Say Yes

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LESSON FIVE

• Say Yes

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A Profile Tobias Wolff (1945---- )

• Tobias Wolff was born in Alabama in 1945. His
  parents divorced when he was a boy. Wolffs
  mother retained custody of him, while his brother
  Geoffrey who also became a writer who lived with
  their father. As a child, Wolff traveled with his
  mother, Rosemary, to the Pacific Northwest, where
  she remarried. Growing up in the Pacific
  Northwest, young Tobias soon was forced to endure
  life under his strict and cruel stepfather. His
  efforts to get away from his stepfather led to
  his self-transformation. That period of Wolffs
  life is recounted in This Boys Life A Memoir,
  which was later made into a film.
• He lives with his family in upstate New York
  and teaches writing at Syracuse University.

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• From 1964 through 1968, Wolff served as a
  lieutenant with the U.S. Army Special Forces
  (Green Berets) in Vietnam. He later recounted his
  wartime experiences in the memoir In the
  Pharaohs Army Memoirs of the Lost War. In
  1972 Wolff earned his B.A. and then his M.A. from
  Oxford University with First Class Honors in
  English three years later. That year, his first
  book, Ugly Rumours, was published in London. Also
  that year, he won a prestigious Stegner
  Fellowship from Stanford University.

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• He is the author of the short novel The Barracks
  Thief, which won the 1985 PEN/Faulkner Award
• two collections of short stories, Back in the
  World (collecting Say Yes) and In the Garden of
  the North American Martyrs, which received the
  Saint Lawrence Award for fiction in 1982
• Mr. Wolff's work appears frequently in Esquire,
  Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, and other magazines
  and reviews.

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Old School
Works

• The Night In Question Stories

This Boys Life (autobiography)
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• BACK IN THE WORLD

BARRACKS THIEF/SELE/
In Pharaoh's Army Memories of the Lost War
In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs
The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short
Stories
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Theme of the text

• The idea of racism is a theme in the story, for
  the implication of the husbands racism is what
  causes the couple to quarrel. The wife dislikes
  her husbands beliefs that African Americans are
  different from whites. He maintains that it is
  not that he is prejudiced against African
  Americans, but that they come from a different
  culture than white people
• they even have their own language.

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• His protestation that I like hearing them talk
• because it makes him feel happy reveals much
  about his personality his belief that African
  Americans are inherently foreign to whites, and
  his condescending(????????)attitude. He needs
  something completely unlike himself to bring him
  pleasure.
• The husbands negative response to Anns question
  of whether he would marry her were she African
  American indicates the pervasive and destructive
  nature of his racism.

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Husband

• The husband in the story is generally an
  unsympathetic character. He appears to have
  racist feelings and seems to be dishonest with
  himself. He claims to appreciate the stability of
  his life with Ann, yet he makes efforts to
  undermine it. He refuses to take responsibility
  for his actions. Throughout the evening, he is
  seen to be less than a genuine person he does
  things for effect rather than out of a genuine,
  sincere desire. In the story, his most
  significant trait is his rejection of his wife,
  which she takes quite seriously, much to his
  surprise. By the end of the story, the husband
  demonstrates yet another shift in mood
  excitement as he realizes that, in certain ways,
  his wife is unknowable to him. The final scene
  has him awaiting his wife in their darkened
  bedroom, imagining that she is a stranger that he
  seems to embrace, as demonstrated by the excited
  pounding of his heart.

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• Introduction Wolff has often been likened to
  other writers of his generation such as Raymond
  Carver and Richard Ford. In his short stories,
  Wolff practices a direct, even nondramatic, style
  of writing. This is certainly the case in his
  story Say Yes which takes as its backdrop an
  average evening in the life of a married couple.
  When the conversation delves into an issue on
  which the couple do not agree, the relationship
  experiences a newfound rockiness. The husbands
  reaction to this argument demonstrates the secret
  undercurrents that run through relationships.

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• Comments
• Tobias Wolff is perhaps best known by the
  American reading public for his memoir This Boy?
  Life, which was later made into an acclaimed
  movie, but his literary reputation was first
  established on the merit of his short stories. He
  is still primarily known for these short stories,
  in which he depicts many characters voices and a
  wide range of emotions. Since the early 1980s,
  Wolff has produced several collections of short
  stories. These fictions focus on the important
  relationships and the moral choices in everyday
  peoples lives men and women, husbands and
  wives, parents and children. As scholar Marilyn
  C. Wesley writes in the Dictionary of Literary
  Biography, Wolff writes about the basic needs of
  Everyman, written with a respect that Everyman
  deserves.

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Historical Context The Republican Years

• The 1980s was a decade led by Republican policy.
• Ronald Reagan took office as president of the
  United States in 1980, and served two terms,
  after which his vice president, George Bush, was
  elected to the nations top office.

