Category Archives: Imagination

Creating a Perfect Opening for a Novel—Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep”

Posted on by
12

In the California literature Honors course that I am teaching at Azusa Pacific University this semester, we are studying Raymond Chandler’s novel, The Big Sleep, a classic of hardboiled detective fiction that features private investigator Philip Marlowe solving mysteries in a noir-ish and unforgettable Los Angeles setting.

After the students read the book, one of the first ways we studied it was simply to read out loud and analyze the first few pages. Chandler wastes no time. His opening establishes the novel’s tone and atmosphere, captures the personality of the narrator Marlowe, and propels the plot into motion. It isn’t easy to do all those things at once. If you don’t believe me, try it.

Take a look at The Big Sleep’s first two paragraphs:

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. he didn’t seem to be really trying.

What information do we learn from these two paragraphs? A private detective has dressed up in a nice suit in order to call on a wealthy client who lives in a mansion.

Those are the facts, but Chandler’s words tell us much more. Why describe the outfit in such detail, even down to the socks? If you pick up a hint of sarcasm in that little bit of over-description, it is confirmed in the next sentence: “I was neat, clean shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it.” That declaration conveys more than the surface meaning of the words. As one of my students put it, “Someone who is usually sober doesn’t need to point out that he is sober.” The same is true for being clean and shaved. Marlowe may be revealing a few weaknesses in that sentence, but also a few strengths: he’s frank, down-to-earth, and he has a self-deprecating sense of humor. I like him already.

Almost every sentence in these two paragraphs has something to commend it. For example, take at “I was calling on four million dollars.” A lesser writer might have settled for something like, “I was calling on a wealthy client.” Chandler’s sentence is better than that in both tone and content. We now know how wealthy General Sternwood is (his four million is in late 1930s dollars), and more importantly, the tone indicates Marlowe is not over-awed by money.

His sarcasm toward ostentatious displays of wealth is extended in the second paragraph, when he describes the Sternwood mansion. He doesn’t need any direct comment about how gaudy he thinks the place is. The fact that the entrance doors “would have let in a troop of Indian elephants” tells the reader plenty about Marlowe’s attitude toward the house. His commentary on the stained-glass artwork tells us as much about the unpretentious detective as it does about the questionable artistic taste of the Sternwoods.

The opening paragraphs of The Big Sleep let us know we are starting a journey with a narrator who knows what he’s doing, both as a detective and as a storyteller. We like him from the start, and we can’t wait to see what he’ll do next. He doesn’t disappoint.

Teaching and the Joy of Repeating Oneself

Posted on by
10

One of the most frequent questions I get asked about teaching is, don’t you get tired of teaching the same things year after year?

The answer is a resounding No. I never get tired of it. In fact, the repetition is part of what I enjoy about my job. I am in my 22nd year as a professor of English at Azusa Pacific University. Before that, I taught for five years at Olivet Nazarene University. Before that, I taught part-time for three years at Purdue University while I was a graduate student. I have been teaching non-stop since I was 21 years old. If I were going to get tired of it, I think it would have happened by now.

I teach various courses in American literature. Some of the writers I teach change from year to year, but most of them stay the same. The individual works we cover from those great writers are also sometimes different as semesters go by, as anthologies are updated and as I shift my focus in the courses. But even if the writers and works stayed exactly the same, I still wouldn’t mind.

One of the things I love about teaching a work I have taught before is that through repetition, I learn what does and does not work in the classroom. I learn which questions provoke the most fruitful discussions, which areas of inquiry lead to the richest understanding of the work, and which issues fall flat and are best avoided. I know what responses to anticipate and can be ready for where I will lead the discussion no matter what direction it heads. Each time of teaching the work becomes, in one sense, a performance that I can hone and improve.

Because I teach the same authors, I also have gathered a wealth of material about each one over the years—new articles, photos, biographical information, popular culture references, and so on. I end up with far more information than I can ever use for each writer, but that allows me to fill the class period with rich material.

The Same—But Always Different

I have been emphasizing what I enjoy about the repetition of teaching, but as any literature teacher knows, no class is ever really the same twice. No matter how much I approach a literary work in the same way I taught it before, it always comes out a little different. Last semester I taught the same class two hours in a row, and even one hour later, with a different audience, it was a whole new experience.

