Chapter 34 — Teaching Companion

This chapter's big question

The narrator says that most of our vices are “attempted short cuts to love.” Does that make wrongdoing easier to forgive, or only easier to understand?

The tension The richest man of the century did “great service to the world” and his death was received “with pleasure”; the clever man of power was praised by the nation “and, just beneath, with gladness that he was dead”; the third man, who “perhaps made many errors,” was mourned in the streets with “How can we go on without him?”

Today's focus

Notice how the narrator builds his argument from a question, an old story and three remembered deaths, and where he admits doubt.

The shape at a glance

The chapter is an essay. The story stops, and the narrator speaks to the reader in his own voice. It opens on a question anyone might ask: what is the world’s story about? He answers that there is one story only, humans caught in a net of good and evil, and that at the end of a life two questions are left: was it good or evil, and have I done well or ill. Then he tells a story from Herodotus. Croesus, the richest king of his time, asks the wise Solon who is the luckiest person in the world, hoping to hear his own name. Solon says he cannot tell, because Croesus is not dead yet. Croesus loses his luck, his wealth and his kingdom, and is burned on a fire. The narrator says that at any great man’s death the question is still Croesus’s question, and that the measure is whether he was loved or hated: is his death felt as a loss, or does a kind of joy come of it? He remembers three deaths. The richest man of the century clawed his way to wealth, then spent years trying to buy back love and did great service to the world; when the news reached the ship the narrator was on, nearly everyone was pleased. A second man, clever and blind to human dignity, bought, bribed and threatened his way to great power; the nation praised him and, just beneath, was glad he was dead. A third man, who perhaps made many errors, gave his life to making frightened people brave and good; at his death people wept in the streets and asked how they could go on without him. The narrator says that in uncertainty he is certain that people want to be good and to be loved, and that most vices are short cuts to love. A man who dies unloved has failed, to himself, so we should live so that our death brings the world no pleasure. He ends where he began: there is one story. Evil must keep being born again, while virtue is immortal and venerable.

A way in

Read the chapter yourself before the lesson; it is short. It comes right after the deaths of Dessie and Tom Hamilton, but it never mentions them or anyone else in the story. If the student asks whether the essay is about the Hamiltons, let the question stand: the essay names no one, and the guide does not make it a verdict on anyone in the book. Some background the chapter assumes. Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian, and his history tells of the wars between the Greeks and the Persians. Croesus was a king of Lydia famous for his riches; Solon was a lawgiver of Athens. In Herodotus the story goes on past where the narrator stops: on the fire, Croesus calls out Solon’s name and is spared. The narrator stops at the fire and says only that Croesus “may have thought of it.” Do not require this; share it after the second discussion question if it helps. A Pearl White serial is a silent-film adventure told in episodes, its heroine often left in danger at the end of one. Warp and woof are the lengthwise and crosswise threads of woven cloth. The narrator names none of the three men whose deaths he remembers. Do not supply names, and steer the talk away from guessing; what matters is what he does with them. Keep his hedges in view: “perhaps,” “It seems to me,” “it occurs to me,” and above all “In uncertainty I am certain.” Slow down three times: at Solon’s answer, at the three deaths read one after another, and at the paragraph that begins “In uncertainty I am certain.”

Lesson plan

Retell The student tells the argument back, from the question at the top of the chapter to the last lines about vice and virtue. Look for the steps in order: one story, a net of good and evil, and the two hard questions at the end of a life; Croesus’s question to Solon, Solon’s “You aren’t dead yet,” and the fire; the turn to “our time” and the measuring stick, loved or hated; the three deaths, each with how it was received; “In uncertainty I am certain” and the short cuts to love; the advice; and the closing contest. Look for the narrator’s hedges kept in, and no names given to the three men. Then ask which sentence the argument turns on, and why.

Imitate the author After copying, the student writes four sentences in the manner of the first passage, on something they believe but cannot prove: a sentence that opens on a doubt and a claim together, as “In uncertainty I am certain” does; a short sentence beginning “Indeed” that presses the claim one step further; a long sentence that holds its main clause back behind “when,” “no matter what” and “if”; and a closing sentence of advice that turns to “you or I.” Then two sentences in the manner of the second passage, each balanced on “while,” setting two things against each other. Read them aloud beside Steinbeck’s and ask where each sentence puts its weight.

Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues that the claim makes wrongdoing easier to forgive. It gathers “men want to be good and want to be loved”; the rich man’s years “trying to buy back the love he had forfeited”; the third man’s errors, which did not stop the tears; and the dying that is “a cold horror.” The other side argues that it makes wrongdoing only easier to understand. It gathers “attempted,” a short cut that does not arrive; the climb “through the souls and bodies of men”; the bribed man who “can only hate his briber”; the ship’s pleasure and the nation’s gladness, which the narrator lets stand; and advice that warns rather than pardons. Each side must answer the other’s strongest piece. Neither may name the three men or turn the essay into a verdict on anyone in the story.

