Comprehensive Midterm Study Guide: Modern American Short Stories
Exam Preparation Strategies and Core Literary Concepts
Study Guide Overview:
Comprehensive review for English Midterm I covering plot, characters, conflict, themes, symbols, and matching clues.
Designed for success on both the matching section and written analytical questions.
Exam Section Instructions:
Matching Section: Memorize the distinctive proper names, character names, and specific objects categorized under the keyword clues for each story.
Written Questions: Master the basic plot line, the central conflict (what causes the struggle and makes it difficult), and what the resolution or ending reveals.
Five Critical Concepts for Short-Answer Questions:
Point of View (POV): Identifies who tells the story and defines the boundaries of what the narrator can know, observe, or understand.
Conflict: The central struggle of the story, encompassing the opposing forces and the obstacles that make resolving the situation difficult.
Theme: A complete, articulated message or insight about life or society, rather than a single word or generic subject.
Symbol: A concrete object, person, or situation that points to and embodies a larger, abstract idea; explanations must articulate the link between the object and the broader concept.
Irony: The perceived incongruity or difference between what a character believes, intends, or expects and what actually happens or exists in reality.
Source Text Accuracy and Verification Notes:
Entries for "Ten Words or More" and certain secondary character details in "Rich" derive from limited publicly available summaries.
Exact names, textual significance, and specific minor details should be cross-checked directly against assigned class copies, as matching assessments frequently focus on minute textual elements.
Don Shea — “Jumper Down” (2006)
Narrative Point of View:
First-person narration from the perspective of an active paramedic working alongside Henry.
Setting:
New York City; specifically focused on emergency response locations where individuals threaten suicide by jumping from bridges or buildings, culminating at the Brooklyn Bridge.
Main Characters:
Henry: A veteran paramedic on the verge of retirement who possesses a specialized skill for talking potential jumpers down from dangerous perches.
The Narrator: An unnamed fellow paramedic working closely with Henry.
Fellow Paramedics: Coworkers on the squad who celebrate Henry's career.
The Jumper: An unidentified individual threatening suicide on the bridge.
Plot and Central Conflict:
On Henry's final work shift prior to retirement, his emergency response coworkers organize a retirement party.
An emergency call interrupts the celebration reporting a "jumper up" located on the Brooklyn Bridge, which the squad views as an ideal, poetic concluding call for Henry's career.
Before Henry can reach the individual to initiate negotiation, the man jumps.
Upon reaching the ground, the paramedics discover the man is still barely clinging to life.
Henry speaks to the dying man, telling him that his jump was "magnificent."
The narrator initially reacts to Henry's statement with horror, interpreting it as an act of cruelty.
The narrator subsequently realizes Henry's comment was a profound, compassionate attempt to validate the dying man and grant him a final moment of human recognition and dignity.
Themes:
Compassion and empathy enacted within extreme, harrowing circumstances.
Human dignity at the moment of death.
The coexistence of despair and hope within tragic outcomes.
The instinctive drive to forge human connection when lifesaving interventions are impossible.
Symbols and Key Terminology:
“Jumper Up”: Technical emergency jargon denoting an individual currently situated high on a bridge or building who may still be engaged and talked down.
“Jumper Down”: Technical emergency jargon designating an individual who has already jumped.
Henry's Praise ("Magnificent"): Functions as a dark, morally intricate gesture of empathy designed to comfort a conscious, dying person.
Keyword Clues:
Henry; paramedic; retirement party; Brooklyn Bridge; “jumper up” / “jumper down”; “magnificent” jump.
George Saunders — “Sticks” (1995)
Narrative Point of View:
First-person plural ("we"), narrated collectively by the adult children reflecting retrospectively on their upbringing and their father.
Setting:
The family home and surrounding yard, spanning decades of family history and seasonal transitions.
Main Characters:
The Father: A severe, rigorous, emotionally repressed, and uncommunicative patriarch.