In this sense teaching literature is like a basketball or football game. Athletes—and fans—know that no game is ever the same. That’s why players keep playing and fans keep watching. They like the repetitive aspects of the experience, such as the fact that the football game always has four quarters, the same number of players, the same rules, and so on. But each game is its own separate drama that unfolds in unexpected ways.

People who ask whether I get tired of teaching the same literature over and over might just as well ask basketball players whether they get tired of shooting that same ball into that same hoop again and again, or baseball players whether they get tired of smacking that same ball with that same bat, or golfers whether they get sick of hitting that little white ball into hole after hole, game after game, year after year. The answer would be No, they love the game, and there is just as much suspense in the 537th game as there was in the first.

When a familiar literary work comes up in the course schedule, I enjoy it the same way I enjoy a favorite song I haven’t heard for awhile when it comes on the radio. I don’t enjoy it less because it’s familiar, I enjoy it more.

I am grateful for the repetition in teaching. The only repetitious aspect of teaching I don’t enjoy is grading papers, but that is a topic for a different post.

 

Pretend Someone is Watching–and Other Tips to Help Your Writing

Posted on by
6

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post that compared the discipline of running to the discipline of writing. That struck a nerve with some readers who have never even put on a pair of running shoes. I am following up this week with three more crucial disciplines from running that help me as a writer. Unless I follow these habits in both running and writing, I can’t get anything done.

1. Take It In Segments.

When I start my morning run, I can’t bear the thought of all that territory that lies ahead.  I follow a regular route that winds along some horse trails and streets through parks and neighborhoods near my house. However, when I’m out there, I don’t think of myself as running one long route. That would feel too overwhelming.

Instead, I run a series of segments. First there is the warm-up walk from my house to a certain driveway one street over. Then comes the segment that takes me to the end of my neighborhood. Then there is my run through the park. And so on. I can do those little segments. Each one by itself feels manageable. If I think about how far it is to the end of the run, I might be tempted to quit. I run one part, then another, and then another. Eventually, I reach the finish line.

When I’m writing, I follow a similar discipline. I don’t sit down and think of myself as writing a book. That’s too daunting. I don’t even think of writing a chapter. Instead, I think of one small part—maybe a paragraph, or scene, or anecdote—that I know I can do. I work on that. Once I finish it, I work on the next bit. Momentum builds, and so does my confidence. Before long, the ideas flow freely.

2. Pretend Someone is Watching.

This one may sound a little weird, but have you ever watched a group of kids around the neighborhood playing basketball or some other sport, and one of them is announcing every move like a TV sports announcer? Do you ever hear that announcer in your head when you’re playing sports yourself? Sometimes when I’m running, especially on days when my motivation is lacking, I pretend this is more than just some regular daily run. Instead, it’s a momentous race, and everything—say, the fate of the world, or my country—hinges on my reaching the finish line. People on all sides are cheering me on. I barely have room to run. They’re all watching. I’d better not screw this up.

With writing, I also sometimes envision an audience. Some writers I know think of specific people they are writing to. I have done that, but often I write to an idealized audience. It’s the type of reader who is leaning toward me, listening with anticipation, ready to engage my ideas. I don’t want to let that reader down. I want to hold up my end of the conversation.

Writing can be a lonely task, with just me and the computer in a quiet room. Imagining an audience reminds me that if I do this right, that pretend audience might become real if I stick to my work and get the words down on the page.

3. Get So Lost in the Work that Time Slips Away.

When I’m running, the worst thing for me to think about is the running itself. If I’m thinking about my breathing, or my feet, or my movement, that over-awareness makes the run seem much longer. The best runs are the ones in which my mind is thinking about everything except running. As I daydream or plan, the time slips by, and once I break out of that deep concentration, I might be surprised to realize that the run is half over. I may not remember much about the last mile, but I ran it anyway. The work is done.

