves.
bookseller, an engraver, and
an editor, all three from TEXT FEATURE PURPOSE
Scotland. Although
heads and subheads: one or Heads are structures that separate
encyclopedias had been
more words that appear at the a text into sections and indicate the
written since antiquity,
beginning of a section of a text nature of the content that follows.
Britannica was conceived
during the Scottish illustration: visual depiction of Illustrations are features that show
Enlightenment, a time of an object, scene, or other detail what a textual detail looks like; they
intellectual fervor, and its described verbally in a text clarify and expand meaning.
creators envisioned a new
caption: usually brief informative Captions provide information about
type of source. Existing
text positioned near an image to images so that readers understand
encyclopedias in English
explain or describe it what they depict.
listed topics briefly and
alphabetically, somewhat like hyperlink: clickable word or Hyperlinks are digital features that
a dictionary, so related topics passage that opens a new feature help users clarify information or
did not appear together. or takes a user to another web explore related topics.
Britannica, by contrast, page
integrated related topics into
essays that were then
alphabetized. The
encyclopedia retains that Comprehension Strategy NOTEBOOK

format even today. Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Make Predictions Informational texts often include text features that
enhance or organize the content. These elements can help you make
predictions about a text. Consider the Media Vocabulary that describes
specific text features, and use those elements to make predictions:

• Skim the text, noticing heads and subheads. Consider what these
features show about the ideas the text will cover.
• Look at illustrations. Notice what they depict and the mood they
create. Consider what these features suggest about the topic.
B.E.S.T. • Examine cross-references and hyperlinks. Consider what these
K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend features indicate about the main text.
grade-level complex texts proficiently.
12.R.2.1: Evaluate the structure(s)
and features in texts, identifying how
■ PRACTICE Before you read, use the text features of the article to make
the author could make the text(s) three predictions. Then, read on either to confirm your predictions or to
more effective. correct them.

856 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 MEDIA | ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE

from History of Jamaica

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Reprinted with permission from Encyclopaedia Britannica, © 2015 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

BACKGROUND
Jamaica is the third-largest island in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies.
In 1962, Jamaica attained independence from the United Kingdom and
became a constitutional monarchy. Culturally, Jamaica is known as the home
of the musical genres of ska and reggae, and it has an extensive local
tradition of poetry and the visual arts. The capital city is Kingston.
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

To explore this online encyclopedia article, open the Interactive Student

Edition, available to you on Realize.

TAKE NOTES

from History of Jamaica 857

BUILD INSIGHT

NOTEBOOK Response
Work on your own to 1. Personal Connections What aspect of Jamaica’s history do you find
answer the questions in most interesting? Why?
your notebook. Cite text
evidence to explain and
justify your reasoning.
Comprehension
2. Reading Check (a) How did the British gain control of Jamaica? (b) Who
were Maroons, and what roles did they play in Jamaica’s history? (c) How
did one agricultural resource come to dominate the Jamaican economy in
the eighteenth century, and how was it eventually replaced?

3. Strategy: Make Predictions (a) Review a prediction you made before

reading this article. Which text features or structures helped you make
your prediction? (b) Did you have to correct your prediction as you read
on, or were you able to confirm it? Explain.

WORKING
AS A GROUP
Analysis and Discussion
With your group, discuss 4. Compare and Contrast What similarities do you find between the
your responses to the history of Jamaica and Bede’s history of the English church and people?
Analysis and Discussion What are some differences you noticed?
questions.
• Listen actively to one
another’s ideas and be 5. Generalize How would you characterize the relations between the Taino
receptive to different and the Spanish who inhabited the island in the early sixteenth century?
views. Support your answer with details from the text.
• Use clear, respectful
language to respond 6. Draw Conclusions Did life for the Jamaican inhabitants improve when
appropriately. the British captured Jamaica and expelled the Spanish? Explain.
• If necessary, modify
your speaking style;
for example, rephrase 7. Draw Conclusions Did the events from 1914 through the 1930s lead to
comments the group Jamaica’s eventual independence and self-rule? Explain.
finds unclear.
8. Get Ready for Close Reading Choose a passage from the text that you Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

find especially interesting or important. You’ll discuss the passage with

your group during Close-Read activities.
B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.1.1: Cite evidence to explain
and justify reasoning.
EQ NOTES
K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend INTERACTIVITY
grade-level complex texts proficiently.
K12.EE.4.1: Use appropriate
What does it mean to call a place home?
collaborative techniques and active What have you learned about the idea of home from reading this
listening skills when engaging in
text? Go to your Essential Question Notes and record your observations
discussions in a variety of situations.
and thoughts about the excerpt from the encyclopedia article.
12.R.2.1: Evaluate the structures(s)
and features in texts, identifying how
the author could make the text(s)
more effective.
12.V.1: Vocabulary

858 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ANALYZE AND INTERPRET

Close Read NOTEBOOK

Review the encyclopedia entry again. As you review, take notes about
important details and jot down your observations. Then, use a graphic
organizer like the one shown to write down your questions and conclusions.
from HISTORY OF JAMAICA

MY QUESTION(S):

MY CONCLUSION(S):

LANGUAGE STUDY

Media Vocabulary NOTEBOOK

Text Features These words name characteristics of multimedia texts, including

specific text features that appear in this encyclopedia entry. Practice using
them in your responses.

head    illustration   hyperlink
subhead   caption     

PRACTICE Answer item 1 independently. To complete item 2, work as a

group and independently, as directed in the item. EQ NOTES
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1. (a) Analyze What purpose is served by the subheads “Early Period” Before moving on to a
and “British Rule” on the first two pages of the encyclopedia article? new selection, go to your
Essential Question Notes
(b) Evaluate Do you find the use of heads and subheads in this article
and record any additional
to be effective? Explain.
thoughts and observations
2. (a) Evaluate Working as a group, collaborate on an analysis of the you may have about the
overall layout and organization of the encyclopedia entry. List specific excerpt from “History of
examples of text features, and explain the purpose of each. Then, Jamaica.”
explain whether you think the use of text features in the article is
effective in achieving those purposes. (b) Evaluate Working
independently, evaluate the overall layout and organization of the
encyclopedia entry. Is it helpful to readers searching for information? Is it
engaging for readers who are just browsing? Are there specific ways in
which the author could have used text features more effectively? Share
your responses with the group.

from History of Jamaica 859

COMPARE ACROSS GENRES
NOTEBOOK

Writing to Compare INTERACTIVITY

You have read two texts that describe the history of a nation: an excerpt
from Bede’s A History of the English Church and People and a portion of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica article “History of Jamaica.” Both selections are
histories—but each reflects a distinctive idea of what a history should be.
from A HISTORY OF THE Deepen your understanding of historical writing by comparing these texts.
ENGLISH CHURCH AND PEOPLE

ASSIGNMENT
Write a comparison-and-contrast essay in which you evaluate
the similarities and differences between Bede’s history and the
Encyclopaedia Britannica entry. Focus on the different ideas of history
and of historical explanation that each assumes. What do these texts
reveal about the writers’ values and worldviews?
from HISTORY OF JAMAICA

Analyze the Texts

Gather Evidence Review the two texts, noting the various types of details
that each includes. Use a chart like the one shown.

TYPE OF DETAIL BEDE’S HISTORY ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE

date

statistic

quotation

narration of events

traditional story or belief

other

Then, record examples of the types of explanations that each text provides.
For example, does the text explain an event in terms of the actions of a
leader or group? Or does it cite the interaction of impersonal forces? Use a
chart like the one shown, which has been partially filled in. Then, answer the

Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

questions that follow.

TERMS OF ANALYSIS BEDE’S HISTORY ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLE

impersonal forces why the plantation system
ended: end of slavery,
declining prices, end of tariffs
individual or group why Picts favor the
decisions female royal line: a
bargain they made
B.E.S.T. with the Scots
12.R.3: Reading Across Genres | other
Comparative Reading
12.C.1.4: Write an in-depth analysis
of complex texts using logical 1. W
 hat types of details found in one source are not featured (or not
organization and appropriate tone featured as prominently) in the other?
and voice, demonstrating a thorough
understanding of the subject. 2. What types of explanations found in one source are not featured (or not
featured as prominently) in the other?
860 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME
 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Interpret Each Text KEY CONCEPT

Draw Conclusions Review your charts, and draw conclusions about the When you evaluate
worldview each reflects. similarities and differences,
you make judgments about
• First, identify and evaluate the major differences in the details and
• their importance;
explanations that each text features.
• whether the comparison
• Then, identify and evaluate the values that seem to guide each source. reveals an advantage or
Consider these possible values: objectivity, depth of explanation, respect shows that something is
for authority, wonder. missing.
When you evaluate the
values guiding a work, you
Synthesize Across Texts make judgments about
Organize Ideas To organize your essay effectively, consider using one of • their importance to the
the following structures: writer;
• their consistency or how
• Start with a comparison of specifics in each text and then move to a they conflict with other
conclusion about their worldviews. values.

• Establish the worldview in each text and then make specific comparisons.

Develop Original Commentary To develop your comparisons effectively,

it is not enough to include examples or quotations from the text sequentially,
without explanation. You need to explain the significance of textual details to
your readers. Using original commentary—your own analysis and
evaluations—you can tell what the details show and explain why they are
important.

MODEL: ORIGINAL COMMENTARY

Example 1 does not contain the original commentary needed to explain

and connect the details cited by the writer. Example 2 does.

EXAMPLE 1
Bede quotes St. Basil by name but does not name the leaders of the
Scots and Picts. Similarly, the encyclopedia article is unable to provide The writer has added original
details from the earliest period of Jamaican history, but it explains that commentary, drawing a
“little is known of them [the ‘Redware people’].” conclusion about what each
textual reference shows and
EXAMPLE 2 explaining its significance for
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Bede quotes St. Basil by name, indicating the respect he has for learned the comparison.
Church authorities. At the same time, he does not give the names of
the leaders of the Scots and Picts. The fact that he does not apologize
for the omission suggests that he may not view his job as answering all
questions. Instead, he might see his job as just passing along what is
known. By contrast, when the encyclopedia article is unable to provide
details from the earliest period of Jamaican history, it explains that
“little is known of them [the ‘Redware people’].” This small explanation
seems to reflect our culture’s hope for “complete” knowledge—we
should find out more, it seems to say.

Compare Across Genres 861

PREPARE TO READ

POETRY COLLECTION 1

The Seafarer
Dover Beach
Escape From the Old Country

Concept Vocabulary
As you read these three poems, you will encounter these words.

desolation   fervent   blanch

Context Clues If these words are unfamiliar to you, try using context
clues—other words and phrases that appear in a text—to help determine
their meanings. There are various types of context clues that you may
encounter as you read. Note that images can also serve as context clues.
Here are two other examples:

Restatement: Evan thought the acrobats made only a semblance of

enjoying their routine; clearly, their enjoyment was just for show.
Contrast of Ideas: Just an hour after the raging storm was over, the
air was utterly tranquil.

PRACTICE Examine the images that accompany these poems. Then, as

you read, apply your knowledge of context clues and the information you
gain from the images to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words.

Comprehension Strategy NOTEBOOK

Create Mental Images Poetry uses language that evokes the physical
world. When you read a poem, deepen your understanding by noticing words

Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

and phrases that relate to color, shape, texture, movement, size, and space. Use
these concrete details to create vivid mental images.

EXAMPLE
Notice the words related to color, shape, and space in these lines
from “By the Stream” by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Use them to create
mental images of this scene.

B.E.S.T.
By the stream I dream in calm delight, and watch as in a glass, / How
K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend the clouds like crowds of snow-hued and white-robed maidens pass, /
grade-level complex texts proficiently. And the water into ripples breaks and sparkles as it spreads, / Like a
12.V.1.3: Apply knowledge of context host of armored knights with silver helmets on their heads.
clues, figurative language, word
relationships, reference materials, PRACTICE As you read these poems deepen your understanding by
and/or background knowledge to
noting vivid details and pausing to create mental images.
determine the connotative and
denotative meaning of words and
phrases, appropriate to grade level.

862 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

About the Poets Backgrounds

Burton Raffel (1928–2015) was a poet and The Seafarer

translator who published more than 100 “The Seafarer” is a poem written in Anglo-
books in his lifetime, including poetry, fiction, Saxon (Old English), the language that was
literary theory, and, especially, translations. spoken in Britain before the arrival of the
Among his translations, he is best known for Normans in 1066. The Anglo-Saxons took
Beowulf, an Anglo-Saxon classic, but he also ocean voyages, often lasting for months at a
translated the Middle English The Canterbury time, in wooden vessels that were powered
Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer; the Spanish Don by both oars and sails and were similar to
Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes; and the Viking ships.
Italian Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri.

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) was a Dover Beach

poet and essayist. As a professor at Oxford, “Dover Beach” is one of Matthew Arnold’s
Arnold became the first professor to lecture best-known poems. In it, he examines the
in English rather than Latin. His essays topic of psychological isolation, a common
established literary criticism as a distinct genre theme in his work, linking it with what he felt
of writing, and they greatly influenced later was the shrinking faith of his time. References
critics. His poetry was influential as well; to “Dover Beach” can be seen in many
the work of William Butler Yeats and Sylvia books, poems, songs, and movies, including
Plath, among others, was shaped in part by Armies of the Night, by Norman Mailer;
Arnold’s style. A Darkling Plain, by Philip Reeve; music by
both the rock band Rush and the classical
composer Samuel Barber; and a poem by the
former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins.