The Mother (Wife): The father's spouse, whose eventual death drastically alters the father's behavior.
The Children: The collective narrators who observe their father's rituals from youth into adulthood.
Plot and Central Conflict:
The father maintains a tall metal pole erected in the yard, which serves as his sole creative outlet for personal expression and holiday amusement through elaborate decorations.
Over time, the children grow up, mature, and move away from the family home.
Following the death of his wife, the father's decorating rituals transform, growing increasingly eccentric, bizarre, and deeply personal.
The father begins driving sticks into the yard, wiring them to the central pole with complex string configurations and attaching written messages.
These written notes contain apologies, confessions, and expressions of regret that he was never capable of articulating verbally to his family.
Themes:
Emotional repression and the agonizing difficulty of communicating affection.
Pervasive family distance and alienation.
The crippling weight of guilt, remorse, and unspoken apologies.
Grief, bereavement, and late-life isolation.
Symbols and Key Details:
The Pole: Serves as a manifestation of the father's hidden internal psychological life and his clumsy, mediated attempt to connect with the external world.
The Sticks, Strings, and Notes: Tangible externalizations of hidden psychological wounds, grief, and unuttered confessions of sorrow toward his estranged family.
Keyword Clues:
A pole in the yard; holiday decorations; the father; children moving away; wife’s death; sticks and strings; apologies.
Ruth Moose — “Ten Words or More” (2009)
Narrative Point of View:
First-person narrative voiced by a grieving widow.
Setting:
A private residential domestic space, centered around a telephone interaction with references to institutional hospital and insurance environments.
Main Characters:
The Widow (Narrator): A recently bereaved woman struggling to cope with the practical, bureaucratic demands following her husband's death.
The Insurance Representative: An impersonal institutional agent conducting a telephone assessment.
Hospital Personnel / Late Spouse: Referenced background figures associated with the preceding medical crisis.
Plot and Central Conflict:
A widow must navigate the grueling logistical and bureaucratic aftermath following the death of her spouse.
She is engaged in a high-stakes telephone interrogation with an insurance company that requires her to explain and validate her mental state and circumstances.
The system imposes an arbitrary requirement to respond using a minimum length ("ten words or more") to establish cognitive competence and prove sanity.
The narrative focuses on the conflict between authentic, paralyzing bereavement and the cold, unfeeling, and absurd demands of corporate bureaucracy.
Themes:
The exhausting nature of profound grief and personal bereavement.
The isolation and alienation produced by corporate institutional bureaucracy.
Societal pressure forcing the grieving to project rationality, composure, and emotional control.
The sudden difficulty of performing routine everyday tasks during traumatic loss.
Symbols and Key Details:
“Ten Words or More”: Represents arbitrary, institutional metrics imposed on human suffering to prove sanity.
“Marbles” / Sanity: The colloquial metaphor for maintaining psychological stability under administrative scrutiny.
Razor: Specific domestic object associated with memories or mental strain (verify class text for specific contextual meaning).
Insurance and Hospital Paperwork: Emblems of impersonal administrative burdens interfering with the natural grieving process.
Keyword Clues:
Widow; insurance phone call; hospital; having to prove she is not “crazy”; marbles/sanity; ten words or more.
Flannery O’Connor — “Good Country People” (1955)
Narrative Point of View:
Third-person narration, closely aligned with the internal thoughts, intellectual vanity, and perspective of Hulga Hopewell.
Setting:
A rural farm in Georgia, centered in Mrs. Hopewell's house and an adjacent agricultural barn loft.
Main Characters:
Hulga Hopewell (born Joy): A 32-year-old intellectual who holds a PhD in philosophy; she wears a wooden leg due to a childhood hunting accident, suffers from a heart condition, and professes absolute belief in nihilism.
Mrs. Hopewell: Hulga’s mother; a Southern landlady who categorizes humanity into simplistic categories, prizing those she deems "good country people."