With writing, the key is not to focus on fretful thoughts such as, “Oh, I should be writing. WIll I be able to do the writing? I am worried about the writing.” Instead, I need to let myself get close to my ideas. Let the images and language lure me in. Shut out all distractions and let my mind get absorbed in the world of the writing project. When I create conditions that help me get lost in the work, I look up an hour later to realize the paragraphs that had seemed so daunting are now on the page, and I am ready for more. That won’t happen if I’m checking Facebook every ten minutes, or writing emails, or answering text messages. I need to be surrounded only by the words. The computer. The books and other materials I need for research. A calm and energetic mind. A determination to sit there until the words begin to flow.

I wish you well as you run the race of writing.

 

Forty-Seven Different Endings? Some Lessons from Hemingway about Revision

Posted on by
23

For the past several weeks my students and I have been immersed in the novels of Ernest Hemingway. I have had the pleasure of teaching a course on him and William Faulkner this semester. In most literature courses, we study only the final, published drafts of novels and other works of literature. That gives us the chance to enjoy the final masterpieces, but it doesn’t reveal much about the torment the author went through to make the book as good as it is. How many revisions did it go through? How many false starts were there? How much bad writing did the author produce before he found discovered the right way to tell the story?

A new edition of Hemingway’s masterpiece, A Farewell to Arms, was published earlier this year that sheds light on his careful, sometimes agonizing writing process. Depending on how you count them, Hemingway produced up to 47 different endings. The exact number is tricky to determine because some drafts use bits and pieces of other drafts and therefore are not completely distinct from one another. The editors have grouped the 47 drafts under nine categories, such as “The Nada Ending,” “The Religious Ending,” “The Live-Baby Ending,” and so on.

Examining these very different endings reveals much about the creative process of writing a novel. Here are a few points his methods illustrate:

• Even very good writers are capable of very bad writing.

Hemingway may be a brilliant, Nobel Prize-winning, best-selling author, but some of these drafts are just bad. One of the “Nada” endings, for example, says, “That is all there is to the story. Catherine died and you will die and I will die and that is all I can promise you.” The first of three “Funeral Ending” drafts says, “When people die you have to bury them but Continue reading →

Some Thoughts on That Planet Made of Diamond

Posted on by
7

Imagine a planet made of diamond.

Photo by Haven Giguere. Artist's rendition of the diamond planet.

It exists.

According to National Geographic, this planet, which has been given the unimaginative name “55 Cancri e,” is twice the size of earth but has eight times its mass. At least a third of the planet is composed of pure diamond.

I am endlessly fascinated by astronomy and the discoveries that are being made about the universe. I love to read about the vastness of space, the variety and mind-boggling number of planets, galaxies, moons, suns and objects that are out there. In my recent book, Pieces of Heaven: Recognizing the Presence of God, I write about the discovery last year of the most massive and distant clouds of water ever found in the universe. The National Geographic article reporting on that discovery says the giant cloud of mist weighs forty billion times the mass of earth. The water in this cloud is enough to fill all the oceans on earth 140 trillion times.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t just skim over facts like that. They stop me. I have to let my imagination play with what such an enormous body of water would look like and how it could possibly even exist. Or when I read that a diamond planet is floating out there in space, I wonder how—and why—could that be true. It pushes my mind to the Creator of such a universe. Why would God put a diamond planet out there? Why would he create that vast space-cloud of water? For fun? Just because he can? For variety? What, if anything, will he ever do with that planet or that water?

I know that these amazing astronomical facts don’t “prove” the existence Continue reading →

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Posted on by
5

I am happy to welcome guest blogger Michael Bruner, a popular and gifted Honors professor at Azusa Pacific University.

 Michael was born and raised in the Philippines to missionary parents. He moved with his family to the US when he was ten and received his B.A. in English from University of Washington in 1988. He received his M.Div. from Princeton Seminary in 1994 and was ordained as a Presbyterian Minister shortly thereafter. He now teaches in the Dept. of Practical Theology at APU and lives in Pasadena with his wife and two children.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

By Michael Bruner

I was thinking of Heaven as I was reading the Lake Isle of Innisfree a couple of days ago, and I thought about how terrible it would be if Heaven were just a place we came up with in our minds, a Lake Isle of our own making, in order to counter the reality that we are in fact alone in this life. I then extended this idea further and considered how truly awful it would be if, as we are told in that nursery rhyme, this life itself is “but a dream.”

