Chapter 36 — Teaching Companion

This chapter's big question

Aron pushes his mother “back into death” so that his father need not be a liar. Is closing his mind a way of keeping faith, or a way of hiding from the truth?

The tension Under the willow, the news brings “his flood of pleasure” and then “a sense of loss, of dreadful loss”: “If his mother was alive, his father was a liar. If one was alive, the other was dead.” Aron feels “that something had to die—his mother or his world,” and he goes home and says, “Good night, Father.”

Today's focus

Notice how the narrator describes each twin as hiding something beneath what people see, and what Aron hides from himself by the end.

The shape at a glance

The chapter has three sections. In the first, Cal and Aron start the seventh grade at the West End school in Salinas. Cal works out a plan for raising hands that wins the twins a reputation for smartness, though both learn easily anyway. The narrator then sets the twins side by side. Cal is dark, quick and secret; adults are a little afraid of him, and he hides his hurts as well as his cleverness. Aron is fair and angel-faced and loved on sight, but behind the face is a slow, steady, unbending nature that holds one course at a time. In the second section Aron follows Abra home from school, asks whether she is engaged, and walks with her to a willow beside a pump house, whose branches make a house of leaves. They play at being husband and wife. Then Aron asks her to play his mother, and when she holds his head in her lap he cries and cannot stop. Abra asks him about his mother, tests whether he can keep a secret, and then tells him one: riding home in the buggy after a visit to the Trasks’ place, she overheard her mother and father say that his mother was not dead but went away. Aron says she is dead and that his father is not a liar. Abra makes him swear not to tell, kisses him, and runs home. In the third section Aron sits alone under the willow and lets his thoughts in one at a time, holding the big one back. The frogs of Salinas sing. At last he lets it in: his mother is alive, and so his father must be a liar. He remembers Lee’s teaching that a lie is a running sore, and that Lee built Adam into the essence of truth. He decides that Abra only repeated what she heard, pushes his mother back into death, and closes his mind. At home after supper he touches his father’s shoulder and says good night.

A way in

Read the chapter yourself before the lesson. A few things it takes for granted. The pictures in each classroom are Victorian prints of old stories; the seventh grade’s, Laocoon wrapped in snakes, shows a priest of Troy who warned against the wooden horse and was killed by serpents. The student need not know this, but a teacher may enjoy it. A slough is a marshy pond; tules are tall rushes. Chalkies, immies, glassies and agates are marbles; splitters are sharp spinning tops. ’Dobe is adobe clay. Complected means complexioned, the color of skin and hair. The Bulletin and the Salinas Index are local papers. Abra’s family once visited the Trasks’ place, and the chapter mentions that visit only in passing. A teacher who has read on knows more about Aron’s mother than Aron does; keep that out of the talk, since the chapter gives only what Abra overheard. Keep the twins from becoming a good twin and a bad twin: the narrator says each hides something. Keep the willow scene from becoming only sweet; there is longing in Aron’s tears and in Abra’s game. Do not let Aron’s choice be read as stupidity: weigh what Lee taught him first. Slow down three times: at the mother game, at the secret and the oath, and in the dark from the frog song to the good night.

Lesson plan

Retell The student tells the chapter back, from the West End school to “Good night, Father.” Look for the three sections in order: the school, Cal’s plan and the two portraits; Aron following Abra, the house of leaves, the two games, the test, the secret and the oath, and the kiss; then Aron alone, letting thoughts in one at a time, the frogs, the big thing, Lee’s voice, the solution and the good night. Look for nothing added about where Aron’s mother is. Then ask which one sentence the whole chapter turns on, and why.

Imitate the author After copying, the student writes a short paragraph in the manner of the second passage, about someone taking in hard news: one sentence for a mind that cannot take it all at once, one that gives the mind a door, one long sentence that lets things in one at a time, and a short last sentence for what is held back. Then two or three sentences in the manner of the first passage, about someone others misread: a run of three words joined by “and,” and a sentence in which one feeling leads to another. Read them aloud beside Steinbeck’s and ask which sentence carries the weight.

Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues that Aron is keeping faith. It gathers “My father says she’s dead. He’s not a liar.”; Lee’s line between error and lie; “She had told him only what she had heard”; and the touch on Adam’s shoulder. The other side argues that he is hiding from the truth. It gathers “The quick pain of truth can pass away”; “a running sore”; Abra’s “Maybe he thinks she’s dead,” which he never returns to; and the words “pushed” and “closed.” Each side must answer the other’s strongest piece. Neither may say whether Aron will learn the truth, or what Abra’s mother and father really know.

