T3XT. Note: The below excerpt is for foundation knowledge and is not to be directly applied to the prompt.

Transcription

1 T3XT Note: The below excerpt is for foundation knowledge and is not to be directly applied to the prompt. excerpt from Buffalo Tales: The Near-Extermination of the American Bison by Shepard Krech III, Brown University; National Humanities Center The decline of the buffalo is largely a nineteenth-century story. The size of the herds was affected by predation (by humans and wolves), disease, fires, climate, competition from horses, the market, and other factors. Fires often swept the grasslands, sometimes maiming and killing buffaloes. Millions of horses in Indian herds competed for grasses. Drought was perhaps most significant; severe prior to the fifteenth century, and episodic in the eighteenth, it might have been worst at the very moment when other pressures converged in the early years of the decades from 1840 to Yet no matter the impact from drought, horses, or fires, what doomed the buffalo most were (1) the commodities markets for buffalo tongues, skins, meat, and robes; and (2) the railroads, which provided the means of transportation to rapidly expanding European-American populations. Again largely a nineteenth-century tale, the final stage from 1867 to 1884 was notable for the fury of the slaughter for hides and other products. In 1867 the first of five railroads split the herd in the heart of buffalo range, a process repeated again and again. Provisioners like Buffalo Bill Cody, sportsmen, farmers, and ranchers who craved the prairies for crops and cattle all placed new pressure on bison. The railroads made transportation of buffalo hides easy and cheap, so market hunters flooded in, wasting three to five times the numbers they killed. The carnage from herds already depleted by other factors defied description: 4-5 million killed in three years alone. The commercial hunt was finished by the fall of Indians, confined to reservations and distressed from hunger, took part until the bitter end. 1

2 Without Title: for my father who lived without ceremony by Diane Glancy Textbook, pg. 39 It s hard you know without the buffalo, the shaman, the arrow, but my father went out each day to hunt as though he had them. He worked in the stockyards. All his life he brought us meat. No one marked his first kill, no one sang his buffalo song. Without a vision he had migrated to the city and went to work in the packing house. When he brought home his horns and hides my mother said get rid of them. I remember the animal tracks of his car backing out the drive in snow and mud, the aerial on his old car waving like a bow string. I remember the silence of his lost power, the red buffalo painted on his chest. Oh, I couldn t see it but it was there, and in the night I heard his buffalo grunt like a snore. 2

3 Explain how the text, context, and subtext connect in Without Title: for my father who lived without ceremony by Diane Glancy to produce meaning. Cite examples from each element. First Graphic Organizer Purpose: this will help organize your thoughts and gather evidence so that you can make the connections later. Fill in your notes and quotations in the vertical columns one at a time while ignoring the other columns. This is akin to free writing. Text (keyword[s]) (Blank) Context (what happened to inspire this?) Subtext (author s purpose or tone) 3

4 Text (keyword[s]) buffalo hunt stockyards kill (Filled In - Example) Context (what happened to inspire this?)...the buffalo, the shaman, the arrow... This seems to be taking place in present time, after the Native Americans were removed from their lands. When he brought home his horns and hides my mother said get rid of them. The culture of the father s past doesn t seem to fit into the present scenario he is living in. Subtext (author s purpose or tone) No one marked his first kill I remember the silence of his lost power There is a history the father remembers and seems lonely that he can t experience it. The wife doesn t understand him so there is a disconnect. But the daughter - the narrator - seems interested. 4

5 Second Graphic Organizer Purpose: this will allow you to structure your response in a format that is a rough draft. Your final draft will essentially become a more clearly written response of what is written below. Don t forget to add an introduction sentence and concluding sentence. Put your primary elements (text, context, and subtext) in any order you like in the gray boxes down the middle. Then choose whichever elements you want to connect them to and place them in the white boxes beneath. Fill in your notes and quotations from your first graphic organizer into the far right column. Primary Element (Blank) Connecting Element of Your Choice Primary Element Connecting Element of Your Choice Primary Element Connecting Element of Your Choice 5