It then occurred to me that that’s what hell is, and the severest forms of mental illness (which are, in some sense, merely mirror images of each other): being alone in one’s own existence with nothing but voices and phantoms of one’s own making, an echo chamber of chaos where one is profoundly misunderstood even by oneself — and ultimately unknown to oneself. This is also the height of narcissism, which, I am convinced, is the DNA of all mental illness.

And so, if Heaven is real and, by extension, this life is not a dream, then Heaven must be an even deeper reality than this life, where we understand more and are, in turn, more fully known; we’ll see ourselves as parts of a larger whole, as separate (but not separated) parts of who we all are and who God is. And yet we will, in some sense, remain a mystery.

Which would make eternity, in our as-yet presently unredeemed state of individualism, hell. The boundaries between us must dissolve before the boundary of time can disappear. In heaven, we won’t be the same self-conscious, individuated people we are now. We will know ourselves for being known in communion with others. We will still be ourselves, no doubt, replete with bodies, but they will be Continue reading →

Five of the Eighteen Reasons I Write (by William J. Torgerson)

Posted on by
6

Editor’s Note: This post is the third in a series that features former students of mine who have become professional writers. I asked each of them to focus on the topic, “Why I Write.” Today’s post is by Bill Torgerson, whom I first met when he was one of my writing students at Olivet and who is now an award-winning screenwriter, novelist and writing professor. His first novel, Love on the Big Screen, is set at a fictionalized Olivet in the era when Bill and I were there.  (To see the first post in this series, by Dr. Michael Clark, scroll down or click here. To see the second post, by John Small, scroll down or click here.)  

Five of the Eighteen Reasons I Write

By William J. Torgerson

Professor Joe Bentz was the first person I ever knew to be actively working on a novel. When I was his student at Olivet Nazarene University just south

of Chicago, I was an English teacher who wanted to be a basketball coach because I’d long understood I couldn’t play professionally.  I had no plans to write, but I’d heard that Joe’s house was wallpapered with notes for his book.

As a country kid from Indiana, I found Professor Bentz’s ambition exotic, as if he were a space traveller who’d gone to Mars and come back to tell me about it. Professor Bentz was the first person to encourage my writing. I wrote an essay in his class about a bad date, and he told me I should send it out for consideration for publication. Over fifteen years later, a revision of that essay appeared in my first novel. Upon receiving Joe’s request to write this guest post, I was quickly able jot down eighteen reasons I write. Here are five of them:

  • To Stand Out. Even when I used to think of myself as worth noticing because I could shoot a basketball from a long distance and make it go through a hoop, I was an everyday writer.  At first, I wrote because it was a way in addition to basketball that a girl would take notice of me. Even though I’ve always thought of myself as a latecomer to writing, I realize that even as a middle school student I wrote (by hand on paper!) regularly for a specific audience: a girl I liked. I revised like an obsessive-compulsive madman.
  • For Mental and Physical Peace.  I have a high-octane mental and physical motor.  There’s something about intense workouts and at least a page a day that allows me to get as close as I can to relaxing.  When someone asks me what I do for fun, one of my first thoughts is that I run. Writing gives me a mostly positive act toward which to direct my addiction prone energy.  When I write, I am somehow able to empty my mind just enough to get some sleep.
  • Because I Can’t Stop.  I received Prof. Bentz’s request to do this guest post via my iPhone at 5:08 PM when I was wandering around an outlet mall and my family was doing some school shopping. I could not stop Continue reading →

Why I Write (by John Small)

Posted on by
6

Editor’s Note: This post is the second in a series that will feature former students of mine who have become professional writers. I asked each of them to focus on the topic, “Why I Write.” Today’s post features my friend and former student, John Small, whom I met during my early years of teaching at Olivet Nazarene University in the mid-1980s. I taught journalism and literature and advised the student newspaper. John was editor-in-chief of the paper and did excellent work. He has continued to thrive as a journalist ever since. (To see the first post in this series, by Dr. Michael Clark, scroll down or click here.)  