Purpose Close on the chapter’s design. Steinbeck stops the story right after the Hamilton deaths and lets the narrator speak to the reader directly. The essay moves from a question anyone might ask, to an old story, to three deaths the narrator remembers, to a claim, to advice, and ends on the claim it began with: “We have only one story.” Solon’s answer is the essay’s method in small: wait for the end, then judge. Ask why the essay comes where it does, without making it a verdict on anyone in the book, and what the last two sentences leave open. Name the habit the chapter practices: following an argument step by step and testing each step against the examples it is built on.

Three levels

Easier Read the whole chapter aloud together; it is short. Stop after Solon’s answer, after each of the three deaths, and after “short cuts to love,” and ask the student to say in one sentence what the narrator has just claimed. Talk through the second, fourth and fifth discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.

On level Talk through all five discussion questions in order, then write both written questions as a thesis, the strongest objection and a revised thesis, each with lines from the chapter.

Harder Ask for one argued essay: what does the narrator’s argument leave out? Every example he gives is a king or a famous man whose death a crowd hears about. Test his measure on a life no crowd will ever hear of, and on someone loved who did real harm. Meet the strongest objection to your side, and keep his “In uncertainty I am certain” in view.

Discussion

1. The net of good and evil catches people everywhere, even in “their kindness and generosity too.” How could kindness catch a person?Theme

What it asks It asks the student to look hard at one list in the opening. The narrator says there is “one story in the world, and only one,” and then: “Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil.” The list runs from hungers to cruelty, and then, with “too,” it takes in kindness and generosity. A net holds whatever it catches. A few sentences later: “There is no other story.” Further on, the richest man spends years “trying to buy back the love he had forfeited,” and the second man “clothed his motives in the names of virtue.”

A strong answer A strong response explains how kindness can catch a person and grounds it in the opening list. One reader says kindness can be bait or a disguise: the richest man gave for years “trying to buy back the love he had forfeited,” and the second man dressed his motives in virtue’s names, so a person can be caught in their own generosity. Another says the net is the whole of a life, not a punishment: “There is no other story,” and kindness holds us inside the contest as surely as cruelty does. The best answers notice the word “too,” and carry the question forward to the short cuts to love.

2. Croesus asked Solon who was the luckiest person in the world, and the narrator turns that into a question of good and evil. What does luck have to do with being good?Inference

What it asks It asks the student to test the step the whole essay stands on. Croesus puts a leading question to Solon: “Who,” he asked, “is the luckiest person in the world?” Solon answers, “How can I tell?” and “You aren’t dead yet.” The answer “must have haunted Croesus dismally as his luck disappeared, and his wealth and his kingdom.” Then the narrator turns to “our time”: when a man of wealth and power dies, “the question is still there: Was his life good or was it evil?—which is another way of putting Croesus’s question.” One sentence later the measure changes again: “Was he loved or was he hated? Is his death felt as a loss or does a kind of joy come of it?” Lucky, good, loved: the narrator moves through three measures and treats them as one.

A strong answer A strong response says what luck has to do with being good, and whether a question about luck can become a question about good and evil, and grounds it in the Croesus story and the paragraph after it. One reader says the only luck that lasts is a good life: Croesus’s riches disappeared, Solon would count nothing until the end, and at the end only the hard question is left. Another says the narrator slides from luck to good to “Was he loved or was he hated?”, and the last step hands the verdict back to other people, which is a kind of luck again. The best answers notice all three measures, and carry the question forward to the three deaths, where the narrator puts his measure to work, and to his claim that underneath, people “want to be loved.”

3. “A bribed man can only hate his briber,” the narrator writes, because the briber has “removed his self-love.” Who took that self-love away, the man who offered the gift or the man who took it?Moral reasoning

What it asks It asks the student to weigh the second man’s paragraph, and one line in it. The second man, “smart as Satan,” was “lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness,” and he “used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power.” Then: “He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man’s love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber.” The narrator puts the removing on the briber: “you have removed.” The bribed men are never shown choosing. At this man’s death, “the nation rang with praise and, just beneath, with gladness that he was dead.”

A strong answer A strong response decides who took the self-love away and grounds it in the second man’s paragraph. One reader says the briber did: he hunted out “every aspect of human weakness and wickedness” and used bribes beside threats and seduction, so the bribed men were trapped, and their hate is just. Another says the bribed man gave his self-love up when he took the gift, and hates the briber because hating himself is harder; if men “want to be good,” the hate is a way of not looking. The best answers notice that the narrator writes “you have removed,” ask whether both men were taking short cuts, and carry the question toward who, in the narrator’s account, deserves forgiveness.

