“Remind the people to be subject
to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men.”
~ Titus 3:1–2
Larry King was gently scolding Al Gore. CNN’s Larry King Live was blaring from my mother’s opaque Panasonic 25-inch screen. Electrons danced across this colander of 21st century entertainment. Cable television munificence clashed with dancing electronic intruders. Bounteous contradictions were everywhere evident.
It did not matter, though, because my mother only accessed one-third of her available channels. The effort to ingress more exotic offerings in the upper channels was fatuous anyway. From Mom’s perspective, she only needed CNN, the Weather Channel, and the History Channel. Even the local news did not interest her now. This was all the entertainment she needed and, to her, news was entertainment. Mom was dying of pancreatic cancer.
Lying under a brightly colored afghan knitted by her mother, who was affectionately called Big Momma by all other generations, Mom was obviously defeated by the cancer interlopers who had completely subdued her body and were now skirmishing with her spirit. With her blonde frosted wig slightly askew on her forehead, Mom very much appeared the defeated warrior.
She needed the bright color in the afghan to tease vigor from her emaciated frame and color from her pallid skin. Big Momma had shamelessly knit bright chartreuse, gold, and pinks into her afghan. Her cacophonic choices doomed the afghan to family coffers or to the most destitute recipient who had no ardor for natural, appealing, subtle hues or had no affordable choice anyway. My mother’s body, naturally big boned but until recently pudgy, unnaturally jutted out from loose knitted afghan perimeters. Her angular right knee was lassoed by a frayed portion of Big Momma’s much-used, little-appreciated afghan. It looked like a reptile peeking through the burnished flora of a viscous jungle thicket.
It suited my mother just fine now, though. She herself felt frayed, tattered, and very old. She also felt used and useless. In the dim hue of Larry King Live, the afghan and my mother had a bizarre, surrealistic demeanor that accurately depicted the environs of her crumbling world.
It started with a stomach ache. Ordinary in scope and sequence, this stomach ache nonetheless was an aberration in my mother’s medical portfolio. Mom simply wasn’t sick. Never. Her delusion of immortality was so endemic to her personality that sickness was beyond the realm of her possibilities.
Unfortunately, the stomach ache ended and the anemia began. In most medical communities anemia is a sure sign that something is amiss in the gastrointestinal cosmos. In the Southern Arkansas universe where my mother lived, medicine was more empathic than empirical, and anemia was perceived as too much fried chicken or turnip greens. This diagnosis worked well enough, perhaps better, than conventional interventions in colds, flu, and the occasional gall bladder attack. However, in the really big things — like pancreatic cancer — normal rural Southern medical practice was hopelessly dilatory and inevitably, therefore, nugatory.
My mother, who walked three miles a day and regularly ate chicken gizzards fried in old lard, shrugged her shoulders and forgot about the whole thing. In fact, even after Geritol and BC Powders failed, she refused to visit her doctor. To question a doctor-friend’s diagnosis was worse than a serious illness — it was downright unfriendly, something my mother manifestly refused to be. With confident sanguineness, old Dr. E.P. Donahue, throat reflector protruding from his head, oversized Masonic ring protruding from his left middle finger, pronounced mom to be in remarkably good health. Dr. Donahue, who had delivered all Mom’s three boys, was infallible. The medical “pope” as it were, whose edicts, once promulgated, were infallible.
Mom’s malady, however, was already fatal. Her stamina and obstinacy propelled her forward for almost a year, but the carcinoma had already ambushed her. No one could tell, though, because she was in such great health. Like a beautiful price mare whose robustness and wholesomeness camouflaged its metastasis malevolent concealed interior. “My health,” my mother said as she ironically shrugged, “killed me.”
By the time our family surgeon and good friend Dr. Johnny Joe Jones, one of Dr. Donahue’s cardinals, called the hogs with mom one last time before she went into the operating room and opened her up with his scalpel, mom was mellifluent with metastatic carcinoma.
My mother did not know, but would find out an important truth: we are crucified with Christ, yet, it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us. Mom did not know it, but that part of life that was hers, was ebbing, and that which was God’s, was rising. Yet, in a sense, we all are dying physically, every day. But in Christ, we live forever — not metaphorically, but in reality.
My mother was walking onto the stage into a drama whose ending she could not control. She knew the ending, or at least she shortly would know the ending.
The question was, “Will it be a comedy or a tragedy? Will it have a happy ending, or a sad one?” It was never about cancer. It was about life. Life eternal. How about you? When you walk onto the stage of life, are you joining a drama with a happy or sad ending?
The truth is, the script had been written in eternity long before her physician found the carcinoma. And her script, as all our scripts, was written by a Creator God who loves us dearly.
“When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you”1 (Friedrich Nietzsche). On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society by Gertrude Himmelfarb argues that the “abyss is the abyss of meaninglessness.”2 The interpreter takes precedence over the thing interpreted, and any interpretation goes. The most obvious aim of such a creed is to weaken our hold on reality, chiefly by denying that there is any reality for us to get hold of; its most probable effect, if we were to take it seriously, would be to induce feelings of despair and dread. This view invites the tyranny of the subjective — anything goes so long as it does not hurt anyone and it is believed sincerely.
My poor mother had looked into the abyss. Even though she knew the Lord as Savior, it was precious little comfort to her as she faced pancreatic cancer. Yet, in the midst of this crisis, in the midst of her confusion, the clarity for her, as it is for us all, is the Cross at Calvary! I am crucified with Christ.
