Chapter 13 — Teaching Companion

What it asks It asks the student to look hard at the picture the narrator chooses for the glory at the moment it reaches Adam. The paragraph begins, “Whatever Cathy may have been, she set off the glory in Adam. His spirit rose flying and released him from fear and bitterness and rancid memories.” Then comes the star shell, and right after it: “Perhaps Adam did not see Cathy at all, so lighted was she by his eyes.” A star shell bursts high in the dark and hangs a hard white light over the ground below. The student says what that light would show and what it would do to the eye. It feeds the hinge: the comparison holds both halves of the question, a light that makes a dark world new and a light over a battlefield. The essay had already given the glory one explosive picture, “like a fuse burning toward dynamite”. The card must not say what Cathy will do to Adam later; the chapter does not show it.

One reading

A world made new. Under the flare the dark ground leaps into view, every shape suddenly clear and strange. That is what the essay promised: a man who has lived “in the gray” finds the whole world glowing. Adam has known only “half-sorrows and sick dissatisfactions”, and now he sees soil, tracks, oaks and a future. The light is a gift because it shows him a world he never saw.

• it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes
• His spirit rose flying and released him from fear and bitterness and rancid memories.

Another reading

A battlefield, still. A flare does not end the fighting; it lights it, harsh and white, for a moment, and the shadows behind things go blacker. Anyone staring into it cannot see past it. The very next sentence says so of Adam: he may not have seen Cathy at all. The ground he sees by is still a battleground.

• Perhaps Adam did not see Cathy at all, so lighted was she by his eyes.
• You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite.

Listen for

• Notices that the essay’s first picture of the glory is also an explosive, “like a fuse burning toward dynamite”, and asks why both pictures go off.
• Hears that the light falls on “a battleground”, not on a garden or a field, and asks who is fighting there.
• Notices the turn in the next sentence, “so lighted was she by his eyes”: the light comes from Adam, not from Cathy.
• Keeps to the page: the chapter does not say what Cathy will do to Adam, and the student should not supply it.

If stuck

• What is a star shell for?
• What would a battlefield look like at night, and then under a flare?
• When the flare burns out, what is left?

A strong answer A strong response says what the light would show and what it would hide, and stands on the fourth paragraph of the second section. One reader sees a world made new: under the flare the dark ground jumps into view, as the essay promised when a man who lived “in the gray” finds the whole world glowing, and Adam is freed from fear and bitterness. Another sees a battlefield, lit but not changed, with darker shadows and a light so bright the watcher cannot see past it, which is what the next sentence says of Adam. The best answers notice that the narrator chose a picture from war for his highest joy, and carry that into the last question.

What it asks It asks the student to test the narrator’s measure of a man on the one man the chapter shows without the glory. In the essay the narrator writes, “And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories.” In the second section Adam’s glory is so bright “that he did not notice the sullen pain in his brother, did not see the glinting in his brother’s eyes.” He sells his share of the farm to Charles “for less than it was worth” and leaves “free and rich”. The chapter then stays behind for one paragraph: Charles rubs his scar as the train pulls out, drinks four quick whiskies, goes up to the top floor of the inn, where his visit ends in tears, and then rages at his farm until “he became rich without pleasure and respected without friends.” The student decides whether the measure is fair to Charles, and what it leaves out. It feeds the hinge: the light that lifts Adam is the same light that kept him from seeing his brother’s pain, and the measure counts the glory but not what the glory fails to see. The card must not explain the scar or what lies between the brothers; this chapter tells neither. It must not say what Charles feels beyond what the page shows.

One reading

Fair. The narrator’s own words weigh Charles and find him light. He takes no rest and no pleasure; he forces his farm and his boundaries grow, but he gains nothing he enjoys and no friend. A man can be rich and respected and still count for little, and Charles shows how. Adam, lit up, leaves free; Charles, with no glory, is left with land.

• He took no rest, no recreation, and he became rich without pleasure and respected without friends.
• with that and his half of his father’s money he was free and rich

Another reading

Not fair. The measure counts glories and leaves out pain, and Charles is full of it: he rubs his scar, drinks, and cries in a stranger’s arms until she puts him out. That pain is exactly what Adam’s glory could not see. The narrator only guesses at his measure, and then gives Charles a paragraph the measure has no room for. A light that never saw his pain is a strange scale to weigh him on.

• He cried in her arms until she put him out.
• And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories.