Greetings. My name is John Small; I am the news editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly small town news paper headquartered in Tishomingo, Oklahoma. I met Joe Bentz while were were both at Olivet Nazarene University; age-wise we are contemporaries, but I was the student and he was my college advisor and journalism professor and I worked with him at the campus newspaper, the GlimmerGlass. We both left the same year as I recall, he to take his job at Azusa Pacific and I to take the job here. Always makes me think there was a reason we were both there at the same time, but I suppose that’s a topic for another time…

WHY I WRITE

by John Small

It occurs to me that there is no one easy answer to that question.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I was fortunate enough to have parents who both love to read, and they saw to it that I earned to read as a much younger age than the other kids my age. My mother claims my love of writing stems from that; the story she likes to tell is that I started writing my own stuff because we ran out of things at the house for me to read. That certainly sounds like something I would have done.

My late younger brother Jimmy always said I took up writing as a defense mechanism. When you’re the lone bookworm in a class overflowing with jocks and jerks you tend to get picked on a lot – but the picking lessens considerably when they realize you’re the only one who can help them with their term papers.

My wife Melissa likes to say I became a writer to get her attention. That’s not entirely true, as I was writing long before I met her; on the other hand, why argue with success.

My own feeling is that I became a writer because Continue reading →

This is How I Know I’m a Writer (by Michael Clark)

Posted on by
12

Editor’s Note: This post by Michael Clark is the first in a series that will feature former students of mine who have become professional writers. I asked each of them to focus on the topic, “Why I Write.” 

Dr. Michael Clark has had an inspiring journey as a writer. He has worked professionally as a journalist, a high school English teacher, and now as a college professor. I first met him at Azusa Pacific University, where he became editor-in-chief of the student newspaper while I was faculty advisor. He had extraordinary energy and drive. Once he graduated and became a newspaper reporter, I thought his career was set for life. He was good at it, and he could have stayed with that work for as long as he wanted to. He married another of my talented former students, Heather (Murphy) Clark, an Honors student who became a teacher and is now a part-time college instructor. Michael felt the urge to try teaching, so he completed the education and other steps necessary to move into that career. Once again, I thought he was set. Then he felt the urge to earn a Ph.D. in creative writing and pursue fiction writing. He applied to universities across the country and was accepted at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It took courage for Michael and Heather to move their young family a couple thousand miles away to pursue this dream, but they did it, and once Michael finished his Ph.D., he was hired as a writing professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, where he now teaches. 

This is How I Know I’m a Writer

by Michael Clark

I’m a writer. This is a reality I have finally accepted. I do not have a large number of publications. I may not be very good at it. I can’t really tell. But I am a writer nonetheless (if for no other reason than I use the word nonetheless unreservedly).

How do I know I’m a writer? Simple – it’s what I do. Two full novels written (unsold), a third well underway (40,000 words and counting), and more than 20 short stories (mostly on my hard drive) that I would show other people attest to the simple fact that writing is more than my hobby. My body of work is solid and continues to grow, whether or not anymore ever sees the light of day. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I have a stack of rejection letters, like every other writer I know. They’re from journals, publishers, and agents across the country. I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of all the times I’ve been rejected and accepted. According to this ledger, I’m deeply in the red. This is how I know I’m a writer.

When I hear stories of famous authors who struggled to find a publisher before they were finally granted a book, I am unabashedly soothed by them. The fact that Elie Wiesel couldn’t sell Night for years gives me hope, not that I will ever be Elie Wiesel, but that I can continue to try. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I simultaneously love and hate with the way I say things.  I want the ability to revise my conversations as they happen and fully expect that every time I try to put things into words the result will be fantastic. It is a frustrating way to live. This is how I know I’m a writer.

Every aspect of the world around me has the potential to be told. To live and breathe not just in the moment I witness it, but on the page and for much longer than it would have otherwise. Thus, I am alternately interested in everything and overwhelmed to the point of shutting out those closest to me. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I often forget to eat, but I never go long without coffee. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I live in San Diego, three miles from the ocean, but I spend more time in a chair wrestling with the next character, the next scene, the next story than I do in the water. This is how I know I’m a writer.