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• Reagan held conservative political beliefs, both
  on the domestic front and when it came to foreign
  policy. Although his economic programs brought
  the national inflation rate down, they also
  seemed to favor the wealthy. During the Reagan
  era, many middle-class Americans saw their
  personal income shrinking, while the richest of
  Americans increased their wealth.

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• By the 1980s, as the United States and the Soviet
  Union built up a stockpile of nuclear weapons,
  the cold war had been ongoing for almost forty
  years. led by the two superpowers. Reagan, an
  ardent opponent of communism, encouraged his
  administration to greatly increase military
  spending.

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Topics for Further Study

• 1. How do you think the husband and wife will
  resolve their situation?
• Do you think they will resolve it?
• Write a scene that takes place the following
  day.
• 2. Analyze the husband in terms of whether or not
  he is a racist character.

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Topics

• 3. Write a counterargument to the husbands
  statement that African Americans dont come from
  the same culture as whites.

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Information background

• 1980s At the beginning of the 1980s, nine
  percent of all United States households are made
  up solely of a married couple. There are over
  forty-eight million married couples in the United
  States. 1990s At the end of the 1990s, only
  three percent of all United States households are
  made up solely of a married couple. There are
  close to fifty-five million married couples in
  the United States. 1980s In 1980, 67.2 percent
  of the white American population is married, and
  51.4 percent of the African-American population
  is married. 1990s While more than half of the
  American population continues to marry, the
  percentages for both whites and African Americans
  has decreased in the past ten years. In 1997,
  62.1 percent of the white American population is
  married, and 42.4 percent of the African-American
  population is married. 1980s In 1980, there
  are 651,0000 interracial couples in the United
  States....

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a look at the new integrated Literatures

• Units on Toni Morrison's Beloved,
• Alice Walker's The Color Purple,
• Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun,
• Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
• Johnnie Lee Gray was an African-American painter
  whose themes focused around the Jim Crow era. His
  paintings bring to life the experience of African
  Americans in the South of his youth and the South
  of today.

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Band-Aid

• A trademark for a piece of thin material that is
  stuck to the skin to cover cuts and other small
  wounds.

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• hypo- prefix meaning below, under
• 1) in words denoting an organ or location below a
  given body part ?-- ??
• hypoderm ????
• 2) in terms denoting a body condition in which
  substances or functions are at below-normal
  levels ??
• hypotension ???? hypothermia ????
• 3) used in the names of chemical compounds that
  are in a lower state of oxidation(??) than a
  given compound ?
• 4) counterpart to a word formed with
  hyper(?--??,??, ??,??)
• hypotension ???? ---- hypertension ????

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• hyper- excessive??, ??, ??,??
• hypersensitive
• hyperphysical???? ????
• hyperoxide ????
• hypercritic ????,?????
• hyperbole ???
• hyperacid????

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• consider v.
• E.g. All things considered, the reform is a
  success.
• considerate a. showing kind regard for the
  feelings,
• thoughtful, careful not to hurt or cause
  inconvenience
• to others
• E.g. It is considerate of you not to play
• the piano while I was having a sleep.
• considerable a. rather large or great , as in
• size , distance, or
  extent
• E.g. He bought a house at a considerable expense.
• considering prep. in view of, having regard to
• E.g. Shes very active, considering her age.

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• break up divide/ split, (a couple, relationship)
  come to
• an end
• break down collapse, failure in machinery
  useless,
• suffer physical or mental
  weakening
• break in (to) enter a building by force
• break away go away suddenly, give up (idea,
  belief)
• break through make a way through
• break off stop, pause

His health has broken ____ from overwork. A.
down B. in C. off D. away
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• ashamed feeling shame?????,???
• E.g. You should feel ashamed of what you have
  done.
• shameful???,?????
• E.g. shameful conduct
• shameless without shame, immodest?????
• E.g. shameless exploiter

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• Ku Klux Klan
• a secret white supremacist organization at
  various times in American
• history terrorized blacks and white sympathizers
  with violent acts of
• lynching, shootings, and whippings.
• pronunciation kOO klucks klan also Known As kKK
• 
  KKK
  Symbol
• Founder Confederate Civil War veterans Captain
  John C. Lester, Major James R. Crowe, John D.
  Kennedy, Calvin Jones, Richard R. Reed, Frank O.
  McCord
• Founded 1866
• Headquarters
• Imperial Klans of America is headquartered in
  Powderly, Kentucky
• American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in
  Butler, Indiana
• Knights of the White Kamelia in Jasper,
  Texas.
• Background The Klan has fragmented into scores
  of competing factions. Most of these are
  nominally independent, while a few remain
  affiliated with one of the umbrella groups listed
  above.