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7 Note: Remember to remove the first-person pronoun without removing the writer s voice behind it. No I, but keep your unique voice. Let the evidence be objective. Response (Example): (With the exception of the introduction sentence and the conclusion sentence, every sentence in the response paragraph comes from the second graphic organizer in the order in which they were organized. This forms a clear and analytical response to the original prompt: Explain how the text, context, and subtext connect in Without Title: for my father who lived without ceremony by Diane Glancy to produce meaning.) The meaning of Without Title: for my father who lived without ceremony by Diane Glancy is to portray the cultural loneliness of a man whose ancestors way of life is as nearly extinct as the buffalo they so heavily relied upon. In her poem, Glancy uses keywords such as hunt and stockyards. These two pieces of text highlight the difference between the professions of the father s ancestors in contrast to the father s current profession. The narrator even says, When he brought home his horns and hides my mother said get rid of them, which shows that the father doesn t seem to belong in this present time. However, the father is a good man because even if he can t provide for his family by bringing meat home from a hunt, he brings meat home from his job at the stockyards. The reader can sense the father s loneliness such as when Glancy writes, No one marked his first kill... which illuminates the concept that his ancestry is an important part of his life that is missing. If he was living in the time of his ancestors, his first kill would have been celebrated as entry into manhood. The mistreatment of the Native Americans such as being forced from their land and having their greatest resource - buffalo - hunted to near extinction, has led to their descendants feeling alone and out of place. 7

8 Your Turn Directions: Read the following two poems and choose one. Explain how the text, context, and subtext connect in the poem of your choice to produce meaning. Cite examples from each element: text, context, and subtext. Remember to use your graphic organizers to form your response. Sonnet, with Pride by Sherman Alexie Inspired by Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan & Niko Henrichon 1. In 2003, during the Iraq War, a pride of lions escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during an American bombing raid. 2. Confused, injured, unexpectedly free, the lions roamed the streets searching for food and safety. 3. For just a moment, imagine yourself as an Iraqi living in Baghdad. You are running for cover as the U.S. bombers, like metal pterodactyls, roar overhead. You are running for cover as some of your fellow citizens, armed and angry, fire rifles, rocket launchers, and mortars into the sky. You are running for cover as people are dying all around you. It s war, war, war. And then you turn a corner and see a pride of freaking lions advancing on you. 4. Now, imagine yourself as a lion that has never been on a hunt. That has never walked outside of a cage. That has been coddled and fed all of its life. And now your world is exploding all around you. It s war, war, war. And then you turn a corner and see a pride of freaking tanks advancing on you. 5. It s okay to laugh. It s always okay to laugh at tragedy. If lions are capable of laughter, then I m positive those Baghdad lions were laughing at their predicament. As they watched the city burn and collapse, I m sure a lioness turned to a lion and said, So do you still think you re the King of the Jungle? 6. I don t know if the lions killed anybody as they roamed through the streets. 7. But I d guess they were too afraid. I m sure they could only see humans as zookeepers, not food. 8. In any case, the starving lions were eventually shot and killed by U.S. soldiers on patrol. 9. It s a sad and terrible story, yes, but that is war. And war is everywhere. And everywhere, there are prides of lions wandering inside your hearts. 10. You might also think that I m using starving lions as a metaphor for homeless folks, but I m not. Homeless folks have been used far too often as targets for metaphors. I m using those starving lions as a simple metaphor for hunger. All of our hunger. 11. Food-hunger. Love-hunger. Faith-hunger. Soul-hunger. 12. Who among us has not been hungry? Who among us has not been vulnerable? Who among us has not been a starving lion? Who among us has not been a prey animal? Who among us has not been a predator? 8

9 13. They say God created humans in God s image. But what if God also created lion s in God s image? What if God created hunger in God s image? What if God is hunger? Tell me, how do you pray to hunger? How do you ask for hunger s blessing? How will hunger teach you to forgive? How will hunger teach you how to love? 14. Look out the window. It s all hunger and war. Hunger and war. Hunger and war. And the endless pride of lions. Asphodel by A.E. Stallings (after the words of Penny Turner, Nuymphaion, Greece) Our guide turned in her saddle, broke the spell: You ride now through a field of asphodel, The flower that grows on the plains of hell. Across just such a field the pale shade came Of proud Achilles, who had preferred a name And short life to a long life without fame, And summoned by Odysseus he gave This wisdom, Better by far to be a slave Among the living, than great among the grave. I used to wonder, how did such a bloom Become associated with the tomb? Then one evening, walking through the gloom, I noticed a strange fragrance. It was sweet, Like honey - but with hints of rotting meat. An army of them bristled at my feet. from The Best of the Best of American Poetry (2000) 9

10 First Graphic Organizer 10

11 Second Graphic Organizer 11

12 Your Response 12