Mrs. Freeman: The wife of a tenant farmer employed by Mrs. Hopewell; fascinated by morbid subjects and diseases.
Manley Pointer: A seemingly simple, earnest traveling Bible salesman who poses as a naive rustic but is actually a depraved, predatory con artist.
Plot and Central Conflict:
Mrs. Hopewell invites Manley Pointer to dinner because she naively presumes he belongs to the category of honest "good country people."
Hulga looks down upon everyone around her, priding herself on intellectual superiority and philosophical nihilism (asserting belief in nothing).
Hulga schemes to seduce and manipulate Manley Pointer on an outing, treating him as an innocent rustic pupil whom she can intellectually enlighten.
Manley lures Hulga into an isolated barn hayloft, seduces her, and persuades her to remove her artificial wooden leg.
Once the leg is detached, Manley reveals his true character: he opens his hollowed-out Bible, which contains a flask of whiskey, a pack of obscene playing cards, and a box of condoms.
Manley steals Hulga's artificial leg, places it in his valise, and discloses that he has stolen strange mementos before (such as a glass eye).
He abandons Hulga trapped, helpless, and humiliated in the hayloft, boasting that he was an atheist long before she was and proving that her intellectual vanity made her profoundly blind to real-world malice.
Themes:
The destructive nature of intellectual arrogance and spiritual pride.
The radical gap between outward appearance and inner reality.
Hypocrisy masked as religious devotion.
The limits and failure of abstract secular philosophy when confronted with real evil.
Spiritual vulnerability and unmasking.
Symbols and Key Details:
The Wooden Leg: Serves as the core symbol of Hulga's underlying physical vulnerability, true identity, and spiritual dependency.
The Hollow Bible: Exposes the fraudulent piety of Manley Pointer and functions as a literal vessel of deceit and worldly vice.
The Name “Joy” vs. “Hulga”: Demonstrates Hulga's intentional rejection of maternal joy and sentimental femininity in favor of an ugly, defiant intellectual armor.
The Phrase “Good Country People”: Highly ironic colloquialism demonstrating how naive social stereotypes facilitate dangerous deception.
Keyword Clues:
Hulga/Joy; Manley Pointer; Bible salesman; hollow Bible; wooden leg; hayloft/barn; Mrs. Freeman; “good country people.”
Flannery O’Connor — “Everything That Rises Must Converge” (1962)
Narrative Point of View:
Third-person limited narration, viewing events through the critical, self-righteous internal monologue of Julian.
Setting:
A racially integrating Southern city during the civil rights era; specifically staged on an integrated municipal city bus traveling toward the YMCA.
Main Characters:
Julian: A recent college graduate and aspiring writer residing with his mother; he sells typewriters while harboring deep resentment toward his mother's traditional racial attitudes, believing himself to be progressive.
Julian’s Mother: A proud, condescending Southern woman living with high blood pressure who clings to aristocratic ancestry while facing impoverished contemporary realities.
Carver: A small Black boy who boards the bus with his mother.
Carver’s Mother: An imposing, dignified Black woman who boards the municipal transit bus wearing an identical hat to Julian's mother.
Bus Passengers: Other riders reflecting varying social dynamics on the integrated public transit system.
Plot and Central Conflict:
Julian grudgingly accompanies his mother on a city bus ride to her weekly reducing class (weight-loss clinic) hosted at the YMCA, necessary for managing her dangerous blood pressure.
Julian's mother wears an extravagant, expensive new purple-and-green hat, justifying the purchase by repeating her family pedigree, which includes a former governor, a plantation, and enslaved people.
Julian internally critiques his mother's racism and fantasizes about humiliating her or bringing home Black acquaintances to challenge her worldview, though his own interactions remain performative and awkward.
A Black woman and her young son, Carver, board the integrated bus; Carver's mother is dressed in the exact same purple-and-green hat that Julian's mother wears.