Listen for

• Hears the hedge in “I guess”, and asks how sure the narrator is of his own measure.
• Notices the two pairs, “rich without pleasure and respected without friends”, and asks what the missing halves have to do with the glory.
• Asks what “the glinting in his brother’s eyes” might be, tears or something harder; the page does not say.
• Keeps to the page: the chapter does not tell where the scar came from or what lies between the brothers, and the student need not supply it.

If stuck

• What does the narrator say a man’s importance can be measured by?
• What does Charles do after the train pulls out?
• What does Charles have at the end of that paragraph, and what does he lack?

A strong answer A strong response tests the measure on Charles and stands on the essay’s first paragraph and the paragraph after the station. One reader calls it fair: by the narrator’s own words Charles becomes “rich without pleasure and respected without friends”, a man with land and no glory, while Adam leaves free. Another calls it unfair: the measure counts glories and leaves out pain, and Charles’s pain, the scar, the whiskies, the tears in a stranger’s arms, is the very thing Adam’s glory did not see. The best answers notice that the narrator only guesses at his measure, and carry the question of what the glory cannot see into the last question.

What it asks It asks the student to weigh the free mind the essay praises against the forces that brought Adam to the valley. The essay has warned that “mass method is bound to get into our thinking”. Now the narrator says, “How they happened to go to the Salinas Valley is very easy to understand.” The railroads, “striving to increase and to dominate”, put out booklets and broadsides, and “the company had to create customers to get custom.” Adam studied one that set forth the valley “as that region which heaven unsuccessfully imitated.” Yet “Adam did not rush at his purchase”: he drove from farm to farm, crumbled dirt in his fingers, put an auger down through the subsoil, and knelt at the game tracks. The student weighs how much of where he settles, the valley and then the ranch, was his own choice. It feeds the hinge: the glory runs on a bright picture, and here someone else painted one. The card must not tie the essay’s attack on mass thinking to any one named country; the narrator speaks of “some nations”.

One reading

Very little. The railroad made the picture and Adam bought it. The narrator says so with a straight face: no claim was too extravagant, and anyone who did not want to settle there was crazy. Adam’s glory needs a bright picture, and here a company printed one for him, the way his own mind made a sweet and holy girl. Even Bordoni knew before Adam did.

• After reading the literature, anyone who did not want to settle in the Salinas Valley was crazy.
• Bordoni knew Adam was going to buy his land long before Adam knew it.

Another reading

Most of it. The broadside brought him to the valley, but it did not choose his land. He asked about soil and water, climate and crops, the small wild plants, and he walked every foot. “It was not speculation with Adam.” A free mind can take a hint from an advertisement and still decide for itself.

• Adam did not rush at his purchase.
• He drove and rode and walked over every foot of the land.

Listen for

• Hears the narrator’s tone in “very easy to understand” and “was crazy”, and asks whether he is laughing at Adam or at the railroad.
• Notices that the essay has just warned that mass method gets into our thinking, and asks whether a railroad broadside is mass method at work.
• Sets the broadside’s heaven beside harder words for the valley: the Hamilton hills “will break a man’s heart”, and the Sanchez house ends on rats that “will gnaw at the hide if they are let”.
• Keeps to the page: the narrator’s attack on mass thinking names no country; he says “some nations”.

If stuck

• What did the broadside say the valley was like?
• What did Adam do before he bought?
• Who knew Adam would buy the Sanchez place before Adam did?

A strong answer A strong response weighs the broadside against the testing, and stands on the railroad paragraphs and the Sanchez paragraphs. One reader says little of the choice was Adam’s: the company had to create customers, the broadside sold a heaven, and Adam, whose glory runs on a bright picture, bought one someone else painted; even Bordoni knew before he did. Another says most of it was his: the broadside brought him, but he did not rush, and he walked every foot of the land before he shook hands. The best answers notice that Bordoni knew before Adam did, and ask whether Adam’s care was a choice or the steps of a choice already made.

What it asks It asks the student to weigh the doctor’s promise and the joke that follows it, the gap between the room upstairs and the lobby. In the room Dr. Tilson finds the knitting needle, shakes it in Cathy’s face, and tells her, “The baby is safe. Your aim was bad.” He threatens her with the law: “I will charge you, I will testify against you, and I will see you punished.” Only then “The cold went out of her eyes and a weak sadness took its place.” She gives him a reason, “I’m tainted. Epilepsy.”, and adds, “I couldn’t bring that to my husband.” His anger disappears “like mist”, he promises, “I won’t tell your husband what you did.”, and he puts the knitting needle in his pocket. Downstairs he uses “his trick, his standard joke”, and Adam hears only “Your wife is going to have a baby.” The student says whom the doctor’s silence protects, and at what cost. It feeds the hinge: the narrator says “nothing Cathy did or said could warp Adam’s Cathy”, and here the picture is kept whole by someone else’s silence, so the blindness is not Adam’s alone. The card must not say why Cathy really tried to end the pregnancy (the epilepsy story is the reason she gives the doctor, and the chapter has shown her lying before), and must not say who fathered the baby.