Adrienne Su (b. 1967) was raised in Atlanta, Escape From the Old Country
Georgia. She graduated from Radcliffe “Escape From the Old Country” is a poem
College at Harvard University and received a from Su’s collection Sanctuary, published in
Master of Fine Arts from the University of 2006. It is about being the child of parents
Virginia. She has published five books of who immigrated to the United States from
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poetry and teaches at Dickinson College in China. Like much of Su’s work, the poem
Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She says that “writing illuminates what it means to be a member
goes best for me when it’s woven into of a community, whether it be a family,
everyday life.” a neighborhood, or an ethnic group.

Poetry Collection 1 863

POETRY

The
Seafarer
translated by Burton Raffel

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864 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 T his tale is true, and mine. It tells
How the sea took me, swept me back
And forth in sorrow and fear and pain,
UNLOCK WORD
MEANINGS
The pronunciation and part
Showed me suffering in a hundred ships, of speech for each of the
5 In a thousand ports, and in me. It tells vocabulary words appear in
Of smashing surf when I sweated in the cold the side notes. In your
Of an anxious watch, perched in the bow notebook, write the
As it dashed under cliffs. My feet were cast meaning of each word.
In icy bands, bound with frost.
10 With frozen chains, and hardship groaned
Around my heart. Hunger tore
At my sea-weary soul. No man sheltered
On the quiet fairness of earth can feel
How wretched I was, drifting through winter
15 On an ice-cold sea, whirled in sorrow,
Alone in a world blown clear of love,
Hung with icicles. The hailstorms flew.
The only sound was the roaring sea,
The freezing waves. The song of the swan
20 Might serve for pleasure, the cry of the sea-fowl,
The death-noise of birds instead of laughter,
The mewing of gulls instead of mead.1
Storms beat on the rocky cliffs and were echoed Use context clues or apply another
By icy-feathered terns and the eagle’s screams; strategy to help you determine the
25 No kinsman could offer comfort there, meanings of concept vocabulary.

To a soul left drowning in desolation. desolation (deh suh LAY

And who could believe, knowing but shuhn) n.

The passion of cities, swelled proud with wine

And no taste of misfortune, how often, how wearily,
30 I put myself back on the paths of the sea.
Night would blacken; it would snow from the north;
Frost bound the earth and hail would fall,
The coldest seeds. And how my heart
Would begin to beat, knowing once more
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35 The salt waves tossing and the towering sea!

The time for journeys would come and my soul
Called me eagerly out, sent me over
The horizon, seeking foreigners’ homes.
But there isn’t a man on earth so proud,
40 So born to greatness, so bold with his youth,
Grown so brave, or so graced by God,
That he feels no fear as the sails unfurl,
Wondering what Fate has willed and will do.
No harps ring in his heart, no rewards,
45 No passion for women, no worldly pleasures,
Nothing, only the ocean’s heave;

1. mead n. liquor made from fermented honey and water.

The Seafarer 865

 But longing wraps itself around him.
Orchards blossom, the towns bloom,
Fields grow lovely as the world springs fresh,
50 And all these admonish that willing mind
Leaping to journeys, always set
In thoughts traveling on a quickening tide.
So summer’s sentinel, the cuckoo, sings
In his murmuring voice, and our hearts mourn
55 As he urges. Who could understand,
In ignorant ease, what we others suffer
As the paths of exile stretch endlessly on?
And yet my heart wanders away,
My soul roams with the sea, the whales’
60 Home, wandering to the widest corners
Of the world, returning ravenous with desire,
Flying solitary, screaming, exciting me
To the open ocean, breaking oaths
Use context clues or apply another
strategy to help you determine the On the curve of a wave.
meanings of concept vocabulary. Thus the joys of God
fervent (FUR vuhnt) adj. 65 Are fervent with life, where life itself
Fades quickly into the earth. The wealth
Of the world neither reaches to Heaven nor remains.
No man has ever faced the dawn
Certain which of Fate’s three threats
70 Would fall: illness, or age, or an enemy’s
Sword, snatching the life from his soul.
The praise the living pour on the dead
Flowers from reputation: plant
An earthly life of profit reaped
75 Even from hatred and rancor, of bravery
Flung in the devil’s face, and death
Can only bring you earthly praise
And a song to celebrate a place
With the angels, life eternally blessed
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80 In the hosts of Heaven.
The days are gone
When the kingdoms of earth flourished in glory;
Now there are no rulers, no emperors,
No givers of gold, as once there were,
When wonderful things were worked among them
85 And they lived in lordly magnificence.
Those powers have vanished, those pleasures are dead.
The weakest survives and the world continues,
Kept spinning by toil. All glory is tarnished.
The world’s honor ages and shrinks,
90 Bent like the men who mold it. Their faces
blanch (blanch) v. Blanch as time advances, their beards
Wither and they mourn the memory of friends.

866 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 The sons of princes, sown in the dust.
The soul stripped of its flesh knows nothing
95 Of sweetness or sour, feels no pain,
Bends neither its hand nor its brain. A brother
Opens his palms and pours down gold
On his kinsman’s grave, strewing his coffin
With treasures intended for Heaven, but nothing
100 Golden shakes the wrath of God
For a soul overflowing with sin, and nothing
Hidden on earth rises to Heaven.
We all fear God. He turns the earth,
He set it swinging firmly in space,
105 Gave life to the world and light to the sky.
Death leaps at the fools who forget their God.
He who lives humbly has angels from Heaven
To carry him courage and strength and belief.
A man must conquer pride, not kill it,
110 Be firm with his fellows, chaste for himself,
Treat all the world as the world deserves,
With love or with hate but never with harm,
Though an enemy seek to scorch him in hell,
Or set the flames of a funeral pyre
115 Under his lord. Fate is stronger
And God mightier than any man’s mind.
Our thoughts should turn to where our home is,
Consider the ways of coming there,
Then strive for sure permission for us
120 To rise to that eternal joy,
That life born in the love of God
And the hope of Heaven. Praise the Holy
Grace of Him who honored us,
Eternal, unchanging creator of earth. Amen.
“The Seafarer” from Poems and Prose from the Old English by Burton Raffel.
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright ©1998. Used with permission of the publisher, Yale University Press.

MEDIA CONNECTION NOTEBOOK

DISCUSS In what ways is the cellist’s relationship

to the cello similar to or different from the sailor’s
relationship to the sea in “The Seafarer”?

Write your response in your notebook before sharing your

ideas.

The Seafarer

The Seafarer 867

 POETRY

868 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

Matthew Arnold
Dover Beach

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 The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;1 on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
5 Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
10 Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,2
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

15 Sophocles3 long ago

Heard it on the Aegean,4 and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
20 Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
25 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles5 of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

30 To one another! for the world, which seems
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To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
35 And we are here as on a darkling6 plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

1. straits Straits of Dover, between England and France.

2. strand n. shore.
3. Sophocles (SOF uh kleez) Greek tragic dramatist (c. 496–406 B.C.).
4. Aegean (ee JEE uhn) arm of the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Turkey.
5. shingles n. beaches covered with large, coarse, waterworn gravel.
6. darkling adj. in the dark.

Dover Beach 869

POETRY

Escape From the

Old Country
Adrienne Su

I never had to make one,

no sickening weeks by ocean,

no waiting for the aerogrammes*1

that gradually ceased to come.

5 Spent the babysitting money

on novels, shoes, and movies,

yet the neighborhood stayed empty.

It had nothing to do with a journey

not undertaken, not with dialect,

10 nor with a land that waited

to be rediscovered, then rejected.

As acid rain collected

above the suburban hills, I tried

to imagine being nothing, tried

15 to be able to claim, “I have

no culture,” and be believed.

Yet the land occupies the person

even as the semblance of freedom
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invites a kind of recklessness.
20 Tradition, unobserved, unasked,

hangs on tight; ancestors roam

into reverie, interfering at the most

awkward moments, first flirtations,

in doorways and dressing rooms—

25 But of course. Here in America,

no one escapes. In the end, each traveler

returns to the town where, everyone

knew, she hadn’t even been born.

* aerogrammes (AIR uh gramz) n. letters sent by air.

870 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 BUILD INSIGHT

Response NOTEBOOK

1. Personal Connections Describe a time when you left a familiar place for Work on your own to
one that was unfamiliar. What emotions and thoughts did you answer the questions
experience? Explain your answer. in your notebook.
Cite text evidence to
explain and justify your
Comprehension reasoning.

2. Reading Check (a) According to the speaker in “The Seafarer,” what

has happened to the world’s honor? (b) In the final stanza of “Dover
Beach,” what does the speaker say the world lacks? (c) According to the
speaker in “Escape From the Old Country,” what does tradition do?

3. Strategy: Create Mental Images (a) Give an example of a mental

image you created as you read one of the poems. What kinds of details
helped you form the mental image? (b) Would you recommend this
strategy to others? Why, or why not?

Analysis and Discussion

WORKING
4. (a) In lines 27–38 of “The Seafarer,” what causes the speaker’s heart to
AS A GROUP
“begin to beat”? (b) Make Inferences How do you think the speaker
With your group, discuss
can endure all the hardships and dangers of a life at sea and yet be so
your responses to the
strongly drawn to it?
Analysis and Discussion
questions.
5. Synthesize Explain the connection between the concluding message of
• Listen actively to one
“The Seafarer” and its depiction of the seafarer’s wandering existence.
another’s ideas and be
receptive to different
6. (a) In “Dover Beach,” where are the speaker and his “love,” and what do
views.
they hear and see? (b) Interpret Why do you think the scene suggests to
• Use clear, respectful
the speaker “the eternal note of sadness”? language to respond
appropriately.
7. (a) In the last stanza of “Dover Beach,” what does the speaker say that he • If necessary, modify
and his “love” should do? (b) Draw Conclusions What problem does your speaking style;
the speaker believe they can avoid if they follow his urging? for example, rephrase
Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

comments the group

8. Make Inferences What conflict does the speaker allude to in lines 17–24 finds unclear.
of “Escape From the Old Country”? Explain.

9. Get Ready for Close Reading Choose a passage from each poem that
you find especially interesting or important. You’ll discuss the passage
with your group during Close-Read activities.

B.E.S.T.
EQ NOTES INTERACTIVITY K12.EE.1.1: Cite evidence to explain
and justify reasoning.
What does it mean to call a place home? K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend
grade-level complex texts proficiently.
What have you learned about the idea of home from reading these
K12.EE.4.1: Use appropriate
poems? Go to your Essential Question Notes and record your collaborative techniques and active
observations and thoughts. listening skills when engaging in
discussions in a variety of situations.

Poetry Collection 1 871

ANALYZE AND INTERPRET

Close Read
PRACTICE Complete the following activities. Use text evidence to
support your responses.

POETRY COLLECTION 1
1. P
 resent and Discuss To engage in a meaningful discussion with your
group, share the passages from the text that you found especially interesting.
Discuss what you noticed, the questions you had, and the conclusions you
reached. For example, you might focus on the following passages:

• “The Seafarer,” lines 39–64: Discuss the nature of the internal conflict,
GROUP DISCUSSION or struggle between different longings or motivations, expressed in
Although it is not necessary these lines.
for group members to agree • “Dover Beach,” final stanza: Discuss the speaker’s lament and
about a subject, it can be
whether the experience of the world he describes is common.
helpful to seek common
ground, especially as you • “Escape From the Old Country”: Discuss the themes of culture,
begin a discussion. Find community, and family in the poem as a whole, and note the lines you
aspects of the poems on
find especially meaningful.
which your group can agree.
Then, discuss your
2. R
 eflect on Your Learning What new ideas or insights did you uncover
differences of opinion.
during your discussion of the texts?

LANGUAGE STUDY

Concept Vocabulary NOTEBOOK

WORD NETWORK
Why These Words? The concept vocabulary words are related.
Note words in the text
that are related to the
concept of finding home. desolation   fervent   blanch
Add them to your Word
Network. PRACTICE

1. With your group, determine what the words have in common. Write Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
your ideas. Add another word that fits the category.
B.E.S.T.
2. Use each of the words in a sentence. Include context clues that hint at
12.R.1.1: Evaluate how key elements
enhance or add layers of meaning and/ each word’s meaning. Trade sentences with a partner, and review each
or style in a literary text and explain the other’s work.
functional significance of those
elements in interpreting the text.
12.R.1.2: Analyze two or more themes
and evaluate their development
Word Study NOTEBOOK

throughout a literary text. Latin Root: -sol- In “The Seafarer,” the speaker refers to a “soul left
12.R.1.4: Evaluate works of major drowning in desolation.” The word desolation contains the Latin root -sol-,
poets in their historical context.
meaning “alone.”
12.V.1.2: Apply knowledge of
etymology, derivations, and commonly PRACTICE Reread lines 58–64 of “The Seafarer.” Identify a word that
used foreign phrases to determine
meanings of words and phrases in contains the root -sol-, and write its meaning. Then, challenge yourself to think
grade-level content. of other words containing this root. Write the words and their meanings. Use a
dictionary to verify your answers.
872 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME
 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Literary / Text Elements NOTEBOOK

KEY CONCEPT

Follow these steps to

Historical Context and Theme Themes are the central messages or
evaluate the influence of the
insights that a literary work conveys. historical context on theme:
1. Identify two or more
• A universal theme is a message about life that is expressed in the
themes of the work.
literature of all cultures and time periods. Universal themes include those
2. Identify the historical
that express the importance of courage and the power of love. context of the work.
• A culturally specific theme reflects a work’s context, including its 3. Find resonances between
historical context—the events, institutions, values, and traditions of the the themes of the work
and aspects of the
time period in which it was written.
historical context.
4. E valuate the power of the
HISTORICAL
themes and of their
TYPE OF THEME EXAMPLE CONTEXT
expression in the work,
Universal Humanity is fated to question all times including how well they
its place in the world. reflect both specific issues
of its day and universal
Culturally Specific When traditional answers the modern period, human concerns.
about humanity’s place no after science and
longer work, individuals look skepticism have
for their own answers. challenged traditions

PRACTICE Work as a group to complete the activity in item 1. Work

individually on items 2 through 5.
1. Connect Analyze the historical context of each poem. Assign
specific research tasks, including analyzing references in the poem,
consulting the Background notes, and consulting online sources.
Note your conclusions in a shared document.
2. (a) Interpret In what sense does the speaker in “The Seafarer”
belong at sea? In what sense does he not belong? Cite lines in
support. (b) Interpret What do lines 81–96 imply about humanity’s
place in the world? (c) Draw Conclusions What answer do lines
117–122 provide to the question of where humanity belongs?
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3. (a) Interpret In “Dover Beach,” what question do lines 21–28

implicitly ask about humanity’s place in the world?
(b) Interpret What response is suggested in lines 29–30?
4. (a) Draw Conclusions In “Escape From the Old Country,” why
might the American-born speaker want to be able to claim “’I have /
no culture’” (lines 15–16)? (b) Interpret What might she mean in
saying that tradition “hangs on tight”? (c) Interpret What might
she mean by saying that each American “returns to the town where,
everyone / knew, she hadn’t even been born” (lines 26–28)?
5. (a) Interpret What themes about belonging and being out of place
does each poem convey? Cite text evidence. (b) Evaluate For each
theme you identify, evaluate how culturally specific elements
influence the poet’s expression of the theme.