Julian relishes the coincidence, viewing it as a poetic lesson in racial equality that dismantles his mother's delusion of social uniqueness and superiority.
Upon exiting the bus, Julian's mother treats Carver with patronizing, antebellum affection and attempts to bestow a penny on the boy as a gift.
Enraged by the patronizing gesture, Carver's mother strikes Julian's mother with her heavy pocketbook, knocking her violently to the pavement.
Julian immediately lectures his mother on the ground, proclaiming that she received the retribution her outdated social attitudes deserved.
Julian's mother becomes severely disoriented, speaks incoherently of her former Black nurse and plantation ancestors, and collapses from a fatal medical crisis (stroke/heart attack).
Julian experiences instant terror and grief, realizing too late his complete emotional dependence on her as he runs blindly into the night calling for help.
Themes:
Racial conflict and the irreversible collapse of the old Southern social hierarchy.
Generational friction, moral superiority, and filial resentment.
Hypocrisy among intellectual liberals who harbor disguised forms of arrogance.
The catastrophic psychological cost of unyielding personal and racial pride.
Symbols and Key Details:
The Purple-and-Green Hat: A symbol of historical convergence; highlights the identical humanity and consumer status of both women, completely destroying the mother's imagined social distinction.
The Penny: An emblem of paternalistic, obsolete racial condescension dressed up as charitable kindness.
The Reducing Class at the Y: The mundane destination highlighting the mother's physical frailty and medical vulnerability.
The Title: Derived from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, pointing to the inevitable, painful collision and convergence of disparate social classes and races.
Keyword Clues:
Purple-and-green hat; matching hat; Julian; Carver; penny; bus; reducing class/YMCA; family history of a plantation and enslaved people.
W. D. Wetherell — “The Man Who Loved Levittown” (1986)
Narrative Point of View:
First-person monologue conveyed through the nostalgic, defensive retrospective voice of Tommy DiMaria.
Setting:
Levittown, Long Island; an iconic planned suburban development built for returning World War II veterans, charting its transition from the postwar boom era into the alienated, gentrified 1980s.
Main Characters:
Tommy DiMaria: An aging World War II Army veteran, retired aerospace factory worker, and original Levittown homeowner.
Tommy’s Late Wife: His deceased spouse with whom he constructed his home, raised his family, and lived out the suburban dream.
Scotty: Tommy’s longtime original neighbor who finally succumbs to financial pressure and decides to sell his home.
Ginger: Tommy’s loyal pet dog who accompanies him on his neighborhood walks.
Real-Estate Agents: Aggressive, predatory suburban developers and brokers pressuring older original residents to cash out.
Plot and Central Conflict:
Tommy looks back fondly on returning from World War II, acquiring a house in Levittown, and laboring alongside neighboring veterans to cultivate suburban community life and realize the American Dream.
Decades later, his wife has passed away, his children have grown and scattered, original neighbors have died or migrated away, and real estate speculation drives up local property values and taxes.
Tommy discovers a "FOR SALE" sign installed on the front lawn of his close friend Scotty, signaling that the very last vestiges of his community network are collapsing.
Taking his dog Ginger on a walk, Tommy experiences overwhelming alienation as new, wealthy professionals replace the original blue-collar working-class families.
Besieged by aggressive real estate agents hounding him to sell his lot for modernization, Tommy chooses extreme defiance: rather than yield his memories and house to speculators, he vows to burn his home to the ground.
Themes:
The rise, commercialization, and demise of the ideal postwar American Dream.
Aging, bereavement, and the intense isolation of surviving one's historical moment.
The destruction of working-class community solidarity by economic displacement and modernization.
Home as the repository of personal memory, labor, and human identity.
Symbols and Key Details:
The Levittown House: Far beyond mere monetary real estate, it represents decades of domestic labor, personal sacrifice, and shared veteran brotherhood.
The “FOR SALE” Sign: The omen marking the surrender of historical community cohesion to modern corporate market forces.