One reading

Cathy, and she won it. The doctor holds the needle and the law, and she says nothing until he threatens to see her punished. Only then does the cold leave her eyes and a story come out. In a few lines he goes from “You’re a fool” to “Tell me, my dear.” His silence keeps her from the law and from her husband, and it leaves Adam’s picture of her untouched.

• The cold went out of her eyes and a weak sadness took its place.
• All right then. I won’t tell your husband what you did.

Another reading

Adam, or so the doctor believes. Tilson has just told Cathy, “You’ve got a good husband,” and she tells him she could not bring a sickness to a man “so good, so strong.” Keeping quiet spares that good man a wound and sends him running up the stairs to his wife. It is what Adam’s glory does for him, gift and danger both: he builds his home on what he is not told.

• You’ve got a good husband.
• Adam bolted clumsily up the narrow stairs.

Listen for

• Notices that the cold leaves Cathy’s eyes right after the doctor threatens to see her punished, and asks what she was answering.
• Hears the doctor go from “You’re a fool” to “Tell me, my dear.”, and asks what turned him: her story, or his dread of “the sick silence between his sentences”.
• Weighs the joke in the lobby, “the only good sickness there is”, and asks what a joke does in that place.
• Keeps to the page: the epilepsy story is the reason Cathy gives; the chapter does not say whether it is true, or who fathered the baby.

If stuck

• What does the doctor know when he comes down the stairs?
• What does Cathy tell him, and what happens to his anger?
• Who would be hurt if Adam heard everything?

A strong answer A strong response names who is protected and at what cost, and stands on the hotel pages. One reader says the silence protects Cathy, and that she won it: she says nothing until the doctor threatens to see her punished, then the cold leaves her eyes, she gives a reason, and he goes from “You’re a fool” to “Tell me, my dear.” Another says it protects Adam, the good husband both of them name, and sends him happy up the stairs. The best answers notice that the needle leaves in the doctor’s pocket and a joke stands in its place, so Adam’s picture of Cathy is kept whole by someone else’s silence, and carry that into the last question.

What it asks It asks the student to stand inside Samuel while he tells the story of Tom and the sofa. Samuel calls Tom “a hell-bent boy” who “Pleasures too much, sorrows too much”, adds “Liza thinks I’m like that”, and says, “I don’t know what will come to Tom. Maybe greatness, maybe the noose”. Dressing for the dance, Tom “glories like spring flowers”. With only a hay rake left, he hitches two horses to “the fine goose-neck horsehair sofa that Liza loves better than anything”, the one Samuel gave her “to rest on before George was born.” “The last I saw,” Samuel says, Tom was going up the hill reclining on it. He tells it with his blue eyes shining and puts his hands on his hips “the better to laugh.” The student says what kept him from stopping it. It feeds the hinge: a man who loves the glory watches it cost his wife the thing she loves best, and a comic story asks the chapter’s question in small. The card must not say what becomes of Tom; the chapter leaves it at “Maybe greatness, maybe the noose”.

One reading

Delight. Samuel loves the glory in Tom because it is his own: Liza thinks he is like that, and his eyes shine as he tells it. He would rather lose a sofa than shame a boy who has dressed up for a dance. Like the narrator, he treasures that spirit, cost and all.

• Samuel’s blue eyes shone with pleasure.
• Liza thinks I’m like that.

Another reading

Not delight alone. Liza was asleep, and Samuel let the moment pass rather than wake a fight, though he knows what it costs her: “sofa” is “a word of anger and sorrow to Liza.” His laugh carries the doubt he says out loud about Tom. He did not stop the boy because he could not tell which this was, greatness or the noose.

• It’s a word of anger and sorrow to Liza.
• Maybe greatness, maybe the noose

Listen for

• Notices that the chapter’s only other “glories” belongs to Tom dressing for a dance, and asks whether that makes Adam’s glory larger or smaller.
• Hears “Maybe greatness, maybe the noose” as Samuel’s own verdict on a hell-bent spirit, and asks how close it comes to the chapter’s question.
• Weighs “For good or bad, Liza was taking her nap”: Samuel was the one awake.
• Keeps to the page: the chapter does not say what becomes of Tom, and the hanged Hamiltons are a story Samuel says he will tell “sometime”.