Poetry Collection 1 873

STUDY LANGUAGE AND CRAFT

INTERACTIVITY

Author’s Craft NOTEBOOK

Dramatic Structure The three poems in this collection reflect different

cultures (Anglo-Saxon England, Victorian England, and contemporary
America) and are separated by more than a thousand years. However, each
POETRY COLLECTION 1 poem engages the interest of readers through its artful use of dramatic
structure, including the key elements of speaker and audience.
KEY CONCEPT • The speaker of a poem is the voice that “says” the poem. Speakers
Speaker Note that the
range from generalized observers with few specific characteristics to
speaker of a poem should finely drawn characters in specific predicaments. Speakers who are clearly
not be confused with the defined characters typically speak from the first-person point of view.
poet him- or herself. Even
• In general, the audience for a poem, as for any work, consists of the
when the speaker seems to
be the poet, or is a very close readers for whom it is intended. Some poems directly address this audience,
stand-in, it is still a created calling on readers using pronouns such as you or we. Other poems suggest
persona. the presence of a silent listener—a specific figure with whom the speaker
has a one-sided conversation. In some poems, the speaker names this silent
listener; in others, the identity of the silent listener remains unknown,
identifiable only by inferences the reader draws from clues in the text.
By creating intriguing speakers who engage with their audience or listener in
provocative or moving ways, poets enhance the drama of their works.

PRACTICE Work on your own to complete the activity and answer the
questions. Then, discuss your responses with your group.
1. Analyze Use a chart like the one shown to identify and describe the
speaker, audience, and (as applicable) silent listener in each poem. Note
also whether the speaker uses direct address.

POEM SPEAKER / SITUATION AUDIENCE / SILENT LISTENER DIRECT ADDRESS?

The Seafarer
Dover Beach
Escape From the Old Country

2. (a) Analyze In “The Seafarer,” whom is the speaker addressing in lines Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

103–124? (b) Analyze What effect does the speaker intend these lines
to have on that audience or listener?
B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.5.1: Use the accepted rules 3. (a) Distinguish Identify two lines in “Dover Beach” that help readers
governing a specific format to create
understand whom the speaker addresses. Explain your choices. (b) Analyze
quality work.
What effect does the poet create in lines 29–30? How does his use of
12.R.1.1: Evaluate how key elements
enhance or add layers of meaning and/ speaker and audience or silent listener help create this effect?
or style in a literary text and explain the
functional significance of those
4. (a) Interpret What is the speaker’s predicament in “Escape From the
elements in interpreting the text. Old Country”? (b) Analyze How does the poet make the speaker’s
12.C.1: Communicating Through predicament moving for the audience? Explain.
Writing
5. Analyze How do the details the speaker invokes in each poem reflect
12.C.3.1: Follow the rules of standard
English grammar, punctuation,
the time period and culture in which the poem was written? How are
capitalization, and spelling appropriate the speakers’ concerns and attitudes also reflective of these differences?
to grade level.

874 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 SHARE IDEAS

Composition
Correspondence consists of written letters, emails, and other messages sent
to a specific person to communicate information or to mark an occasion. An
informal letter is usually a personal communication that follows a more
relaxed format than a business letter but still uses certain organizing structures.

ASSIGNMENT
Write an informal letter that has a friendly structure to one of the
speakers in the poems you read. Choose from these options:
Imagine that Adrienne Su’s speaker finds the poem “The Seafarer”
in a bottle that has washed up on a beach. Write back to the
Seafarer in the character of Su’s speaker.
Write to the speaker in “Dover Beach” from the perspective of the
“love” mentioned in the poem. Informal Letter Format

Work on your own to write your letter. Then, share and discuss your
[Heading]
work with your group.
Addressee’s name
Street address
City, State, Zip Code
Plan Your Content First, take notes on details related to the speaker you
will be addressing—the Seafarer or Arnold’s speaker. What are the speaker’s [Date]
concerns and character traits? Then, take notes on your letter-writer—Su’s Date of Writing
speaker or the “love” in Arnold’s poem. What are her concerns? What does
she share with the person being addressed? How will they connect? Using [Greeting]
your notes, identify your purpose for writing and the main idea you want to Dear
express. [name of addressee],

Structure Your Letter Follow the Informal Letter Format to structure your [Body]
letter. Include these elements: Develop your ideas;
• a heading, including the address, followed by the date devote one body
paragraph to each idea.
• a greeting, such as Dear [intended reader]
• a closing, such as Sincerely or Yours truly [Closing]
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• your signature Sincerely yours,

Revise for Tone Review your draft, ensuring that the tone is appropriately [Signature]
informal and friendly without being slangy or too familiar. [your signature]

EXAMPLES
Overly Formal Tone: I sympathize with your plight.
Overly Informal Tone: I feel you, man. Sounds like major problems. EQ NOTES
Appropriately Informal Tone: I was really moved by your struggle. Before moving on to a
new selection, go to your
Edit for Spelling Even though this is an informal letter, make sure you edit Essential Question Notes
it for errors, including misspellings of familiar words. For example, spell the and record any additional
commonly confused words affect and effect correctly. To do so, remember thoughts or observations
that affect is usually a verb that means “change,” and effect is usually a you may have about
noun that means “result of a change.” Poetry Collection 1.

Poetry Collection 1 875

PREPARE TO READ

POETRY COLLECTION 2

The Widow at Windsor

From Lucy: Englan’ Lady

Concept Vocabulary
As you read “The Widow at Windsor” and “From Lucy: Englan’ Lady,” you
will encounter these words.

cavalry   stores   rank

Context Clues If these words are unfamiliar to you, try using context
clues — words and phrases that appear in nearby text—to help you
determine their meanings. There are various types of context clues that you
may encounter as you read.

Synonym: The rectitude, or virtue, of the queen’s decisions earned the

people’s respect.
Antonyms: The queen refused to tolerate dishonesty. The rectitude of
her decisions, therefore, appealed to everyone in the realm.
Example: From her first decree—that all of the nation’s children be
guaranteed an education—the queen’s decisions were known for their
rectitude.

PRACTICE As you read, apply your knowledge of context clues and

other vocabulary strategies to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words.

Comprehension Strategy NOTEBOOK

Generate Questions You can engage more deeply with any text if you
take the time to generate questions about it in an intentional way.
Purposefully framing questions will help you focus your attention, deepen
your understanding, and gain more information from any text, including Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
poetry.
• Before you read, preview information about the author or poet. Notice
the title and any images. Jot down any questions you have.
• As you read, take note of details or ideas that challenge your
comprehension or that simply raise questions for you. Jot your questions
down and continue to read.
B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend • After you read, review the questions you recorded and answer the ones
grade-level complex texts proficiently. you can. Note questions that remain unanswered and generate any new
12.V.1.3: Apply knowledge of context questions that you have.
clues, figurative language, word
relationships, reference materials,
and/or background knowledge to PRACTICE To deepen your understanding and gain information, ask
determine the connotative and questions before, during, and after reading these poems. Write your
denotative meaning of words and
questions down, noting the location in the poem that prompted each one.
phrases, appropriate to grade level.

876 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

About the Poets Backgrounds

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was born to The Widow at Windsor

British parents in colonial India. He attended Queen Victoria was the queen of England
school in England but returned to India in from 1837 to 1901. During her reign, the
1882 and took a job with a newspaper. British Empire reached the height of its power
Kipling published a number of witty poems as the most influential colonial ruler in the
and stories while there, and when he world. Her long reign during this time of
returned to England in 1889 he was a vigorous expansion and prosperity resulted in
celebrity. The popularity of his works, such as the period becoming known as the Victorian
the poems “Gunga Din” (1890) and “If—” Age. By the last decade of the nineteenth
(1910), the short-story collection The Jungle century, however, cracks in the strength of
Book (1894), and the novels Captains the British Empire were beginning to show.
Courageous (1897) and Kim (1901), made
Kipling the highest-paid author of his time. In
1907, he became the first English author to
receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

James Berry (1924–2017) spent his From Lucy: Englan’ Lady

childhood in a coastal village in Jamaica, “From Lucy: Englan’ Lady” is part of a group
where he started writing stories and poems of poems that James Berry wrote in the
while still in school. He moved to London Caribbean Creole language and in the voice
after World War II and continued to write of Lucy, a Jamaican immigrant woman living
while working there. Berry published his first in London, England. According to the poet,
collection of poems, Fractured Circles, in most people who came to Britain in the 1950s
1979. Two years later, he became the first had a natural respect for the Royal Family,
West Indian to win the Poetry Society’s which wields ceremonial authority and often
National Poetry Competition. Berry’s other represents Britain to the rest of the world.
awards and honors include the Signal Poetry
Award in 1989 for When I Dance and the
Order of the British Empire in 1990.
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Poetry Collection 2 877

POETRY

The
Widow at
Windsor
Rudyard Kipling

Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

UNLOCK WORD
’Ave you ’eard o’ the Widow at Windsor1
MEANINGS
The pronunciation and
With a hairy gold crown on ’er ’ead?
part of speech for each She ’as ships on the foam—she ’as millions at ’ome,
of the vocabulary An’ she pays us poor beggars in red.
words appear in the 5 (Ow, poor beggars in red!)
side notes. In your There’s ’er nick2 on the cavalry ’orses,
notebook, write the There’s ’er mark on the medical stores—
meaning of each word. An’ ’er troops you’ll find with a fair wind be’ind
That takes us to various wars.
Use context clues or apply another
strategy to help you determine the
meanings of concept vocabulary.
1. the Widow at Windsor Queen Victoria. She spent the rest of her life in mourning at
cavalry (KAV uhl ree) n.
Windsor Castle after the death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861.
stores (stawrz) n. 2. nick mark.

878 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 10 (Poor beggars!—barbarious wars!)
Then ’ere’s to the Widow at Windsor,
An’ ’ere’s to the stores an’ the guns,
The men an’ the ’orses what makes up the forces
O’ Missis Victorier’s sons.
15 (Poor beggars! Victorier’s sons!)

Walk wide o’ the Widow at Windsor,

For ’alf o’ Creation she owns:
We ’ave bought ’er the same with the sword an’ the flame,
An’ we’ve salted it down with our bones.
20 (Poor beggars!—it’s blue with our bones!)
Hands off o’ the sons o’ the widow,
Hands off o’ the goods in ’er shop.
For the kings must come down an’ the emperors frown
When the Widow at Windsor says “Stop!”
25 (Poor beggars!—we’re sent to say “Stop!”) Use context clues or apply another
Then ’ere’s to the Lodge o’ the Widow, strategy to help you determine the
From the Pole to the Tropics it runs— meanings of concept vocabulary.

To the Lodge that we tile with the rank an’ the file, rank (rangk) n.
An’ open in form with the guns.
30 (Poor beggars!—it’s always they guns!)

We ’ave ’eard o’ the Widow at Windsor,

It’s safest to leave ’er alone:
For ’er sentries we stand by the sea an’ the land
Wherever the bugles are blown.
35 (Poor beggars!—an’ don’t we get blown!)
Take ’old o’ the Wings o’ the Mornin’,
An’ flop round the earth till you’re dead;
But you won’t get away from the tune that they play
To the bloomin’ old rag over’ead.
40 (Poor beggars!—it’s ’ot over’ead!)
Then ’ere’s to the sons o’ the Widow,
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Wherever, ’owever they roam.

’Ere’s all they desire, an’ if they require
A speedy return to their ’ome.
45 (Poor beggars!—they’ll never see ’ome!)

The Widow at Windsor 879

POETRY

From Lucy:
Englan’ Lady
James Berry

You ask me ’bout the lady. Me dear,

old center here still shine
with Queen.1 She affec’ the place
like the sun: not comin’ out oft’n
5 an’ when it happ’n everybody’s out
smilin’ as she wave a han’
like a seagull flyin’ slow slow.

An’ you know she come from

dust free rooms an’ velvet
10 an’ diamond. She make you feel
this on-an’-on2 town, London, Copyright © Savvas Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.

where long long time deeper than mind.3

An’ han’s after han’s4 die away,
makin’ streets, putt’n’ up bricks,
15 a piece of brass, a piece of wood
an’ plantin’ trees: an’ it give
a car a halfday job gett’n’ through.

An’ Leela, darlin’, no, I never

meet the Queen in flesh. Yet
20 sometimes, deep deep, I sorry for her.