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KKK

• Estimated size No more than a few thousand,
  organized into slightly more than 100 units.
• Media Mass mailings, leafletting and the
  Internet
• Strategy Public rallies and protests,
  "Adopt-A-Highway" programs, Internet
• Ideology Some Christian fundamentalist beliefs,
  Christian Identity, white supremacy
• Connections Militias, Aryans Nations, National
  Alliance
• Financial support Little. Even Imperial Wizards
  have to hold day jobs. Most funding comes from
  membership dues and sales of Klan paraphernalia.

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Birth of the Klan

• Six college students founded the Ku Klux Klan
  between December 1865 and the summer of 1866 in
  the town of Pulaski, Tennessee. Former
  Confederate officers, the six young men organized
  as a social club or fraternity and spent their
  time in horseplay of various types, including
  wearing disguises and galloping about town after
  dark. They were surprised to learn that their
  nightly appearances were causing fear,
  particularly among farmer slaves in the area.
  They quickly took advantage of this effect and
  the group began a rapid expansion. Various
  factions formed in different towns, which led to
  a meeting in April 1867 to codify rules and
  organizational structure.

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• Targeting those set free after the American Civil
  War - the African Americans, KKK designed to
  spread fear throughout the Black population that
  still lived in the southern states. This was the
  KKK. Only WASPs could belong to it   White
  Anglo-Saxon Protestants. It is common that the
  KKK targeted only the Blacks - also the Jews,
  Catholics, liberals etc but most hatred was
  directed against the poor black families in the
  south who were very vulnerable to attack.

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Reconstruction era kkk

• In 1867, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the
  Grand Wizard of the Empire, converted the Klan
  into a paramilitary force that served to directly
  oppose the formation of Republican governments
  set up by Congressional Reconstruction acts.
  Klansmen dressed in white robes and covered
  hoods, rode on horses, and dragged black people
  and some white republicans from their homes,
  assaulting them by whipping or lynching them.
  Such assaults were successful in keeping black
  men from the polls, and thus altering election
  results.
• To stop the reconstruction era Klan, federal
  intervention was necessary. With the enactment of
  Congressional legislation and enforcement of the
  law by the federal government, the Klan was
  extinguished in 1871 1872.

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The World War I Era Klan

• In 1915, the second Klan era began. As World War
  I was underway, a strong patriotism developed and
  anti-Catholic sentiments emerged. Along with
  these new ideas, white supremacist attitudes, the
  publication of Thomas Dixons novel, The Clansman
  (1905), and the 1915 movie, Birth of a Nation, by
  D.W. Griffith, a new Klan emerged.
• It was at this time that cross burning became a
  popular form of intimidation.

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Periods

• The leader of the KKK in the 1920s was a dentist
  called Hiram Wesley Evans whose name in the KKK
  was Imperial Wizard. The KKK were a violent
  organization. The white KKK burnt churches of the
  black population, murdered, raped, castrated etc
  and they were rarely caught as most senior law
  officers in the South were high ranking KKK men
  or sympathetic with their aims - which was a
  white protestant south. Even white people who had
  contacts with the blacks had reason to fear the
  KKK.

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• The Black Americans tried to fight back using
  non-violent methods. The NAACP (National
  Association for the Advancement of Colored
  People) asked Washington for new laws to help
  combat the KKK violence but received very little,
  if any, help.
• In the 1920s Black Americans started to turn to
  the Back to Africa movement which told blacks
  that they should return to their native America.
  This was started by Marcus Garvey but the whole
  movement faltered when he was arrested for fraud
  and sent to prison.

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The Civil Rights Era Klan

• By the 1960s, as the civil rights movement was
  emerging, the Klans membership reached almost
  twenty thousand. Like the former Klan
  organization, there was not a central leadership.
  
• While the Klan still exists today, its membership
  is in the low thousands. The Klan has ties to
  other white supremacist organizations such as the
  Aryan Nations and the Skinheads.

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Creation of the Jim Crow South

• In the South, during the 1870s and 1880s, it was
  not uncommon for blacks and whites to use the
  same public facilities. However, Supreme Court
  decisions began to strip away the gains of
  Reconstruction, which led the way to the creation
  of Jim Crow laws.

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Jim Crow Laws

•  
• After 1877, and the election of Republican
  Rutherford B. Hayes, the South quickly replaced
  Reconstruction laws with new ones that restricted
  the rights of blacks. These laws allowed the
  South's new upper class of planters, merchants
  and industrialists to prosper, while most blacks
  sank deeper into poverty. Between 1880 and 1900,
  the per capita income of the Deep South showed no
  increase at all, and the average black farmer's
  decreased. Racial segregation, called "Jim Crow,"
  excluded blacks from public transport and
  facilities, jobs, juries, and neighborhoods.
  Blacks had separate hospitals, prisons,
  orphanages, parks and pools. The 19th century
  ended with the races firmly segregated --
  culturally and legally.

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• The End