If stuck

• What was left in the wagon house when Tom came out?
• How does Samuel feel as he tells the story? How will Liza feel when the sofa comes back?
• Samuel says Liza thinks he is like Tom. Is he?

A strong answer A strong response stands inside Samuel and on the forge pages. One reader says delight kept him still: he loves the glory in Tom because it is his own, his eyes shine as he tells it, and he would rather lose a sofa than shame a boy dressed for a dance. Another says he held back because he could not judge it, letting the sleeping Liza lie and laughing at a spirit he himself calls maybe greatness, maybe the noose. The best answers notice that the chapter lends Tom the word “glories”, and carry Samuel’s doubt into the last question.

What it asks It asks the student to test both pictures of Cathy against the chapter’s own claim about where angels and devils come from. The narrator writes, “It doesn’t matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can’t understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins.” He imagines “a secret pond” in everyone, a fence most of what grows there cannot climb, and a man whose evil grows strong enough to “wriggle over the fence and swim free”. Then: “It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.” A paragraph later Adam carries “an image of beauty and tenderness, a sweet and holy girl”. In the hotel, Cathy’s eyes are “as cold as glass” and Dr. Tilson finds “something inhuman about her”; then she says “I’m sorry” and gives him a reason. The student builds a thesis on who invented Cathy, meets the strongest objection, and revises. It feeds the hinge: if only Adam’s Cathy is invented, his glory is blind; if the narrator’s is too, the glory may be no blinder than anyone’s judgment. The card must not say why Cathy tried to end the pregnancy or who fathered the baby, and must not bring in deeds from earlier chapters as if this one showed them.

One reading

Adam invented her; the narrator did not. Adam’s Cathy is built of nothing on the page: she says she does not want to go and he does not listen, she gives noncommittal answers and he hears enthusiasm. The narrator’s word is borne out in this very chapter by the needle, the silence, the cold eyes and a doctor who finds something inhuman in her. The monster is not an invention but a report.

• She said she did not want to go to California and he did not listen, because his Cathy took his arm and started first.
• Her eyes were as cold as glass.

Another reading

Both did. The narrator says so himself: perhaps we cannot understand Cathy, and we invented devils as surely as angels, out of our own hidden water. The word monster names what we fear in ourselves, as holy girl names what Adam longs for. The chapter shows a woman who is cold, then sad, then smiling up at her husband, and neither picture holds all of her.

• Perhaps we can’t understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins.
• Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our hidden water?

Listen for

• Notices “his Cathy” in the sentence about California: two Cathys go to the train, and only one of them took his arm.
• Hears the word “our” in “our monster”, and asks who owns a monster.
• Sets “Her eyes were as cold as glass” beside “a weak sadness took its place”, and asks which eyes are hers, or whether both are.
• Keeps to the page: the chapter does not say why Cathy tried to end the pregnancy, or whether the epilepsy story is true.

If stuck

• What does Adam’s picture of Cathy have in it?
• What do we see Cathy do in the hotel room?
• The narrator says we invented both angels and devils. Who is the “we”?

A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says Adam invented his Cathy and the narrator did not: Adam’s holy girl is built of nothing on the page, since he does not listen when she says she will not go, while the narrator’s word is borne out by the needle, the cold eyes and a doctor who finds something inhuman in her. The strongest objection is the narrator’s own: perhaps we cannot understand Cathy, and we invented devils as surely as angels, out of our own hidden water. A good revision might hold that Adam invents an angel and the narrator a monster, but only one of them knows he is doing it, and ask what that knowing is worth.

What it asks It asks the student to set two men’s inner worlds side by side. Samuel’s eyes are “light blue and filled with a young delight”; Louis warns that he is “all full of plans—a hundred plans a day” and “all full of hope”, and that “some of his plans work out.” At the forge Samuel explains the soil, the hard-pan that is “one of the main curses of our valley”, and his dynamite. Then: “I can see myself sitting on my dust heap making a world in my mind as surely as God created this one. But God saw this world. I’ll never see mine except—this way.” He promises a valley that “could feed the world”, falls silent when “A cloud seemed to come over his eyes”, and speaks of “a blackness on this valley”. Adam answers only the bright half, saying Samuel makes it sound “like a good place to settle”. At the blackness he shivers and leaves. The student builds a thesis on whether Adam could say what Samuel says, meets the strongest objection, and revises. It feeds the hinge: if Samuel holds a glory that knows itself, the chapter shows that the glory need not be blind. The card must not say the blackness comes true; here it is a feeling Samuel cannot explain.