People tell me that fiction is a dying form and it makes me nervous to the point of feeling like a poet. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I only find mathematics understandable if it is part of a narrative with tension and great character development. When I studied math, I often critiqued the lazy form of word problems. This is how I know I’m a writer.

If you are my friend, part of you might just end up in a story. If you’re my close friend, I might just kill you in print. This is how I know I’m a writer.

I write because it is comparable to breathing. When I do it, it is so natural I don’t think about the fact that I’m doing it. When I don’t do it, it’s pretty much all I can think about and I feel like I’m holding my breath. This is how I know I’m a writer.

 

Michael Dean Clark is an author of fiction and nonfiction as well as a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. His work, most of which is set in the San Diego area, has appeared in Fast Forward, Relief (where he later became the fiction editor), and Coach’s Midnight Diner among other publications. He is currently at work on his third novel-length manuscript and will move on to number four as soon as he is done. He’s sort of obsessive that way. When he’s not writing, he is likely herding one of his three children around or speaking to his wife sarcastically because sarcasm his love language.

Is Literature Necessary? (Part 4) “Consumed by Story”

Posted on by
7

Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts that will consider the question:

What does literature have to offer (if anything) that no other art form or media (such as video games, social media, movies, TV shows, etc.) can match?

To view the first post in this series, scroll down or click here. To view the second post, scroll down or click here. To view the third post, scroll down or click here.

Consumed by Story

By Kate Sullivan, APU Honors Student

Throughout all of mankind humans have connected with stories. As Renita J. Weems says in an essay on the womanism movement, “Stories offer readers an inner script to live by, glimpses into the way things are, and more importantly reason and a way to talk about things ought not to be” (Weems 36). We were not simply content with knowing we live on the Earth, instead we make up stories to explain why we are here and make sense of the universe in which we are immersed. As humankind has evolved, the love for stories has not dissipated. Quite the opposite outcome has occurred. Instead of a vanishing media for story telling, a plethora has showed up. A challenge now arises as we go forward: where does literature fit in this high tech era? I hold that literature will always remain important and unique because it captures the imagination in a way different from any other type of media.

Literature connects with the imagination on a deep level because as a reader we dream up a story that is uniquely our own. Although the words are the same for each reader, the characters and imagery are unique to the possessor of the story. This is a quality no other media outlet can really claim, for in movies, TV shows, and video games the character and scenery are created by the authors, and the viewer simply joins their world. The limitation of such media is the viewer only imagines what is set before them. Literature is free from this problem for in reading, the imagination is only led by the words and the rest is entirely within the discretion of the person enjoying the story. This connection gives the reader a type of ownership to the story that surpasses other media sources.

This ownership gives literature its greatest asset that no other media can capture. The deep connection to a body of literature drives a passion for the story and the ideals held in that story. William Jong comments, “Literature preserves the ideals of a people; and ideals–love, faith, duty, friendship, freedom, reverence–are the part of human life most worthy of preservation.” (Jong). The more I connect with a piece of literature, the greater it consumes me and begins to affect my life. Literature has such a tremendous power to consume a reader as they read and as they carry the story on in everyday life.

There is no question that literature will continue to survive in the high tech era that surrounds us, the question is why does it continue to be a favorite medium of so many. It will always be my favorite because literature offers a way for me to escape the reality around me and enter a completely different world. Unlike other media where I am only a visitor, in stories on paper I am the co-creator with the author. No other media has the power to make me stop, think, cry, smile, and laugh quite as well as novels. Socrates’ writings did not survive because of the special effects and sound track, they survived because they captured the mind and heart. The power of literature will always be that the author never truly owns a story; it belongs to each person who sits down and is changed by what they find.

(Note: Kate Sullivan blogs at http://collegegirlonthemove.wordpress.com/.)

 

Works Cited

Jong, William J., PH.D. English Literature: Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World. N.p.: Gutenburg Ebook, 2004. Gutenburg.org. Gutenburg Press, 6 Jan. 2004. Web. 21 Aug. 2012. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10609/10609-h/10609-h.htm#chap1>.

Weems, Renita J. “Re-Reading for Liberation: African American Women and the Bible.”Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World. Ed. Sugirtharajah, R. S.  Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2006. 27-39. Print.