The Use of Contrasts
Antithesis, or contrast, is one of the two most effective devices at the disposal of any artist, whether he works with words or colors. Its skillful use often enables a newspaper writer to make a good item out of trifling material. The object of this week’s work is to teach a little of the art of using antithesis effectively in reportorial work.
What contrasts exist in the following passages?
- London, Dec. 25 — Mrs. Rebecca Clarke, who is 109 years of age, presided this morning at the wedding breakfast of her baby son, Harry, who is 67. This is Mr. Clarke’s second venture on the matrimonial sea. His two brothers are sprightly bachelors of 70 and 73 years. Mrs. Clarke toasted the newly married couple and ate the first slice of the wedding cake. She attended the Christmas wedding celebration in the evening.
- Commuters in Yonkers took advantage of the Christmas holiday to mow their lawns. The grass has been getting longer and longer, owing to the spring weather, until it just had to be cut.
The greens keeper at Dunwoodie says that the greens have been mowed four times since the latter part of September, when in ordinary seasons the grass is mowed for the last time until spring. The condition of the course is about the same as in May, according to the greens keeper.
Up in Bronx Park the grass has not been mowed recently, but it is unusually long for the time of year, and so it is in the other city parks. The same condition prevails in the nearby cemeteries. Out in New Jersey, a fine crop of grass is in evidence.
Farmers in the vicinity of New York are saving on their usual bills for winter fodder, for with the spring weather and the long grass the animals can pick up a living out of doors.
Writers enhance their writing by using sensory details: sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. For instance compare these two sentences.
My shirt had dried food on it.
My starched shirt had dried ketchup smudges with surrounding dirt rings.
Clearly the second sentence is better!
The Good Earth4
Pearl S. Buck
This moving novel is the story of a simple, humble, Chinese farmer who, in his own lifetime, became a wealthy, landed Chinese aristocrat. However, this farmer’s hubris eventually destroys him.
Suggested Vocabulary Words
- There was only this perfect sympathy of movement, of turning this earth of theirs over and over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their gods. . . .
- But Wang Lung thought of his land and pondered this way and that, with the sickened heart of deferred hope, how he could get back to it. He belonged, not to this scum which clung to the walls of a rich man’s house; nor did he belong to the rich man’s house. He belonged to the land and he could not live with any fullness until he felt the land under his feet and followed a plow in the springtime and bore a scythe in his hand at harvest.
Discerning the Argument
In order to demonstrate the primary role of women in The Good Earth, it is essential to discuss the women that exemplify each position and prototype. Representative of these roles are O’lan, as the first wife of the household, Lotus, as concubine, and Pear Blossom, as slave, serving as a servant to the family. O’lan was the first wife of Wang Lung and the foundation of family order and structure. Her role in the novel exemplified that of a farmer’s wife, while revealing her as a definite influence upon Wang Lung’s conscience, his fortune in life, and his life as a whole. Mother, farmer, and regulator of the household, O’lan in the The Good Earth is essential in every respect. For she radiated a strength both internal and physical, which remained the underlying base of the Wang family until her death. Thus, her presence is undoubtedly a principal contributor to the lives of her family since she embodies the position of first wife, the female figure at the top of the family structure in China. Lotus on the other hand played the role of concubine in the Wang household, further exemplifying a characteristic true to Chinese lifestyle. Although a notch below the first wife in status, she gained her power within the house through the manipulation of her master. Lotus employed this medium of control to obtain her material desires and hence, affect Wang Lung’s psychological security.6 (Janice E. Stockard, Daughters of the Canton Delta)
Which statement(s) are true?
- The primary role of women is obvious. They are the strength that, in the background, by emotional and spiritual sustenance, support the male figures of the household.
- Women are monolithic objects with no real value or importance.
- Women are very important. They provide needed dynamic economic support in a household income that was static.
A. I B. II
C. III D. I & III
E. None
Extrapolation from Data
The breeding season of the buffalo is from the 1st of July to the 1st of October. The young cow does not breed until she is three years old, and although two calves are sometimes produced at a birth, one is the usual number. The calves are born in April, May, and June, and sometimes, though rarely, as late as the middle of August. The calf follows its mother until it is a year old, or even older. In May, 1886, the Smithsonian expedition captured a calf alive, which had been abandoned by its mother because it could not keep up with her. Unlike the young of nearly all other Bovidæ, the buffalo calf during the first months of its existence is clad with hair of a totally different color from that which covers him during the remainder of his life.
His pelage is a luxuriant growth of rather long, wavy hair, of a uniform brownish-yellow or “sandy” color (cinnamon, or yellow ocher, with a shade of Indian yellow) all over the head, body, and tail, in striking contrast with the darker colors of the older animals. On the lower half of the leg it is lighter, shorter, and straight. On the shoulders and hump the hair is longer than on the other portions, being 1½ inches in length, more wavy, and already arranges itself in the tufts, or small bunches, so characteristic in the adult animal.7 (W. Hornaday, The Extermination of the American Bison)
The following conclusions may be extrapolated from the above information.
- The American bison is a mammal.
- The American bison calf is helpless and totally dependent upon parents.
- The American bison lives in a herd/group.
- The American bison female will occasionally abandon her calf.
- I
- II
- III
- IV
- I and II
- I and IV
- All
- None
If the bison herd was under attack by predators, when the calf was three weeks old, what do you conclude will happen?
- The herd, especially the parents, will protect the calf.
- The calf can run, albeit at a slower pace than adult bisons.
- The three-week-old calf would be the most likely victim to the predators.
- The color of the calf’s coat will help him blend into the surroundings.
- I
- II
- III
- IV
- I & II
- I & IV
- All
- None