One reading

No. Samuel knows the world he makes is in his mind: God saw His, and Samuel never will see his. He sees the dark beside the light, the hard-pan, the cloud, the blackness. Adam does not know his Cathy is a picture; the image simply was Cathy to him. Samuel’s glory looks out, and Adam’s looks only at what it lights.

• But God saw this world. I’ll never see mine except—this way.
• and that image was Cathy to her husband

Another reading

Nearly. Samuel lives inside his picture too. He can find water nearly everywhere but on his own place, lives on land that Louis says will break a man’s heart, and cannot rest when he knows it could be richer. His hope lets him live there, as Adam’s lets him buy. Samuel says it aloud, but saying it does not make him see further: of the blackness he says, “I don’t know what it is”.

• Nearly every place except my own.
• Yes, it is, but a man can’t entirely rest when he knows it could be richer.

Listen for

• Notices that Adam hears only the bright half, “like a good place to settle”, right after Samuel falls silent, and asks where else in the chapter Adam hears only half.
• Hears Samuel’s own words for a free mind, “A hungry man gorges with his mind” and “a man’s mind can’t stay in time the way his body does”, and asks whether he is the essay’s free, roving mind in person.
• Weighs Adam’s shiver at the blackness, and the night he “struggled all night with his thoughts” before he shook hands with Bordoni.
• Keeps to the page: the blackness is a feeling Samuel cannot name; the chapter does not say it comes true.

If stuck

• What does Samuel build on his dust heap?
• What does Samuel see in the valley besides its riches?
• Does Adam know that his Cathy is a picture?

A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says Adam could not say it: Samuel knows his world lives in his mind and sees the hard-pan and the blackness beside the riches, while for Adam the image simply was Cathy. The strongest objection is that Samuel lives inside his picture too, finding water everywhere but on his own place and hoping on land that breaks men’s hearts, and that naming the blackness does not help him see it. A good revision might hold that both men are lit by a glory, but only one knows where its light comes from, and weigh how much that knowing protects him.

What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. The narrator opens by praising a glory that lights one mind, “the mother of all creativeness”, and declares that “the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world”, ending “If the glory can be killed, we are lost.” Then he shows it come to Adam “through Cathy”, says Adam may not have seen her at all, and follows him: past his brother’s pain, across the continent on a broadside’s promise, over every foot of the Sanchez land, past a hotel room where Cathy has nearly bled to death trying to end her pregnancy, to a lobby where he hears only “Your wife is going to have a baby.” At Samuel’s forge he hears of a rich valley and a blackness, struggles all night, and shakes hands with Bordoni. The student builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say what happens at the birth or how many are born, who fathered the baby, why Cathy really tried to end the pregnancy, or that Samuel’s blackness comes true.

One reading

A gift. The narrator sides with it: it released Adam from fear and bitterness after a life of “half-sorrows and sick dissatisfactions”. It makes him generous to his brother, careful with land, liked by the valley, and ready to found a home. Without it he would be Charles, rich without pleasure. The narrator would fight for it: if the glory can be killed, we are lost.

• His spirit rose flying and released him from fear and bitterness and rancid memories.
• If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Another reading

A danger. The same light that frees him blinds him. He does not listen when Cathy says she will not go, does not see his brother’s pain, does not hear her answers about the ranch, and is told a joke about the only good sickness after the knitting needle has gone into the doctor’s pocket. A glory that cannot see the person beside it builds a life on a picture.

• And he didn’t listen to her noncommittal answers.
• He thought that she linked arms with his enthusiasm.

Listen for

• Notices that the narrator says “It doesn’t matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster”, and asks to whom it does not matter.
• Weighs “It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world” against what the glory does between Adam and Cathy.
• Sets Adam’s care with the land (the auger, the game tracks) beside his not listening to Cathy, and asks whether the glory blinds him everywhere or only to her.
• Keeps to the page: the chapter ends on a handshake with Bordoni; it does not show the birth, name the father, or prove the epilepsy story true or false.

If stuck

• What did the glory free Adam from?
• What does Adam miss because of it?
• Would Adam be better off without it, like Charles?

A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says the glory is a gift: it frees Adam from fear, bitterness and rancid memories, makes him generous and careful, and is the thing the narrator says he would fight for. The strongest objection is everything it hides: a brother’s pain, a wife who said she did not want to go, and the room upstairs, where the doctor learns what Adam is never told. A good revision might hold that the narrator praises the glory knowing it is blind, and asks the reader to hold both at once. The best answers stay with the page and do not reach past the handshake with Bordoni.