1. Queen Queen Elizabeth II, who ascended to the throne in 1952 at the age of 25.
2. on-an’-on extraordinary.
3. deeper than mind more than can be comprehended.
4. han’s after han’s many generations.

880 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 Everybody expec’ a show
from her, like she a space touris’
on earth. An’ darlin’, unless
you can go home an’ scratch up5
25 you’ husban’, it mus’ be hard
strain keepin’ good graces for
all hypocrite faces.

Anyhow, me dear, you know what

ole time people say,
30 “Bird sing sweet for its nest.”6

5. scratch up lose your temper at.

6. “Bird . . . nest” Jamaican proverb, referring to the nightingale’s habit of singing loudest
near its nest. It means, “Those closest to home are the most contented.”

BUILD INSIGHT

Comprehension NOTEBOOK

1. Reading Check (a) In his parenthetical statements, how does the Work on your own to
speaker in “The Widow at Windsor” repeatedly identify himself and other answer the questions
members of the British military? (b) What does the speaker in “From Lucy: in your notebook. Cite
Englan’ Lady” say everybody expects from the queen? text evidence to
explain and justify your
reasoning.
2. Strategy: Generate Questions (a) Cite one question you generated
before reading and one you generated during reading. (b) Were you able
to answer your questions? Explain. (c) What additional question can you
generate now that you have read the poems?

Analysis and Discussion EQ NOTES

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3. (a) Analyze Who is the “Widow at Windsor”? (b) Interpret What is Go to your Essential
surprising about the speaker’s decision to refer to this person in this way? Question Notes and
Explain. record your observations
and thoughts about
Poetry Collection 2.
4. Assess How would “The Widow at Windsor” be different if the remarks
in parentheses were not in the poem? Why?

5. (a) Analyze In “From Lucy: Englan’ Lady,” what challenges does Lucy
think the queen faces as a result of her position? (b) Analyze How do
Lucy’s perceptions humanize the queen? Explain.
B.E.S.T.
6. Get Ready for Close Reading Choose a passage from each poem that K12.EE.1.1: Cite evidence to explain
and justify reasoning.
you find especially interesting or important. You’ll discuss the passages
K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend
with your group during Close-Read activities. grade-level complex texts proficiently.

Poetry Collection 2 881

ANALYZE AND INTERPRET

Close Read
PRACTICE Complete the following activities. Use text evidence to
support your responses. Work with your peers or ask your teacher if you
need help.
POETRY COLLECTION 2
1. Present and Discuss To engage in a meaningful discussion with your
group, share the passages from the poems that you found especially
interesting. Discuss what you notice, the questions you have, and the
conclusions you reach. For example, you might focus on the following
passages:
GROUP DISCUSSION
As you discuss the poems, • “The Widow at Windsor,” lines 31–45: Discuss the speaker’s attitude
stay on task, and avoid toward both the British Empire and its “sentries.” What is the speaker
digressing into discussions suggesting about power and powerlessness?
that are off-topic. Also avoid
side conversations. Make • “From Lucy: England’ Lady,” lines 28–30: Discuss the poet’s use of a
sure that everyone is Jamaican proverb to end the poem. What is the effect? What ideas does
involved in the discussion this choice reinforce?
and that every meeting of
your group is productive. 2. Reflect on Your Learning What new ideas or insights did you uncover
during your discussion of the texts?

LANGUAGE STUDY

Concept Vocabulary NOTEBOOK

WORD NETWORK
Why These Words? The concept vocabulary words are related.
Note words in the text
that are related to the
concept of finding home. cavalry   stores   rank
Add them to your Word
Network. PRACTICE

1. With your group, determine what the words have in common. Write your ideas.
Add another word that fits the category.
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2. Write sentences using each of the three vocabulary words.

B.E.S.T.
12.R.1.1: Evaluate how key elements
Word Study NOTEBOOK

enhance or add layers of meaning and/

or style in a literary text and explain Multiple-Meaning Words Many words in English have more than one
the functional significance of those definition. For example, the words stores and rank, which appear in “The
elements in interpreting the text.
Widow at Windsor,” have several meanings.
12.R.1.4: Evaluate works of major
poets in their historical context. PRACTICE Complete the following items.
12.V.1.3: Apply knowledge of context
clues, figurative language, word 1. Write the meanings of stores and rank as Kipling uses them in the poem.
relationships, reference materials,
and/or background knowledge to 2. Write two more definitions for each word.
determine the connotative and
denotative meaning of words and 3. Identify three other multiple-meaning words in the poems. Record the
phrases, appropriate to grade level. words, and write two definitions for each.

882 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Literary / Text Elements NOTEBOOK

Dramatic Structure in Poetry While “The Widow at Windsor” and “From

KEY CONCEPT
Lucy: Englan’ Lady” are two poems that reflect different cultures and time
periods, both are dramatic monologues, poems in which a distinct persona, Historical Context Kipling
or fictional self created by the poet, expresses his or her ideas about a topic wrote this dramatic
to a silent listener. They are, in essence, one-sided poetic conversations. This monologue in the late
Victorian era. The poem is
poetic form developed during the Victorian era, and author George
part of a collection with a
Thornbury coined the term in 1857. A dramatic monologue relies on two military theme. Berry wrote
main elements to develop key ideas and themes: his dramatic monologue in
the twentieth century. His
• a speaker, who describes or discusses a situation, revealing clues to his work expresses the cultural
or her character and using a distinctive tone perspective of a mid-
twentieth-century Jamaican
• a silent listener, or one whose responses are implied who emigrated to England.
In some dramatic monologues, the speaker may refer to but not directly
describe what the silent listener says or does. “The Widow at Windsor” and
“From Lucy: Englan’ Lady” show this dramatic structure across two different
historical contexts—distinct cultures and time periods—but with very similar
content: a commoner discussing a queen.

PRACTICE Work on your own to answer the questions. Then,

share and discuss your responses with your group.
1. (a) Analyze Is the speaker of “The Widow at Windsor” an
individual or a communal voice? Explain. (b) Interpret In your view,
who is the silent listener in this poem?

2. (a) Analyze In “From Lucy: Englan’ Lady,” who is the speaker and
who is the listener? (b) Analyze How can you tell when the listener
interacts with the speaker? Explain.

3. (a) Analyze These poems share a vantage point—that of a

commoner speaking about a queen. How are the speakers’ tones, or
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attitudes toward their subjects, different? Are they similar in any

ways? (b) Connect In what ways does the tone of each poem
reflect each speaker’s distinct situation? Explain.

4. Interpret What theme does each poem express? Explain, citing

specific textual details that support your answer.

5. Evaluate Why do you think both of these poets, writing in different

time periods and cultures, chose to use the structure of a dramatic
monologue? What effect does this structure have on the reader?
Why is it an effective choice? Explain.

Poetry Collection 2 883

STUDY LANGUAGE AND CRAFT

INTERACTIVITY

Author’s Craft NOTEBOOK

Author’s Use of Language: Dialect The form of a language spoken by

people who live in a particular place or belong to a particular group is a
dialect. The combination of grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and pronunciation
POETRY COLLECTION 2 found in a particular dialect varies from what is considered the standard form
of a language. In literature, authors use dialect to shape the perceptions of
readers in a variety of ways:
• add depth and authenticity to portrayals of characters or poetic speakers
• develop a particular mood, or emotional atmosphere

Take turns with your group

• reflect the realities of an actual historical or cultural setting or add
members reading the poems dimension to a fictional setting
aloud. Listen and identify Authors employ many different techniques to convey dialect. One common
examples of added or
technique is the use of apostrophes to indicate missing sounds or dropped
omitted sounds that you hear
in each speaker’s diction. letters. Both Kipling and Berry use this technique, and others, to convey two
very different dialects.

TECHNIQUE TO CONVEY DIALECT EXAMPLES FROM THE POEMS

Nonstandard Spelling (Poor beggars! Victorier’s sons!)—from “The Widow at Windsor”

Nonstandard Pronouns Anyhow, me dear, you know what…—from “From Lucy: Englan’
Lady”

Use of Idioms—sayings, or expressions an’ it give a car a halfday job gett’n’ through—from “From Lucy:
unique to the dialect Englan’ Lady”

PRACTICE Work with your group to answer the questions and

complete the activities.
1. (a) Distinguish Using a chart like the one shown, identify two
more examples of dialect in each poem. (b) Analyze Explain the
nonstandard language elements evident in each example.

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EXAMPLES OF DIALECT NONSTANDARD ELEMENTS

B.E.S.T. 2. Evaluate Choose two of the examples from your chart to rewrite in
12.R.3.1: Evaluate an author’s use standard English. What is lost in the revision? Is anything gained?
of figurative language. Explain.
12.R.3.4: Evaluate rhetorical choices
across multiple texts. 3. Evaluate How does the poet’s use of dialect in each poem shape
12.C.1.4: Write an in-depth analysis your perceptions of each of the following elements: (a) the speaker’s
of complex texts using logical character; (b) the poem’s setting or context; (c) the poem’s mood, or
organization and appropriate tone emotional atmosphere?
and voice, demonstrating a thorough
understanding of the subject. 4. Evaluate What are some of the positive aspects of the use of dialect
12.C.4.1: Conduct research on a in a literary work? What might be some of the negative aspects? Use
topical issue to answer a question
the analysis you completed in items 1 and 2 to support your response.
and synthesize information from a
variety of sources.

884 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 SHARE IDEAS

Research
A biographical report is a form of nonfiction in which a writer relates the life
story of another person. Biographies can connect events and cultural influences
in the subject’s life to his or her work, accomplishments, and challenges.

ASSIGNMENT
Divide your group into two teams and deliver two biographical
reports—one about Rudyard Kipling and the other about James Berry.
Synthesize information from a variety of text types to draw conclusions
about each poet’s relationship to the idea of the British Empire. Then,
determine the most appropriate delivery method to present your results.
Choose one of these options:
Written Report: Share your findings in a written text.
Oral Report: Share your findings in an oral presentation.
Multimedia Report: Combine visual, audio, and written modes
in a live or recorded presentation.

Use a Variety of Text Types As you conduct research, make sure to

consult a variety of text types, such as articles, essays, and criticism; letters
and interviews; and audio or video sources. Take careful notes, including
publication details, so that you can accurately credit the information you use.

Synthesize Information When you synthesize information, you think deeply

about facts and commentary you have gathered and use it to develop your own
new insights. To synthesize information from varied text types, gather and review
your notes. Then, identify similarities, contradictions, and repetitions among
If you choose to deliver an
specific pieces of information. Ask questions such as the following:
oral or a multimedia report,
• How do these facts relate to other evidence I’ve located? be sure to speak clearly and
slowly enough to be fully
• Does this detail change my thinking or lead to a new idea? understood. Likewise, use a
• Do I see a pattern in this information? variety of connecting words so
that listeners can follow the
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Make logical connections and develop your own perceptions that the flow of your ideas.
evidence supports. Express the insights you gain in a thesis statement.
Choose a Mode of Delivery Once you have completed your research,
discuss the best way to organize and present it. Choose one of these options:

• Written Report: Write a polished text that includes an introduction in

EQ NOTES
which you state your thesis, body paragraphs in which you present your
findings, and a conclusion in which you restate your thesis in a new way. Before moving on to a
new selection, go to your
• Oral Report: Write a detailed set of notes to use in an oral presentation
Essential Question Notes
of your thesis and the researched information that supports it.
and record any additional
• Multimedia Report: Seamlessly integrate written and media elements thoughts or observations
to present your thesis and research findings. For example, you may use you may have about “The
slide presentation software or a set of posters to present verbal text; Widow at Windsor” and
then, enhance it with videos, audio recordings, photos, or other images. “From Lucy: Englan’
Lady.”
Finalize your decisions and share your work with the class.

Poetry Collection 2 885

PERFORMANCE TASK

SOURCES Deliver a Digital Presentation

• Whole-Class Learning
Selections A digital presentation is an organized way of providing information to an
• Peer-Group Learning audience using a combination of words and media, such as images, video,
Selections and audio.

ASSIGNMENT
You have read a variety of literary works that explore different ideas
about what constitutes home. Work with your group to plan and
deliver a digital presentation in response to this question:
How might a virtual space provide the qualities of home?
COLLABORATION Collaborate as a group to develop criteria by which you will evaluate
CENTER
your completed presentation. Participate in making decisions about
Visit the Collaboration both the evaluation criteria and the content of the presentation.
Center for video
tutorials on working
in groups.

Plan and Participate

Review the Prompt Work together to review the assignment and decide
how you will respond to the prompt. Take time to individually come up with
a few ideas based on the selections you've read, and then come back to the
group to brainstorm and make decisions. Genuinely consider a wide range of
ideas, but then work to narrow them down.
MAKING DECISIONS
When working in groups, Decision Point: If your group has a broad range of ideas and opinions,
keep in mind that some how will you narrow them down and come to consensus? For example,
decisions are not clear-cut try grouping ideas into categories and finding commonalities. Then, vote
and may point to more than for the idea that seems to suit the broader group.
one outcome. When your
group faces uncertainty, or Develop Goals and Criteria Develop criteria for your digital presentation.
ambiguity, about decision Your criteria should take into consideration both the content and style of
making, try this process: your presentation. Then, set group goals for collaboration: What rules should
• Summarize the decision you follow to achieve success?
that needs to be made.
Decision Point: On what criteria will your digital presentation be
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• List the options you have.
evaluated? What will be your group goals for this project? Try filling out
• Take a vote or appoint a a chart like the one shown. When the chart is complete, have each
team leader to make the
decision for the group.
group member identify his or her top three items for each category.
Eliminate items that get the fewest votes.