Purpose Close on the chapter’s design. Its first section tells what people see in each twin and what they miss. Its second shows Aron through Abra’s eyes and her questions. Its third goes inside Aron’s head, where he hides something from himself. Doors run through it: the house Aron dreams of, where “We’ll go in and close the door,” the door of his mind that opens one thing at a time, and the mind he closes at the end. Ask which of these doors, if any, the chapter leaves open. Name the habit it practices: reading what a character keeps out as carefully as what he lets in.

Three levels

Easier Read aloud together the mother game, from “Aron said suddenly” to the end of his crying; the secret, from “I think I’m going to tell you a secret” to the oath; and the last section, from “It was quite dark under the willow tree now” to the end. Talk through the second, fourth and seventh discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.

On level Talk through all seven 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 on what each twin hides and from whom. Cal hides his cleverness and his hurts from other people; by the end Aron hides his mother from himself. Judge which hiding costs more, by the chapter’s evidence alone. Meet the strongest objection: the narrator says Lee’s conviction “had made Cal a clever liar,” and the same teaching made Aron the boy under the willow.

Discussion

1. The narrator calls Cal’s three-week plan for raising hands “a waste of time,” since both boys learned easily enough. So why does Cal bother?Character

What it asks It asks the student to account for a plan the narrator says was useless. Cal works it out quickly and explains it to Aron: a week of work without raising hands, a week of raised hands without work, then a week of sitting quiet, until “Pretty soon she’ll let us alone.” It works. The twins are let alone and get “a certain reputation for smartness.” Then the narrator adds, “As a matter of fact, Cal’s method was a waste of time. Both boys learned easily enough.” A few paragraphs later he calls Cal “quick and sure and secret,” and says that if Cal hid his ingenuity, “he concealed his hurts too.” The plan works on what the teacher believes, not on what the boys know.

A strong answer A strong response names what the plan was for and grounds it in Cal’s own words and the narrator’s portrait. One reader says it was for cover: its stated goal is “Pretty soon she’ll let us alone,” and Cal is a boy who “concealed his hurts too.” Another says it was for the pleasure of steering a mind, the same skill that lets him handle Aron “by keeping him off balance.” The best answers take “a waste of time” seriously, notice that the plan manages what someone else believes, and keep Cal more than a villain.

2. Under the willow, it is Aron who asks Abra to play his mother, and then he cries without warning and cannot stop. What was he asking for?Inference

What it asks It asks the student to read the second game under the willow. Abra offers the first: “We can play like we live here while we’re waiting,” as husband and wife. Aron asks for the second, and hedges first: “Maybe you wouldn’t like it.” Then: “Maybe we could pretend like you’re my mother.” Abra says, “That’s easy,” and croons, “Come, my baby, put your head in Mother’s lap.” Aron cries quietly while she wipes his tears with her skirt. Afterward he says, almost angrily, “I don’t hardly ever cry unless I’m mad. I don’t know why I cried.” In the third section the narrator offers a guess: “crying with longing, wanting something and in a way feeling that he was getting it. Perhaps the getting it was what had made him cry.” When Abra’s question about having no mother comes back to him under the willow, he finds the answer at the school parties: “the silent cry and the wordless longing.”

A strong answer A strong response says what Aron was asking for and grounds it in the willow scene and the narrator’s guess. One reader says he knew: he hedges with “Maybe you wouldn’t like it,” and the want is old, the “wordless longing” of the school parties. Another says he asked for a game and got something real: the crying comes “without warning,” and he says, “I don’t know why I cried.” The best answers weigh the narrator’s “Perhaps the getting it,” keep the longing in view, and see that the same want is waiting when the news comes.