4. The third man gave his life to making people brave, yet at his death they weep in the streets and think, “How can we go on without him?” Are those the words of brave people?Character

What it asks It asks the student to set the third man’s life’s work beside the way he was mourned. He “perhaps made many errors in performance but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when ugly forces were loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by the few. When he died the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, “What can we do now? How can we go on without him?”” Of the three deaths, this is the one “felt as a loss,” the narrator’s measure of a good life. But the words in the people’s minds are frightened words.

A strong answer A strong response decides whether the mourners’ words are brave ones and grounds it in the third man’s paragraph. One reader says no: people he had truly made brave would not ask “What can we do now?”, so the grief shows they leaned on him, and a death felt as a loss may measure need rather than strength. Another says yes, or as brave as grief allows: people once “poor and frightened” now fear only losing him, and weeping together is not running away. The best answers ask what the narrator’s measure is counting here, love for a man or the good he did, and whether being needed is a kind of love or a short cut to it.

5. At the top of the chapter, a grown-up asks what the world’s story is about and how it ends. What do the narrator’s last two sentences say about how it ends?Plot structure

What it asks It asks the student to hold the essay’s first lines against its last. The chapter opens on two askers. The first asks only, “What is the world’s story about?” The second, a grown man or woman, asks more: “What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?” The narrator answers the question about the story at once: “there is one story in the world, and only one.” The essay’s last paragraph comes back to it: “We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.” Respawn and venerable are vocabulary words. Each of the last two sentences turns on “while.”

A strong answer A strong response says what the last two sentences tell about how the world’s story ends, and grounds it in the closing paragraph and the opening questions. One reader says virtue lasts: evil must “constantly respawn” because it keeps dying, while virtue is “immortal,” so the world goes toward what holds. Another says the story does not end: the contest is “never-ending,” vice always has a new young face, and the only endings are single lives, which is why the essay measures lives at their deaths. The best answers notice the hedge “it occurs to me,” say whether the ending is a hope, a warning, or both, and ask what a fresh young face has to do with short cuts.

Critical thinking

1. Nearly everyone on the ship was glad the richest man had died, yet the narrator says his good works may have outweighed the evils of his rise. If that is so, what is left of his measuring stick?

What it asks It asks the student to hold the narrator’s measure against his own first example. Just before the three deaths he sets out the measuring stick: “Was he loved or was he hated? Is his death felt as a loss or does a kind of joy come of it?” He adds that at a death “Envies are gone.” Then the first of the three men, “having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise.” When the news reached the ship, “nearly everyone received the news with pleasure.” By the measuring stick, this life failed. By the narrator’s “perhaps,” it may have done more good than harm. A paragraph later another “perhaps” sits on the third man’s errors, and the second man’s paragraph says that “no gift will ever buy back a man’s love when you have removed his self-love.”

A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis on what is left of the measuring stick, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says all of it is left: the stick asks whether a man was loved, the richest man’s service was a way of “trying to buy back the love he had forfeited,” and the narrator says no gift buys back love, so the “perhaps” weighs a different thing. The strongest objection is that a man who did “great service to the world” died to cheers, so the stick can miss real good, and the cheering may be envy, though the narrator says “Envies are gone.” A good revision might say the stick measures how a life ends for the one who lived it, not what it gave the world, which is why the narrator calls an unloved life “a failure to him.” The best answers name none of the three men and keep the narrator’s “perhaps” in view.

2. The narrator says that most of our vices are “attempted short cuts to love.” Does that make wrongdoing easier to forgive, or only easier to understand?

What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. After the three deaths the narrator writes: “In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love.” He has just set out three lives. The richest man climbed to wealth and then spent years trying to win love back; at his death the ship is glad. The second man bought and bribed his way to power and “clothed his motives in the names of virtue”; the nation’s praise had gladness “just beneath.” The third man “perhaps made many errors” and was mourned in the streets. The narrator goes on: a man who “dies unloved” finds his life “a failure to him and his dying a cold horror,” and “we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.” He says most vices, not all. He does not say the glad people on the ship were wrong. The essay names none of the three men and mentions no one in the story.

A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says the claim makes wrongdoing easier to forgive: if a vice is a clumsy reach for love, the wrong is in the road and not the heart, and the narrator finds “underneath” every frailty a wish to be good and loved; a man dying unloved, in “a cold horror,” calls for pity. The strongest objection is that understanding is not pardon: “attempted” short cuts still run through other people, the narrator lets the ship’s pleasure and the nation’s gladness stand, and his advice is a warning to live so our death “brings no pleasure.” A good revision might say the claim makes forgiveness possible without making it owed, or that it speaks more to the one tempted to take a short cut than to the one wronged by it. The best answers keep the narrator’s “In uncertainty I am certain” and his “most,” name none of the three men, and pass no verdict on anyone in the story.

Vocabulary definitions