CRITERIA FOR PRESENTATION GOALS FOR COLLABORATION

Must have an interesting thesis Each member will take on a

responsible role.

Must have a great array of media Each member will participate in

decision making.

886 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Gather Details, Organize, and Draft

Formulate a Thesis Review the prompt one more time, and formulate a
thesis for your presentation. Your thesis should provide a decisive answer to Resolving Disagreement
the prompt and hint at the reasoning and evidence you will use as support. When writing the thesis, you
Refer to the Tip for ideas on how to resolve any disagreement about your may find disagreement in
thesis. the group about how to
word it.
Gather Evidence After you’ve decided on a thesis, come up with at least • Try different words.
three main points to support it. Gather text evidence as well as ideas and Changing the wording of
examples from your own experience to support each point. your thesis may enable
more people to support it.
Choose Media Gather various types of media to support your thesis. Each
type of media in your presentation should serve a specific purpose—for • Let the evidence do the
talking. List the facts,
example, a photograph that provides a visual example, or music that creates details, and examples that
a specific mood. Discuss the kinds of media (images, video, music) that support each possible
would best complement your ideas and keep your audience interested. response. Is one list much
Organize and Draft Once you have selected the content, work together longer than the others?
to outline a script that will structure your presentation. Include notes that will • Let the majority rule.
If you are still struggling
guide your delivery. Be sure you’ve answered all of these questions:
to agree, take a vote. Do
• How will you include media, and at what points? people clearly favor one
• What text will accompany the visuals? thesis over another?

• Who will deliver the main part of the presentation?

• When will you address questions from listeners? Who will be responsible
for answering them?

Present and Evaluate

Rehearse and Present Once you are satisfied with your script and have
organized text and media into a logical order, rehearse your presentation as a
group before delivering it to the class.
Use a checklist like this one to guide your rehearsal.

• Is the thesis introduced clearly?

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• Are transitions between presenters working smoothly?

• Are the visuals easy to see? Are captions large enough to see?
• Is the conclusion to the presentation strong and interesting?

Evaluate as a Group After all groups have presented, think about what
you learned from other presentations—with regard to both the prompt
and the delivery. Then, gather with your group and discuss which aspects
of your presentation were successful and what you could improve upon in
the future. Use the Criteria for Presentation chart you developed earlier as a
rubric for evaluation. B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.4.1: Use appropriate
collaborative techniques and active
listening skills when engaging in
discussions in a variety of situations.
12.C.5.1: Design and evaluate
digital presentations for effectiveness.

Performance Task: Deliver a Digital Presentation 887

 INDEPENDENT LEARNING

ESSENTIAL QUESTION

What does it mean to call

a place home?
As we venture away from home, the memories we take with us may
be detailed or vague, accurate or distorted. In this section, you will Reading Digital Texts
choose an Independent Learning selection about what it means to Digital texts have a variety of
call a place home. Get the most from this section by establishing a characteristics:
purpose for reading. Ask yourself, “What do I hope to gain from my • may feature annotation tools
independent reading?” Here are a few purposes you might consider: • may include bookmarks,
video and audio files, and
Read to Learn Think about the selections you have already read. other features
What questions do you still have about the unit topic? • may have pop-ups that add
information, such as definitions
Read to Enjoy Evaluate the table of contents. Judging from the
As you read your Independent
titles and descriptions, which text seems most interesting and
Learning selection, critique
appealing to you? and evaluate its digital
Read to Form a Position Consider your understanding of characteristics and consider
how they affect your
the Essential Question. Are you still unclear about some aspect
experience.
of the topic? What ideas of your own do you want to explore in
greater depth?

VIDEO

Independent Learning Strategies INTERACTIVITY

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. Use these strategies to
keep your focus as you read independently for sustained periods of time. Add
ideas of your own to each category.

STRATEGY ACTION PLAN

Create a schedule • Understand your goals and deadlines.
• Make a plan for each day’s activities.
•
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Practice what you • Use a variety of comprehension strategies to monitor
have learned your comprehension and deepen your understanding.
• Consider the different ways in which the text adds to
your knowledge.
•

Take notes • Record important ideas and information.

• Review your notes before sharing what you’ve learned.
•

B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend grade-level complex texts proficiently; 12.R.2.1: Evaluate the structure(s) and features in texts, identifying
how the author could make the text(s) more effective.

888 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 AUDIO ANNOTATE DOWNLOAD
CONTENTS
Choose one selection. Selections are available online only.
DRAMATIC SPEECH | POETRY

St. Crispin’s Day Speech

from Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii
William Shakespeare

Home Thoughts, From Abroad

Robert Browning
Can thoughts and words provide comfort when facing war or
when far from home?

NOVEL EXCERPT

from The Buried Giant

Kazuo Ishiguro

In sixth-century England, where ogres still roam the land, what

is home like?

SHORT STORY

My Old Home
Lu Hsun

When life has brought significant changes, is it possible to

return home?

ESSAY
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from Writing as an Act of Hope

Isabel Allende

Can love, generosity, and justice overcome the horror and

bitterness in the world?

SHARE YOUR INDEPENDENT LEARNING

Reflect on and evaluate the information you gained from your Independent-Learning
selection. Then, share what you learned with others.

Independent Learning 889

 INDEPENDENT LEARNING

Close-Read Guide INTERACTIVITY Tool Kit

Close-Read Guide and
Establish your purpose for reading the text you chose for Independent Model Annotation
Learning. Then, read the selection through at least once. Use a form like
the one shown here to record your close-read ideas.

Selection Title:
Purpose for Reading:
Minutes Read:

TXT2_11pt_ko
Close Read the Text Analyze the Text

Zoom in on sections you found _TXT2

1. Identify aspects of the author’s
interesting. Annotate what you literary choices that you found
notice. Ask yourself questions about significant, effective, or surprising.
the text. What can you conclude?

2. (a) Critique What characteristics of

digital texts did you use as you read
this selection, and in what ways?
(b) Evaluate To what extent did
the digital characteristics of the text
add value to your reading
experience? Explain.

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QuickWrite

Choose a paragraph, a section, or lines from the text that grabbed your interest.
_TXT2
Explain the power of this passage.

890 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Share Your
Independent Learning NOTEBOOK

ESSENTIAL QUESTION:
What does it mean to call a place home?
When you read something independently, your understanding continues to
grow as you share what you have learned with others.

Prepare to Share
CONNECT
One of the most important ways to respond to a text is to notice and
describe your personal reactions. Think about the text you explored
independently and the ways in which it connects to your own experience.
•W
 hat similarities and differences do you see between the text and
your own life? Describe your observations.
•H
 ow do you think this text connects to the Essential Question?
Describe your ideas.

Learn From Your Classmates

DISCUSS
Share your ideas about the text you explored on your own. As you discuss
the texts with others in your class, apply active listening skills. For example,
don’t interrupt another student even if you have an exciting idea to add.
Instead, jot down a note as a reminder of the point you want to make. Then,
focus your attention on the speaker.

Reflect
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EXPLAIN
Review your notes, and mark the most important insight you gained from
these writing and discussion activities. Explain how this idea adds to your
understanding of the places we call home.

B.E.S.T.
K12.EE.1.1: Cite evidence to explain and justify reasoning; K12.EE.2.1: Read and comprehend grade-level complex texts proficiently;
K12.EE.4.1: Use appropriate collaborative techniques and active listening skills when engaging in discussions in a variety of situations.

Independent Learning 891

PERFORMANCE-BASED ASSESSMENT

Sources Expository Essay INTERACTIVITY

• WHOLE-CLASS
SELECTIONS ASSIGNMENT

• PEER-GROUP In this unit, you read about the concept of home from the perspective
SELECTIONS of various writers. You also practiced writing a research report. Now,
apply what you have learned.
• INDEPENDENT-
LEARNING SELECTION Write an expository essay in which you synthesize what you learned
in this unit with your own ideas to respond to the Essential Question:
• Your own experiences
and observations What does it mean to call a place home?

Review and Evaluate Evidence

Review your Essential Question Notes and your QuickWrite from the
beginning of the unit. Have your ideas changed?

  YES   NO

Identify at least three pieces of Identify at least three pieces of

evidence that made you think evidence that reinforced your
differently about the topic. ideas about the topic.

1. 1.

2. 2.

3. 3.

State your ideas now:

What other evidence might you need to support a thesis on the

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topic?

892 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 ESSENTIAL QUESTION | What does it mean to call a place home?

Share Your Perspective

Keep the Elements of Expository Writing in mind as you work on the
assignment.

PLAN Before you write, read the list of expository text elements and
make sure you understand all of the items.

DRAFT As you write, pause occasionally to make sure you’re meeting the
requirements.
Use New Vocabulary Refer to your Word Network to vary your word
choice. Also, consider using one or more of the Academic Vocabulary
terms you learned at the beginning of the unit: migrate, modify,
requisite, reiterate, implication.

REVIEW AND EDIT After you have written a first draft, review it
EQ NOTES
against the list. Make any changes needed to strengthen your essay,
including its structure, language, and craft. Likewise, check your use of Make sure you have
standard English conventions, including correct and accurate use of subject- synthesized information
from your Essential
verb agreement. Then, reread your essay and fix any additional errors in
Question Notes to support
grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.
your thesis.

ELEMENTS OF EXPOSITORY WRITING

PURPOSE
 to explain and support a thesis using facts, examples, and other
evidence

CHARACTERISTICS
 a clear thesis
 varied
supporting evidence, including facts, specific details, and
pertinent examples
 explanations and commentary that demonstrate a thorough
understanding of the subject
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 if researched information is used, citations that follow an

accepted format, including a Works Cited list or bibliography
 elements of craft, including word choices that are precise and
appropriate for the intended audience
B.E.S.T.
 tone and voice appropriate for academic writing K12.EE.5.1: Use the accepted rules
governing a specific format to create
 command of standard English conventions quality work.
K12.EE.6.1: Use appropriate voice
STRUCTURE and tone when speaking or writing.
 a logical organizational structure that includes an introduction 12.C.1.4: Write an in-depth analysis
and a conclusion of complex texts using logical
organization and appropriate tone
 a coherent progression of ideas between sentences and and voice, demonstrating a thorough
paragraphs understanding of the subject.
12.V.1.1: Integrate academic
vocabulary appropriate to grade
level in speaking and writing.

Performance-Based Assessment 893

PERFORMANCE-BASED ASSESSMENT

Writing and Language INTERACTIVITY

This type of test asks you to detect errors in passages and choose the best
revision. Often, your task is to review the underlined and numbered part of
the passage and choose the best version of it. Sometimes there will be a
question about the passage as a whole.

Read the passage, and then choose the best answer for items 1–5.

William Somerset Maugham

[1] William Somerset Maugham was a British playwright, novelist and short
story writer. [2] A critic said, “He was among the most popular writers of his
time.” Not wanting to become a lawyer like others in his family, [3] Maugham
initially trained to be a physician. When WW I arrived, he served with the Red
Cross in the ambulance corps, after which he was recruited into the [4] british
secret intelligence Service. [5] On the other hand, he traveled to India and
Southeast Asia, accumulating experiences that would later inform his stories
and novels.

1. A) NO CHANGE 4. A) NO CHANGE
B) Add a semicolon after playwright. B) British secret intelligence Service
C) Add a comma after novelist. C) British Secret Intelligence Service
D) Delete the comma after playwright. D) British secret Intelligence Service

2. What revision would most improve 5. Which revision, if any, would improve
sentence 2? sentence 5?
A) The quotation needs a citation. A) NO CHANGE
B) The quotation needs to be summarized. B) During his service, he traveled to
India and Southeast Asia,
C) The quotation needs to be paraphrased.
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C) Nevertheless, he went to India and
D) The quotation needs to be deleted.
Southeast Asia

3. A) NO CHANGE D) Because he went to India and

Southeast Asia,
B) Maugham was trained at first to be a
physician.
C) Maugham was trained initially to be a
physician.
D) Maugham, wanting to be a physician,
underwent training.

Standardized tests include a section on conventions and editing skills. The practice test here is modeled
on the SAT Writing and Language Test format.

894 UNIT 6 • FINDING HOME

 UNIT
6 REFLECTION
NOTEBOOK

Reflect On the Unit INTERACTIVITY

Reflect On the Unit Goals

REVISIT Review your Unit Goals chart from the beginning of the unit.
Then, complete the activity and answer the question.
1. In the Unit Goals chart, rate how well you meet each goal now.
2. In which goals were you most and least successful?

Reflect On the Texts

VOTE The selections you read in this unit involved perceptions of home.
Which selections did you find most intriguing or moving, and why? Use a
chart like the one shown to indicate your choices and your reasons. Then,
discuss your choices with a group or the class.

SELECTION CHOICES
TITLE REASONS
Back to My Own Country: An Essay
Shooting an Elephant
from A History of the English Church and People
from History of Jamaica
The Seafarer
Dover Beach
Escape From the Old Country
The Widow at Windsor
From Lucy: Englan’ Lady
My Independent-Learning Selection

Reflect On the ESSENTIAL QUESTION

WRITE Write a voiceover script for a short multimedia presentation that
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summarizes your most memorable or insightful response to the Essential

Question:
What does it mean to call a place home?
• Review unit selections to recall your answers and insights.
• Brainstorm for key words and phrases that relate to the Essential
Question.
• Consider words, images, and other media that work together to form a
presentation that represents your view of home.

B.E.S.T.
12.C.3.1: Follow the rules of standard English grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling appropriate to grade level.