3. Abra says she tells the secret because it might make Aron glad, and then the dream of finding his mother carries her off like a rip tide. Whose gladness is she thinking of?Character

What it asks It asks the student to weigh Abra’s stated reason against the way she tells. Before she tells, she sits silent, her face “tight against a seething inner argument,” and asks Aron, “Do you want to have a mother?” He says, “ ’Course I do. Everybody does.” She tests whether he can keep a secret, then says, “I think I’m going to tell you this secret because it might be good for you. It might make you glad.” Aron hears the news and says, “She’s dead,” and then, “My father says she’s dead. He’s not a liar.” Abra goes on: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could find her? ’Spose she lost her memory or something. I’ve read about that.” The narrator adds, “The glory of the romance caught her like a rip tide and carried her away.” Then she binds him with the oath. The chapter never says Abra means to hurt him.

A strong answer A strong response says whose gladness Abra has in mind and grounds it in what she asks and how she tells. One reader says Aron’s: her questions find out that he wants a mother before she says the news “might make you glad.” Another says her own, more than she knows: the story of a lost mother found is one she has “read about,” and “The glory of the romance” carries her, not him. The best answers set her gladness beside the “dreadful loss” Aron feels later, and keep clear of saying she meant to hurt him.

4. When Aron says his father is not a liar, Abra gives him a way for his father to be honest and his mother alive: “Maybe he thinks she’s dead.” What would it cost Aron to take it?Moral reasoning

What it asks It asks the student to weigh a way out that Abra offers and Aron never takes. When she tells the secret, Aron says, “She’s dead,” and then, “My father says she’s dead. He’s not a liar.” Abra answers, “Maybe he thinks she’s dead.” Aron says, “I think he’d know.” The narrator adds, “But there was uncertainty in his tone.” By Lee’s own rule, a father who believed it would not be lying: “If something was untrue and you didn’t know it, that was error.” Yet under the willow Aron reasons, “If his mother was alive, his father was a liar,” and never comes back to Abra’s way out. His solution uses the same rule on someone else: Abra’s mother and father “had only heard it too.” He lets them be mistaken, and not his father. The chapter does not say what Adam knows.

A strong answer A strong response says what Abra’s way out would cost Aron and grounds it in his answer to her or in his reasoning in the dark. One reader says it would cost him a father who knows: a father built as “the essence of truth” would know, so “I think he’d know” keeps Adam from being merely wrong. Another says it would cost him a settled world: Abra’s way leaves his mother alive and settles nothing, when Aron feels “that something had to die.” The best answers notice that by Lee’s rule Abra’s “maybe” makes Adam’s word an error, not a lie, and ask why Aron allows that to Abra’s mother and father and not to his father.

5. Just before the big thought gets in, the narrator stops for the frogs, whose song is so steady that the town would wake if it ever stopped. What in Aron’s life is like that song?Author's choice

What it asks It asks the student to read a paragraph that seems to be scenery. Between Aron’s thought about the school parties and “the big thing,” the narrator turns to the frogs of Salinas. “With the evening the air was so full of their song that it was a kind of roaring silence. It was a veil, a background, and its sudden disappearance, as after a clap of thunder, was a shocking thing.” If it stopped in the night, “everyone in Salinas would have awakened, feeling that there was a great noise.” The paragraph ends: “perhaps it is the ears’ function to do this just as it is the eyes’ business to make stars twinkle.” Then: “It was quite dark under the willow tree now,” and the big thing slips in. The paragraph is about a sound so steady that no one hears it until it stops.

A strong answer A strong response finds something in Aron’s life that works like the frog song and grounds it in the paragraph’s own words. One reader says his dead mother, the steady background whose stopping is “a shocking thing.” Another says his father’s truth, “a veil, a background,” which Aron sets going again. The best answers notice where the paragraph falls, take the last line about the ears seriously, and never pass it over as description.

6. Aron does not know if his mother’s hair was light or dark, yet he has often pictured her lying underground, “still and cool and unrotted.” Why would he keep that picture?Inference

What it asks It asks the student to read one sentence that comes the moment the big thing gets in. Aron told Abra, “We don’t have any pictures,” and when she asked if his mother’s hair was light or dark, “I don’t know.” Yet when the news is in, the narrator says: “Often he had pictured her lying underground, still and cool and unrotted. But this was not so.” The living mother is all motion: “Somewhere she moved about and spoke, and her hands moved and her eyes were open.” Aloud he says, “My mother is dead. She’s buried some place in the East.” At the end he “pushed his mother back into death.” The question is what the old picture gave him, and so what he goes back to.

A strong answer A strong response says what the picture gave Aron and grounds it in the sentence and in what follows it. One reader says it let him keep her: a boy with no photograph made an image, and “unrotted” holds her whole. Another says it was his father’s word as a picture, a mother who asks nothing, where a living one with open eyes would look back. The best answers weigh the words of the picture, set it beside the moving mother, and see that “back into death” returns him to it.

7. Abra strokes Aron’s cheek in the mother game, and at the end Aron gives his father “a stroking touch” on the shoulder. What has Aron brought home from the willow?Character

What it asks It asks the student to hear one word come back. In the mother game Abra draws Aron’s head into her lap, and when he cries, “Abra stroked his cheek and wiped the flowing tears away with the edge of her skirt.” Afterward “he felt good and he felt warm.” Alone in the dark he “pushed his mother back into death and closed his mind against her.” He is late for supper and explains only, “I was with Abra.” After supper Adam sits in his new chair reading the Salinas Index, and “he felt a stroking touch on his shoulder and looked up.” Adam asks, “What is it, Aron?” and Aron says, “Good night, Father.” The narrator, who has been inside Aron’s head all evening, stays outside it for these lines. The chapter gives only the touch and the words, and says nothing of whether Aron forgives his father or suspects him.

A strong answer A strong response names what Aron brings home and grounds it in both touches. One reader says he brings a mother’s tenderness and gives it to the father he kept: he was stroked like a baby under the willow, and now he gives Adam “a stroking touch.” Another says he brings the longing, still asking without words: Adam looks up and asks, “What is it, Aron?” and only “Good night, Father” gets out. The best answers hear the word come back, set the touch beside “pushed” and “closed,” and claim nothing about forgiveness or suspicion.

Critical thinking

1. The narrator says Aron is “unchanging once a course was set,” and no more responsible for his angel face than a fawn is for its spots. How much of what he decides under the willow is his own choice?

What it asks It asks the student to set the narrator’s first portrait of Aron against what Aron does in the dark. In the first section: “All of him was hidden by his angelic face, and for this he had no more concern or responsibility than has a fawn for the dappling spots on its young hide.” Aron “was unchanging once a course was set. He had few facets and very little versatility.” His mind is insensitive “to subtleties.” In the third section: “His slow deliberate mind could not accept so many thoughts and emotions at once.” Yet he lets things in one at a time, and “Aron held it back until last.” He wonders “whether he was ready for the big thing.” Then “His solution lay suddenly before him,” and “He got to his feet and pushed his mother back into death and closed his mind against her.” The verbs at the end are his; the solution arrives as if found.

A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis on how much of the decision is Aron’s, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says very little: the narrator calls him “unchanging once a course was set,” and the solution “lay suddenly before him” like a path he was made to follow. The strongest objection is the third section itself, where Aron sorts, waits, holds the big thing back “until last,” and then “pushed” and “closed.” A good revision might say his nature narrowed the choices to two and he chose between them, or that the fawn sentence fits his face and not his door. The best answers use both the portrait and the verbs, and keep Lee’s teaching in view.

2. Aron pushes his mother “back into death” so that his father need not be a liar. Is closing his mind a way of keeping faith, or a way of hiding from the truth?

What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. Alone under the willow, Aron lets in the big thing: “His mother was alive.” The news brings “his flood of pleasure” and then “a sense of loss, of dreadful loss.” He reasons, “If his mother was alive, his father was a liar. If one was alive, the other was dead.” In the dark he hears Lee: “The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost. That’s a running sore.” He says aloud, “If my father is a liar, Lee is a liar too.” He is lost, with “no one to ask,” and feels that something has to die, his mother or his world. Then his solution: “Abra had not lied. She had told him only what she had heard.” He pushes his mother “back into death,” closes his mind against her, and goes home to say, “Good night, Father.” The chapter does not say whether or when Aron will learn the truth, or what Abra’s mother and father really know.

A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says Aron keeps faith: he weighs a rumor overheard in a buggy against a father he has known all his life, and he uses Lee’s own rule, since Abra “had told him only what she had heard.” The strongest objection is Lee’s other lesson, that “The quick pain of truth can pass away,” while a lie becomes a running sore; Aron shuts the news out with words of force, “pushed” and “closed.” A good revision might say his faith is real but bought by closing a door, or that he keeps faith with his father and breaks it with Lee. The best answers say what faith means, keep both of Lee’s lessons in view, and claim nothing about what Aron will later learn.

Vocabulary definitions