Unit Reflection 895

DRAMATIC SPEECH

St. Crispin’s Day Speech

from Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii
William Shakespeare

About the Playwright

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was born and
grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon, a busy market town
on the Avon River about seventy miles northwest of
London. By 1592, he had moved to London, where he
worked as an actor and soon as a playwright. From
about 1594 to 1610, Shakespeare wrote many plays,
some of them among the most famous in the English
language. These include Hamlet, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and The
Tragedy of Macbeth. Four centuries after his death, his plays continue to be
read and performed throughout the world.

BACKGROUND
“St. Crispin’s Day Speech” is from Shakespeare’s history play Henry V.
The basis for the play’s speech is an actual speech made by the real
King Henry V to the English army shortly before the Battle of Agincourt
in 1415. The battle was fought on St. Crispin’s Day, October 25th.
In Shakespeare’s play, Henry V is responding to a character named
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Westmoreland who has just lamented the fact that the English army is
greatly outnumbered by the French troops. There was, however, no such
real person named Westmoreland at the historical battle. He is, in the
play, a creation of Shakespeare’s imagination. As in the play, the English
army emerged victorious at the end of that October day in 1415.

WESTMORELAND
O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work today!

IL1 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • St. Crispin’s Day Speech from Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii
 KING HENRY
What’s he that wishes so?
5 My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow1
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honor.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
10 By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not2 if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honor,
15 I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz,3 wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honor
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
20 Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man‘s company
25 That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:4
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
30 He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say “Tomorrow is Saint Crispian:”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say “These wounds I had on Crispin‘s day.”
35 Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
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But he’ll remember, with advantages

What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
40 Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
45 But we in it shall be remember’d;

1. enow (ih NOW) adj. enough.

2. yearns me not does not make me sad.
3. coz (kuhz) n. cousin.
4. Crispian a Catholic feast day that falls on October 25, now
commonly referred to as St. Crispin’s Day.

UNIT 6 Independent Learning • St. Crispin’s Day Speech from Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii IL2
 We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
50 And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day. ❧

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IL3 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • St. Crispin’s Day Speech from Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii
 POETRY

Home Thoughts,
From Abroad
Robert Browning

About the Poet

Robert Browning (1812–1889) was a long time in
becoming famous. His early books of poems sold
poorly, if at all. For years, his reputation was eclipsed by
that of his wife, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Eight years after Elizabeth’s death, however, the
publication of a long poem, The Ring and the Book,
achieved wide recognition for its author. Today, Robert
Browning ranks with Tennyson as one of the great Victorian poets. In
addition, several important twentieth-century poets, including Ezra Pound
and Robert Lowell, have expressed deep admiration for his poetry.

BACKGROUND
Browning composed “Home Thoughts, From Abroad” in 1845. By that
time, the English poet had spent quite a bit of time in Italy. It was also
around this time that he and Elizabeth Barrett eloped to Italy, where the
couple lived until Elizabeth’s death in 1861.
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Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
5 That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf1
Round the elm-tree bole2 are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!

1. sheaf (sheef) n. branches that have been cut and bound together with twine.
2. bole (bohl) n. trunk of a tree.

UNIT 6 Independent Learning • Home Thoughts, From Abroad IL4

 And after April, when May follows,
10 And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
15 Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower3
20 —Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

3. dower (DOW uhr) n. natural gift.

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IL5 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • Home Thoughts, From Abroad

 NOVEL EXCERPT

from
The Buried Giant
Kazuo Ishiguro

About the Author

Kazuo Ishiguro (b. 1954) has been telling riveting
stories since his early twenties. He was born in
Nagasaki, Japan—though he knew nothing about the
1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings until after he
moved to England at the age of five. Ishiguro’s novels
often touch on the theme of memory and the ways in
which it fades and gets distorted, as well as on humans’
inability, often, to fully face the past. He has won many awards for his
writing, including the Man Booker Prize in 1989 and the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 2017.

BACKGROUND
This excerpt from the first chapter of The Buried Giant is set in Britain
around the sixth century. After several centuries as a province of
the Roman Empire, Britain had returned to local rule but had also
descended into violence and ethnic tension as the Saxons, a Germanic
tribe, began to invade. This period also gave rise to many well-known
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legends, including that of King Arthur, a legendary British king said

to have battled the Saxons as well as dragons and other fantastical
creatures.

Y ou would have searched a long time for the sort of winding

lane or tranquil meadow for which England later became
celebrated. There were instead miles of desolate, uncultivated
land; here and there rough-hewn paths over craggy hills or bleak
moorland.1 Most of the roads left by the Romans would by then
have become broken or overgrown, often fading into wilderness.
Icy fogs hung over rivers and marshes, serving all too well the

1. moorland (MOOR land) n. tract of open wasteland, usually covered with low bushes.

UNIT 6 Independent Learning • from The Buried Giant IL6

 ogres2 that were then still native to this land. The people who
lived nearby—one wonders what desperation led them to settle
in such gloomy spots—might well have feared these creatures,
whose panting breaths could be heard long before their deformed
figures emerged from the mist. But such monsters were not cause
for astonishment. People then would have regarded them as
everyday hazards, and in those days there was so much else to
worry about. How to get food out of the hard ground; how not
to run out of firewood; how to stop the sickness that could kill a
dozen pigs in a single day and produce green rashes on the cheeks
of children.
2 In any case, ogres were not so bad provided one did not
provoke them. One had to accept that every so often, perhaps
following some obscure dispute in their ranks, a creature would
come blundering into a village in a terrible rage, and despite
shouts and brandishings of weapons, rampage about injuring
anyone slow to move out of its path. Or that every so often, an
ogre might carry off a child into the mist. The people of the day
had to be philosophical about such outrages.
3 In one such area on the edge of a vast bog, in the shadow of
some jagged hills, lived an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice.
Perhaps these were not their exact or full names, but for ease,
this is how we will refer to them. I would say this couple lived an
isolated life, but in those days few were “isolated” in any sense
we would understand. For warmth and protection, the villagers
lived in shelters, many of them dug deep into the hillside,
connecting one to the other by underground passages and covered
corridors. Our elderly couple lived within one such sprawling
warren3—“building” would be too grand a word—with roughly
sixty other villagers. If you came out of their warren and walked
for twenty minutes around the hill, you would have reached the
next settlement, and to your eyes, this one would have seemed

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identical to the first. But to the inhabitants themselves, there
would have been many distinguishing details of which they
would have been proud or ashamed.
4 I have no wish to give the impression that this was all there
was to the Britain of those days; that at a time when magnificent
civilizations flourished elsewhere in the world, we were here
not much beyond the Iron Age.4 Had you been able to roam
the countryside at will, you might well have discovered castles
containing music, fine food, athletic excellence; or monasteries
with inhabitants steeped in learning. But there is no getting

2. ogres (OH guhrz) n. man-eating monsters.

3. warren (WAWR uhn) n. network of interconnected rabbit burrows; a mazelike,
overcrowded area or building that resembles these burrows.
4. Iron Age period marked by the widespread use of iron tools and weapons; the final
prehistoric period of many human societies.

IL7 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • from The Buried Giant

 around it. Even on a strong horse, in good weather, you could
have ridden for days without spotting any castle or monastery
looming out of the greenery. Mostly you would have found
communities like the one I have just described, and unless you
had with you gifts of food or clothing, or were ferociously armed,
you would not have been sure of a welcome. I am sorry to paint
such a picture of our country at that time, but there you are.
5 To return to Axl and Beatrice. As I said, this elderly couple lived
on the outer fringes of the warren, where their shelter was less
protected from the elements and hardly benefited from the fire in
the Great Chamber where everyone congregated at night. Perhaps
there had been a time when they had lived closer to the fire; a time
when they had lived with their children. In fact, it was just such an
idea that would drift into Axl’s mind as he lay in his bed during
the empty hours before dawn, his wife soundly asleep beside him,
and then a sense of some unnamed loss would gnaw at his heart,
preventing him from returning to sleep.
6 Perhaps that was why, on this particular morning, Axl had
abandoned his bed altogether and slipped quietly outside to sit on
the old warped bench beside the entrance to the warren in wait for
the first signs of daylight. It was spring, but the air still felt bitter,
even with Beatrice’s cloak, which he had taken on his way out and
wrapped around himself. Yet he had become so absorbed in his
thoughts that by the time he realized how cold he was, the stars
had all but gone, a glow was spreading on the horizon, and the
first notes of birdsong were emerging from the dimness.
7 He rose slowly to his feet, regretting having stayed out so long.
He was in good health, but it had taken a while to shake off his
last fever and he did not wish it to return. Now he could feel the
damp in his legs, but as he turned to go back inside, he was well
satisfied: for he had this morning succeeded in remembering a
number of things that had eluded him for some time. Moreover,
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he now sensed he was about to come to some momentous

decision—one that had been put off far too long—and felt an
excitement within him which he was eager to share with his wife.
8 Inside, the passageways of the warren were still in complete
darkness, and he was obliged to feel his way the short distance
back to the door of his chamber. Many of the “doorways” within
the warren were simple archways to mark the threshold to a
chamber. The open nature of this arrangement would not have
struck the villagers as compromising their privacy, but allowed
rooms to benefit from any warmth coming down the corridors
from the great fire or the smaller fires permitted within the
warren. Axl and Beatrice’s room, however, being too far from
any fire had something we might recognize as an actual door; a
large wooden frame criss-crossed with small branches, vines, and

UNIT 6 Independent Learning • from The Buried Giant IL8

 thistles5 which someone going in and out would each time have
to lift to one side, but which shut out the chilly drafts. Axl would
happily have done without this door, but it had over time become
an object of considerable pride to Beatrice. He had often returned
to find his wife pulling off withered pieces from the construct
and replacing them with fresh cuttings she had gathered during
the day.
9 This morning, Axl moved the barrier just enough to let himself
in, taking care to make as little noise as possible. Here, the early
dawn light was leaking into the room through the small chinks
of their outer wall. He could see his hand dimly before him, and
on the turf bed, Beatrice’s form still sound asleep under the thick
blankets.
10 He was tempted to wake his wife. For a part of him felt sure
that if, at this moment, she were awake and talking to him,
whatever last barriers remained between him and his decision
would finally crumble. But it was some time yet until the
community roused itself and the day’s work began, so he settled
himself on the low stool in the corner of the chamber, his wife’s
cloak still tight around him. . . . ❧

5. thistles (THIHS uhlz) n. prickly plants, usually with purple flowers.

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IL9 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • from The Buried Giant

 SHORT STORY

My Old Home
Lu Hsun
translated by
Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang

About the Author

Lu Hsun (1881–1936) is a major figure in twentieth-
century Chinese literature. He wrote short stories,
poetry, essays, and literary criticism, both in classical and
vernacular Chinese. As a young man, he studied
medicine but quit before receiving his degree in order to
devote himself to literature. During the 1930s, Lu was
considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Also around
this time, he renounced the writing of fiction and wrote primarily essays
until his death.

BACKGROUND
In this story, Lu Hsun explores the issue of how intellectuals are to live
their lives, specifically in China. It is a theme that Lu and other Chinese
writers during the 1920s addressed again and again in their short stories
and novels. The problem is eloquently illustrated by the descriptions
of the grown narrator and his childhood friend Jun-tu. The narrator, a
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successful writer, has traveled extensively. As a result, he is cosmopolitan

and sophisticated. His old friend, on the other hand, never left their
hometown and never escaped the lower economic origins of his family.
The chasm between their two personalities seems impossible to ignore
or cross.

B raving the bitter cold, I traveled more than seven hundred

miles back to the old home I had left over twenty years
before.
2 It was late winter. As we drew near my former home the day
became overcast and a cold wind blew into the cabin of our boat,
while all one could see through the chinks in our bamboo awning
were a few desolate villages, void of any sign of life, scattered far

UNIT 6 Independent Learning • My Old Home IL10

 and near under the somber yellow sky. I could not help feeling
depressed.
3 Ah! Surely this was not the old home I had remembered for the
past twenty years?
4 The old home I remembered was not in the least like this.
My old home was much better. But if you asked me to recall its
peculiar charm or describe its beauties, I had no clear impression,
no words to describe it. And now it seemed this was all there was
to it. Then I rationalized the matter to myself, saying: Home was
always like this, and although it has not improved, still it is not
so depressing as I imagine; it is only my mood that has changed,
because I am coming back to the country this time with no
illusions.
5 This time I had come with the sole object of saying goodbye.
The old house our clan had lived in for so many years had already
been sold to another family, and was to change hands before the
end of the year. I had to hurry there before New Year’s Day to
say goodbye for ever to the familiar old house, and to move my
family to another place where I was working, far from my old
home town.
6 At dawn on the second day I reached the gateway of my home.
Broken stems of withered grass on the roof, trembling in the
wind, made very clear the reason why this old house could not
avoid changing hands. Several branches of our clan had probably
already moved away, so it was unusually quiet. By the time
I reached the house my mother was already at the door to
welcome me, and my eight-year-old nephew, Hung-erh, rushed
out after her.
7 Though mother was delighted, she was also trying to hide
a certain feeling of sadness. She told me to sit down and rest
and have some tea, letting the removal wait for the time being.
Hung-erh, who had never seen me before, stood watching me at a

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distance.
8 But finally we had to talk about the removal. I said that
rooms had already been rented elsewhere, and I had bought a
little furniture; in addition it would be necessary to sell all the
furniture in the house in order to buy more things. Mother agreed,
saying that the luggage was nearly all packed, and about half the
furniture that could not easily be moved had already been sold.
Only it was difficult to get people to pay up.
9 “You must rest for a day or two, and call on our relatives, and
then we can go,” said mother.
10 “Yes.”
11 “Then there is Jun-tu. Each time he comes here he always asks
after you, and wants very much to see you again. I told him the

IL11 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • My Old Home

 probable date of your return home, and he may be coming
any time.”
12 At this point a strange picture suddenly flashed into my mind:
a golden moon suspended in a deep blue sky and beneath it
the seashore, planted as far as the eye could see with jade-green
watermelons, while in their midst a boy of eleven or twelve,
wearing a silver necklet and grasping a steel pitchfork in his hand,
was thrusting with all his might at a zba which dodged the blow
and escaped between his legs.
13 This boy was Jun-tu. When I first met him he was just over
ten—that was thirty years ago, and at that time my father was
still alive and the family well off, so I was really a spoiled child.
That year it was our family’s turn to take charge of a big ancestral
sacrifice, which came round only once in thirty years, and hence
was an important one. In the first month the ancestral images
were presented and offerings made, and since the sacrificial
vessels were very fine and there was such a crowd of worshipers,
it was necessary to guard against theft. Our family had only one
part-time laborer. (In our district we divide laborers into three
classes: those who work all the year for one family are called full-
timers; those who are hired by the day are called dailies; and those
who farm their own land and only work for one family at New
Year, during festivals or when rents are being collected are called
part-timers.) And since there was so much to be done, he told
my father that he would send for his son Jun-tu to look after the
sacrificial vessels.
14 When my father gave his consent I was overjoyed, because I
had long since heard of Jun-tu and knew that he was about my
own age, born in the intercalary month,1 and when his horoscope
was told it was found that, of the five elements, that of earth was
lacking, so his father called him Jun-tu (Intercalary Earth). He
could set traps and catch small birds.
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15 I looked forward every day to New Year, for New Year would
bring Jun-tu. At last, when the end of the year came, one day
mother told me that Jun-tu had come, and I flew to see him. He
was standing in the kitchen. He had a round, crimson face and
wore a small felt cap on his head and a gleaming silver necklet
round his neck, showing that his father doted on him and, fearing
he might die, had made a pledge with the gods and buddhas,
using the necklet as a talisman. He was very shy, and I was the
only person he was not afraid of. When there was no one else
there, he would talk with me, so in a few hours we were fast
friends.

1. intercalary month (ihn TUHR kuh lehr ee muhnth) One year in the Chinese lunar
calendar consists of 360 days. Every few years, an extra, or intercalary, month is added to
the Chinese lunar calendar. The practice is similar to our leap year, when an extra day is
added to the end of February.

UNIT 6 Independent Learning • My Old Home IL12

 16 I don’t know what we talked of then, but I remember that
Jun-tu was in high spirits, saying that since he had come to town
he had seen many new things.
17 The next day I wanted him to catch birds.
18 “Can’t be done,” he said. “It’s only possible after a heavy
snowfall. On our sands, after it snows, I sweep clear a patch of
ground, prop up a big threshing basket with a short stick, and
scatter husks of grain beneath. When the birds come there to eat, I
tug a string tied to the stick, and the birds are caught in the basket.
There are all kinds: wild pheasants, woodcocks, wood-pigeons,
‘blue-backs’ . . .”
19 Accordingly I looked forward very eagerly to snow.
20 “Just now it is too cold,” said Jun-tu another time, “but you
must come to our place in summer. In the daytime we’ll go to
the seashore to look for shells, there are green ones and red ones,
besides ‘scare-devil’ shells and ‘buddha’s hands.’ In the evening
when dad and I go to see to the watermelons, you shall come too.”
21 “Is it to look out for thieves?”
22 “No. If passersby are thirsty and pick a watermelon, folk down
our way don’t consider it as stealing. What we have to look out for
are badgers, hedgehogs and zba. When under the moonlight you
hear the crunching sound made by the zba when it bites
the melons, then you take your pitchfork and creep stealthily
over. . . .”
23 I had no idea then what this thing called zba was—and I am
not much clearer now for that matter—but somehow I felt it was
something like a small dog, and very fierce.
24 “Don’t they bite people?”
25 “You have a pitchfork. You go across, and when you see it you
strike. It’s a very cunning creature and will rush towards you and
get away between your legs. Its fur is as slippery as oil. . . .”
26 I had never known that all these strange things existed: at the

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seashore there were shells all colors of the rainbow; watermelons
were exposed to such danger, yet all I had known of them before
was that they were sold in the greengrocer’s.
27 “On our shore, when the tide comes in, there are lots of jumping
fish, each with two legs like a frog. . . .”
28 Jun-tu’s mind was a treasure-house of such strange lore, all of
it outside the ken of my former friends. They were ignorant of all
these things and, while Jun-tu lived by the sea, they like me could
see only the four corners of the sky above the high courtyard wall.
29 Unfortunately, a month after New Year Jun-tu had to go home.
I burst into tears and he took refuge in the kitchen, crying and
refusing to come out, until finally his father carried him off. Later
he sent me by his father a packet of shells and a few very beautiful

IL13 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • My Old Home

 feathers, and I sent him presents once or twice, but we never saw
each other again.
30 Now that my mother mentioned him, this childhood memory
sprang into life like a flash of lightning, and I seemed to see my
beautiful old home. So I answered:
31 “Fine! And he—how is he?”
32 “He? . . . He’s not at all well off either,” said mother. And then,
looking out of the door: “Here come those people again. They say
they want to buy our furniture; but actually they just want to see
what they can pick up. I must go and watch them.”
33 Mother stood up and went out. The voices of several women
could be heard outside. I called Hung-erh to me and started
talking to him, asking him whether he could write, and whether
he would be glad to leave.
34 “Shall we be going by train?”
35 “Yes, we shall go by train.”
36 “And boat?”
37 “We shall take a boat first.”
38 “Oh! Like this! With such a long moustache!” A strange shrill
voice suddenly rang out.
39 I looked up with a start, and saw a woman of about fifty with
prominent cheekbones and thin lips. With her hands on her
hips, not wearing a skirt but with her trousered legs apart, she
stood in front of me just like the compass in a box of geometrical
instruments.
40 I was flabbergasted.
41 “Don’t you know me? Why, I have held you in my arms!”
42 I felt even more flabbergasted. Fortunately my mother came in
just then and said:
43 “He has been away so long, you must excuse him for forgetting.
You should remember,” she said to me, “this is Mrs. Yang from
across the road. . . . She has a beancurd shop.”
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44 Then, to be sure, I remembered. When I was a child there was

a Mrs. Yang who used to sit nearly all day long in the beancurd
shop across the road, and everybody used to call her Beancurd
Beauty. She used to powder herself, and her cheekbones were not
so prominent then nor her lips so thin; moreover she remained
seated all the time, so that I had never noticed this resemblance
to a compass. In those days people said that, thanks to her,
that beancurd shop did very good business. But, probably on
account of my age, she had made no impression on me, so that
later I forgot her entirely. However, the Compass was extremely
indignant and looked at me most contemptuously, just as one
might look at a Frenchman who had never heard of Napoleon or
an American who had never heard of Washington, and smiling
sarcastically she said:

UNIT 6 Independent Learning • My Old Home IL14

 45 “You had forgotten? Naturally I am beneath your notice. . . .”
46 “Certainly not . . . I . . .” I answered nervously, getting to
my feet.
47 “Then you listen to me, Master Hsun. You have grown rich,
and they are too heavy to move, so you can’t possibly want these
old pieces of furniture any more. You had better let me take them
away. Poor people like us can do with them.”
48 “I haven’t grown rich. I must sell these in order to buy . . .”
49 “Oh, come now, you have been made the intendant of a circuit,
how can you still say you’re not rich? You have three concubines
now, and whenever you go out it is in a big sedan-chair with eight
bearers. Do you still say you’re not rich? Hah! You can’t hide
anything from me.”
50 Knowing there was nothing I could say, I remained silent.
51 “Come now, really, the more money people have the more
miserly they get, and the more miserly they are the more money
they get . . .” remarked the Compass, turning indignantly away
and walking slowly off, casually picking up a pair of mother’s
gloves and stuffing them into her pocket as she went out.
52 After this a number of relatives in the neighborhood came
to call. In the intervals between entertaining them I did some
packing, and so three or four days passed.
53 One very cold afternoon, I sat drinking tea after lunch when I
was aware of someone coming in, and turned my head to see who
it was. At the first glance I gave an involuntary start, hastily stood
up and went over to welcome him.
54 The newcomer was Jun-tu. But although I knew at a glance
that this was Jun-tu, it was not the Jun-tu I remembered. He had
grown to twice his former size. His round face, once crimson, had
become sallow and acquired deep lines and wrinkles; his eyes too
had become like his father’s, the rims swollen and red, a feature
common to most peasants who work by the sea and are exposed

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all day to the wind from the ocean. He wore a shabby felt cap
and just one very thin padded jacket, with the result that he was
shivering from head to foot. He carried a paper package and a
long pipe, nor was his hand the plump red hand I remembered,
but coarse and clumsy and chapped, like the bark of a pine tree.
55 Delighted as I was, I did not know how to express myself, and
could only say: “Oh! Jun-tu—so it’s you? . . .”
56 After this there were so many things I wanted to talk about,
they should have poured out like a string of beads: woodcocks,
jumping fish, shells, zba. . . . But I was tongue-tied, unable to put
all I was thinking into words.
57 He stood there, mixed joy and sadness showing on his face.
His lips moved, but not a sound did he utter. Finally, assuming a
respectful attitude, he said clearly:

IL15 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • My Old Home

 58 “Master! . . .”
59 I felt a shiver run through me; for I knew then what a
lamentably thick wall had grown up between us. Yet I could not
say anything.
60 He turned his head to call:
61 “Shui-sheng, bow to the master.” Then he pulled forward a boy
who had been hiding behind his back, and this was just the Jun-tu
of twenty years before, only a little paler and thinner, and he had
no silver necklet.
62 “This is my fifth,” he said. “He’s not used to company, so he’s
shy and awkward.”
63 Mother came downstairs with Hung-erh, probably after hearing
our voices.
64 “I got your letter some time ago, madam,” said Jun-tu. “I was
really so pleased to know the master was coming back. . . .”
65 “Now, why are you so polite? Weren’t you playmates together
in the past?” said mother gaily. “You had better still call him
Brother Hsun as before.”
66 “Oh, you are really too. . . . What bad manners that would be.
I was a child then and didn’t understand.” As he was speaking
Jun-tu motioned Shui-sheng to come and bow, but the child was
shy, and stood stock-still behind his father.
67 “So he is Shui-sheng? Your fifth?” asked mother. “We are all
strangers, you can’t blame him for feeling shy. Hung-erh had
better take him out to play.”
68 When Hung-erh heard this he went over to Shui-sheng, and
Shui-sheng went out with him, entirely at his ease. Mother asked
Jun-tu to sit down, and after a little hesitation he did so; then
leaning his long pipe against the table he handed over the paper
package, saying:
69 “In winter there is nothing worth bringing; but these few beans
we dried ourselves, if you will excuse the liberty, sir.”
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70 When I asked him how things were with him, he just shook
his head.
71 “In a very bad way. Even my sixth can do a little work, but
still we haven’t enough to eat . . . and then there is no security . . .
all sorts of people want money, there is no fixed rule . . . and the
harvests are bad. You grow things, and when you take them to sell
you always have to pay several taxes and lose money, while if you
don’t try to sell, the things may go bad. . . .”
72 He kept shaking his head; yet, although his face was lined with
wrinkles, not one of them moved, just as if he were a stone statue.
No doubt he felt intensely bitter, but could not express himself. . . .
73 From her chat with him, mother learned that he was busy at
home and had to go back the next day; and since he had had

UNIT 6 Independent Learning • My Old Home IL16

 no lunch, she told him to go to the kitchen and fry some rice for
himself.
74 After he had gone out, mother and I both shook our heads over
his hard life: Many children, famines, taxes, soldiers, bandits,
officials, and landed gentry,2 all had squeezed him as dry as a
mummy. Mother said that we should offer him all the things we
were not going to take away, letting him choose for himself.
75 That afternoon he picked out a number of things: two long
tables, four chairs, an incense burner and candlesticks, and one
balance. He also asked for all the ashes from the stove (in our part
we cook over straw, and the ashes can be used to fertilize sandy
soil), saying that when we left he would come to take them away
by boat.
76 That night we talked again, but not of anything serious; and the
next morning he went away with Shui-sheng.
77 After another nine days it was time for us to leave. Jun-tu came
in the morning. Shui-sheng did not come with him—he had just
brought a little girl of five to watch the boat. We were very busy
all day, and had no time to talk. We also had quite a number of
visitors, some to see us off, some to fetch things, and some to do
both. It was nearly evening when we left by boat, and by that time
everything in the house, however old or shabby, large or small,
fine or coarse, had been cleared away.
78 As we set off, in the dusk, the green mountains on either side of
the river became deep blue, receding towards the stern of the boat.
79 Hung-erh and I, leaning against the cabin window, were
looking out together at the indistinct scene outside, when
suddenly he asked:
80 “Uncle, when shall we go back?”
81 “Go back? Do you mean that before you’ve left you want to
go back?”
82 “Well, Shui-sheng has invited me to his home. . . .” He opened

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wide his black eyes in anxious thought.
83 Mother and I both felt rather sad, and so Jun-tu’s name came up
again. Mother said that ever since our family started packing up,
Mrs. Yang from the beancurd shop had come over every day, and
the day before in the ash-heap she had unearthed a dozen bowls
and plates, which after some discussion she insisted must have
been buried there by Jun-tu, so that when he came to remove the
ashes he could take them home at the same time. After making
this discovery Mrs. Yang was very pleased with herself, and flew
off taking the dog-teaser with her. (The dog-teaser is used by
poultry keepers in our parts. It is a wooden cage inside which
food is put, so that hens can stretch their necks in to eat but dogs

2. landed gentry upper class of people who own land.

IL17 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • My Old Home

 can only look on furiously.) And it was a marvel, considering the
size of her feet, how fast she could run.
84 I was leaving the old house farther and farther behind, while
the hills and rivers of my old home were also receding gradually
ever farther in the distance. But I felt no regret. I only felt that
all round me was an invisible high wall, cutting me off from my
fellows, and this depressed me thoroughly. The vision of that
small hero with the silver necklet among the watermelons had
formerly been as clear as day, but now it suddenly blurred, adding
to my depression.
85 Mother and Hung-erh fell asleep.
86 I lay down, listening to the water rippling beneath the boat, and
knew that I was going my way. I thought: Although there is such
a barrier between Jun-tu and myself, the children still have much
in common, for wasn’t Hung-erh thinking of Shui-sheng just now?
I hope they will not be like us, that they will not allow a barrier to
grow up between them. But again I would not like them, because
they want to be akin, all to have a treadmill existence like mine,
nor to suffer like Jun-tu until they become stupefied, nor yet, like
others, to devote all their energies to dissipation. They should
have a new life, a life we have never experienced.
87 The access of hope made me suddenly afraid. When Jun-tu
asked for the incense burner and candlesticks I had laughed up
my sleeve at him, to think that he still worshiped idols and could
not put them out of his mind. Yet what I now called hope was no
more than an idol I had created myself. The only difference was
that what he desired was close at hand, while what I desired was
less easily realized.
88 As I dozed, a stretch of jade-green seashore spread itself before
my eyes, and above a round golden moon hung in a deep blue
sky. I thought: Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not
to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth
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had no roads to begin with, but when many men pass one way, a
road is made. ❧

UNIT 6 Independent Learning • My Old Home IL18

ESSAY

from
Writing as an
Act of Hope
Isabel Allende

About the Author

Isabel Allende was born in 1942 in Peru. She has
lived in numerous countries throughout the course of
her life, but currently lives in the United States.
Allende’s novels are often based upon personal
experience but also contain elements of the “magic
realism” tradition associated with the work of many
Latin American writers, including Gabriel García
Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges. Many people consider Allende to be the
most widely read Spanish-language author.

BACKGROUND
“Writing as an Act of Hope” is an excerpt from a slightly longer essay.
It is ostensibly Isabel Allende’s response to questions about writing that
she has been asked over and over again.

I n every interview during the last few years I encountered two

questions that forced me to define myself as a writer and as a
human being: Why do I write? And who do I write for? Tonight I
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will try to answer those questions.

2 In 1981, in Caracas, I put a sheet of paper in my typewriter
and wrote the first sentence of The House of the Spirits: “Barabbas
came to us by sea.” At that moment I didn’t know why I was
doing it, or for whom. In fact, I assumed that no one would ever
read it except my mother, who reads everything I write. I was
not even conscious that I was writing a novel. I thought I was
writing a letter—a spiritual letter to my grandfather, a formidable
old patriarch, whom I loved dearly. He had reached almost one
hundred years of age and decided that he was too tired to go on

IL19 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • from Writing as an Act of Hope

 living, so he sat in his armchair and refused to drink or eat, calling
for Death, who was kind enough to take him very soon.
3 I wanted to bid him farewell, but I couldn’t go back to Chile,1
and I knew that calling him on the telephone was useless, so I
began this letter. I wanted to tell him that he could go in peace
because all his memories were with me. I had forgotten nothing. I
had all his anecdotes, all the characters of the family, and to prove
it I began writing the story of Rose, the fiancée my grandfather
had had, who is called Rose the Beautiful in the book. She really
existed; she’s not a copy from García Márquez,2 as some people
have said.
4 For a year I wrote every night with no hesitation or plan. Words
came out like a violent torrent. I had thousands of untold words
stuck in my chest, threatening to choke me. The long silence of
exile was turning me to stone; I needed to open a valve and let
the river of secret words find a way out. At the end of that year
there were five hundred pages on my table; it didn’t look like a
letter anymore. On the other hand, my grandfather had died long
before, so the spiritual message had already reached him. So I
thought, “Well, maybe in this way I can tell some other people
about him, and about my country, and about my family and
myself.” So I just organized it a little bit, tied the manuscript with
a pink ribbon for luck, and took it to some publishers.
5 The spirit of my grandmother was protecting the book from
the very beginning, so it was refused everywhere in Venezuela.
Nobody wanted it—it was too long; I was a woman; nobody knew
me. So I sent it by mail to Spain, and the book was published
there. It had reviews, and it was translated and distributed in
other countries.
6 In the process of writing the anecdotes of the past, and recalling
the emotions and pains of my fate, and telling part of the history
of my country, I found that life became more comprehensible and
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the world more tolerable. I felt that my roots had been recovered
and that during that patient exercise of daily writing I had
also recovered my own soul. I felt at that time that writing was
unavoidable—that I couldn’t keep away from it. Writing is such
a pleasure; it is always a private orgy, creating and recreating the
world according to my own laws, fulfilling in those pages all my
dreams and exorcising some of my demons.

1. I couldn’t go back to Chile Following a successful military coup in 1973 in Chile,

the dictator Augusto Pinochet assumed power. He replaced the leader of the socialist
government, President Salvador Allende, a close relative of Isabel Allende’s. As a result,
Allende and her family were forced to flee the country. Pinochet remained in power
until 1990.
2. García Márquez Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) was a Colombian writer who
received the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. His novels, especially One Hundred Years
of Solitude and The Autumn of the Patriarch, helped popularize the literary style called
“magic realism.”

UNIT 6 Independent Learning • from Writing as an Act of Hope IL20

 7 But that is a rather simple explanation. There are other reasons
for writing.
8 Six years and three books have passed since The House of the
Spirits. Many things have changed for me in that time. I can no
longer pretend to be naïve, or elude questions, or find refuge
in irony. Now I am constantly confronted by my readers, and
they can be very tough. It’s not enough to write in a state of
trance, overwhelmed by the desire to tell a story. One has to be
responsible for each word, each idea. Be very careful: The written
word cannot be erased.
9 I began to receive academic papers from American universities
about the symbols in my books, or the metaphors, or the colors, or
the names. I’m always very scared by them. I just received three
different papers on Barabbas, the dog. One of them says that he
symbolizes the innocence of Clara because he accompanies her
during her youth, and when she falls in love, symbolically, the
dog dies in a pool of blood. . . . The second paper says that the dog
represents repression—the militarists—and the third paper says
that he is the male part of Clara, the hidden, dark, big beast in
her. Well, really, Barabbas was just the dog I had at home. And he
was killed as it was told in the book. But of course it sounds much
better to answer that Barabbas symbolizes the innocence of Clara,
so that’s the explanation I give when somebody asks.
10 Maybe the most important reason for writing is to prevent the
erosion of time, so that memories will not be blown away by the
wind. Write to register history, and name each thing. Write what
should not be forgotten. But then, why write novels? Probably
because I come from Latin America,3 a land of crazy, illuminated
people, of geological and political cataclysms—a land so large
and profound, so beautiful and frightening, that only novels can
describe its fascinating complexity.
11 A novel is like a window, open to an infinite landscape. In a

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novel we can put all the interrogations, we can register the most
extravagant, evil, obscene, incredible or magnificent facts—which,
in Latin America, are not hyperbole, because that is the dimension
of our reality. In a novel we can give an illusory order to chaos.
We can find the key to the labyrinth of history. We can make
excursions into the past, to try to understand the present and
dream the future. In a novel we can use everything: testimony,
chronicle, essay, fantasy, legend, poetry and other devices that
might help us to decode the mysteries of our world and discover
our true identity.
12 For a writer who nourishes himself or herself on images and
passions, to be born in a fabulous continent is a privilege. In

3. Latin America those countries of the Western Hemisphere south of the United States in
which Spanish, Portuguese, and French are primarily spoken.

IL21 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • from Writing as an Act of Hope

 Latin America we don’t have to stretch our imaginations. Critics
in Europe and the United States often stare in disbelief at Latin
American books, asking how the authors dare to invent those
incredible lies of young women who fly to heaven wrapped in
linen sheets; of black emperors who build fortresses with cement
and the blood of emasculated bulls; of outlaws who die of hunger
in the Amazon with bags full of emeralds on their backs; of
ancient tyrants who order their mothers to be flogged naked in
front of the troops and modern tyrants who order children to be
tortured in front of their parents; of hurricanes and earthquakes
that turn the world upside down; of revolutions made with
machetes, bullets, poems and kisses; of hallucinating landscapes
where reason is lost.
13 It is very hard to explain to critics that these things are not a
product of our pathological imaginations. They are written in our
history; we can find them every day in our newspapers. We hear
them in the streets; we suffer them frequently in our own lives.
It is impossible to speak of Latin America without mentioning
violence. We inhabit a land of terrible contrasts and we have to
survive in times of great violence.
14 Contrast and violence, two excellent ingredients for literature,
although for us, citizens of that reality, life is always suspended
from a very fragile thread.
15 The first, the most naked and visible form of violence, is the
extreme poverty of the majority, in contrast with the extreme
wealth of the very few. In my continent two opposite realities
coexist. One is a legal face, more or less comprehensible and with
a certain pretension to dignity and civilization. The other is a dark
and tragic face, which we do not like to show but which is always
threatening us. There is an apparent world and a real world—nice
neighborhoods where blond children play on their bicycles and
servants walk elegant dogs, and other neighborhoods, of slums
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and garbage, where dark children play naked with hungry mutts.
There are offices of marble and steel where young executives
discuss the stock market, and forgotten villages where people
still live and die as they did in the Middle Ages. There is a world
of fiction created by the official discourse, and another world of
blood and pain and love, where we have struggled for centuries.
16 In Latin America we all survive on the borderline of those
two realities. Our fragile democracies exist as long as they
don’t interfere with imperialist interests. Most of our republics
are dependent on submissiveness. Our institutions and laws
are inefficient. Our armed forces often act as mercenaries for
a privileged social group that pays tribute to transnational
enterprises. We are living in the worst economic, political and
social crisis since the conquest of America by the Spaniards. There

UNIT 6 Independent Learning • from Writing as an Act of Hope IL22

 are hardly two or three leaders in the whole continent. Social
inequality is greater every day, and to avoid an outburst of public
rancor, repression also rises day by day. Crime, drugs, misery and
ignorance are present in every Latin American country, and the
military is an immediate threat to society and civil governments.
We try to keep straight faces while our feet are stuck in a swamp
of violence, exploitation, corruption, the terror of the state and the
terrorism of those who take arms against the status quo.
17 Our Latin America is also a land of hope and friendship and
love. Writers navigate in these agitated waters. They don’t live
in ivory towers; they cannot remove themselves from this brutal
reality. In such circumstances there is no time and no wish for
narcissistic literature. Very few of our writers contemplate their
navel in self-centered monologue. The majority want desperately
to communicate.
18 I feel that writing is an act of hope, a sort of communion
with our fellow men. The writer of good will carries a lamp to
illuminate the dark corners. Only that, nothing more—a tiny beam
of light to show some hidden aspect of reality, to help decipher
and understand it and thus to initiate, if possible, a change in the
conscience of some readers. This kind of writer is not seduced by
the mermaid’s voice of celebrity or tempted by exclusive literary
circles. He has both feet planted firmly on the ground and walks
hand in hand with the people in the streets. He knows that the
lamp is very small and the shadows are immense. This makes him
humble.
19 But just as we should not believe that literature gives us any
sort of power, neither should we be paralyzed by false modesty.
We should continue to write in spite of the bruises and the vast
silence that frequently surrounds us. A book is not an end in itself;
it is only a way to touch someone—a bridge extended across a
space of loneliness and obscurity—and sometimes it is a way of

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winning other people to our causes.
20 I believe in certain principles and values: love, generosity,
justice. I know that sounds old-fashioned. However, I believe
in those values so firmly that I’m willing to provoke some
scornful smiles. I’m sure we have the capacity to build a more
gentle world—that doing so is our only alternative, because our
present equilibrium is very fragile. In literature, we have been
told, optimism is dangerous; it flirts with simplicity and is an
insurrection against the sacred laws of reason and good taste. But
I don’t belong to that group of desperate intellectuals. Despair is a
paralyzing feeling. It only benefits our enemies.
21 My second novel, Of Love and Shadows, tells about the
desaparecidos, “the disappeared ones.” It’s based on a political
massacre that took place in Chile in 1973 during the military coup

IL23 UNIT 6 Independent Learning • from Writing as an Act of Hope

 that put an end to 150 years of democracy. The novel denounces
repression and the impunity of the murderers, and it had a warm
reception from most readers and critics. But it also drew some
strong attacks. Some said it was too political and sentimental and
not very objective, as if one could be objective about the crimes
of a dictatorship. Maybe these critics would have forgiven me, as
other writers have been forgiven, if the book had only been a story
of horror and bitterness. They didn’t like the fact that in the novel
solidarity and hope prevail over death and torture. If the main
characters, Irene and Francisco, had died in a torture chamber, or
at least if the violent experiences they endured had drowned them
in despair and destroyed forever their capacity to love and to
dream, these critics might have been more tolerant. Evidently it’s
hard to accept in literature that love can be stronger than hatred,
although it frequently is in life.
22 If my books are going to be classified as political, I hope readers
will find out that they are not political for ideological reasons
only, but for other, more subtle considerations. They are political
precisely because Alba Trueba, in The House of the Spirits, who has
been . . . tortured and mutilated, is able to reconcile herself with
life; because Irene and Francisco, in Of Love and Shadows, make
love in spite of terror; because in my third novel, Eva Luna, Eva
defeats the odds of her fate with generosity and candor; because
these characters search for truth and have the courage to risk
their lives. . . . ❧
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UNIT 6 Independent Learning • from Writing as an Act of Hope IL24