Ginger: Tommy's canine companion during his reflective walk through the changing neighborhood.
Arson Threat (Burning the House): Tommy's final radical act of personal agency to preserve his dignity against commodification.
Keyword Clues:
Ginger; Tommy DiMaria; Scotty; “FOR SALE” sign; Levittown; postwar housing; Army veteran; aerospace worker; real-estate agents; burning the house.
Joyce Carol Oates — “How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again” (1969)
Narrative Point of View:
First-person fragmented narration presented in the form of raw, disorganized classroom essay notes, structural outlines, and vignettes drafted by a sixteen-year-old girl.
Setting:
Metropolitan Detroit, contrasting the affluent, insulated suburban enclaves (such as Grosse Pointe) and prestigious private schools with urban department stores, inner-city downtown street corners, and the Detroit House of Correction.
Main Characters:
The Narrator: An unnamed sixteen-year-old girl from an extraordinarily wealthy suburban background.
The Narrator’s Parents: Affluent, emotionally detached socialites who prioritize public reputation over genuine parental care.
Institutional Authorities: Private school headmistresses, judges, police, and correctional officers.
Urban Acquaintances: Marginalized individuals, street people, and drug users encountered by the narrator following her escape into downtown Detroit.
Plot and Central Conflict:
Despite her privileged suburban life, a sixteen-year-old girl experiences intense emotional alienation and begins shoplifting petty merchandise, including a pair of gloves, from suburban department stores.
Rather than attempting to understand the psychological distress motivating her petty crimes, her parents use their wealth and status to suppress the scandal.
Feeling unseen and desperate for authentic reality, she runs away from her elite private school and wanders into downtown urban Detroit.
Unprepared for the predatory realities of the street due to her sheltered life, she falls into exploitation and substance use before being apprehended and confined in a correctional facility.
Composing her structured notes within the confines of the detention center, she attempts to assemble the broken pieces of her identity, although the institutional setting offers isolation rather than true rehabilitation.
Themes:
Adolescent alienation, identity diffusion, and the search for authentic selfhood.
The spiritual bankruptcy, emotional vacancy, and hypocrisy of upper-class consumer society.
The sharp divide between superficial societal discipline and true therapeutic understanding.
The structural rift separating wealthy suburbs from impoverished urban city centers.
Symbols and Key Details:
Stolen Gloves: Embody the protagonist's cry for emotional engagement, showcasing petty theft executed by someone who has no material need.
Fragmented Essay Notes / Topical Headings: Reflect the fractured, chaotic psychological state of the teenage narrator trying to organize trauma.
The Subtitle (“Began My Life Over Again”): A deeply ironic statement, as institutionalization within a correctional home imposes isolation without healing structural family failures.
Keyword Clues:
Detroit; House of Correction; sixteen-year-old girl; stolen gloves; wealthy parents; private school; fragmented notes; running away.
Toni Cade Bambara — “The Lesson” (1972)
Narrative Point of View:
First-person narration delivered by Sylvia, a fiercely intelligent, defensive, and skeptical young Black girl living in Harlem.
Setting:
Harlem, New York City, contrasting sharply with the opulent retail landscape of Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, specifically FAO Schwarz toy store.
Main Characters:
Sylvia: The stubborn, street-smart young narrator who vigorously resists being lectured or influenced by adult authority.
Sugar: Sylvia's closest friend and cousin who shares the excursion and ultimately verbalizes the lesson.
Miss Moore: A college-educated Black woman in the neighborhood who wears natural hair, takes voluntary responsibility for educating the local children, and arranges educational outings.
Mercedes and Junior: Other neighborhood children participating in the field trip.
Plot and Central Conflict:
Miss Moore gathers the neighborhood children and takes them on an educational field trip via taxi from Harlem to the high-end FAO Schwarz toy emporium on Fifth Avenue.
The children examine extravagant luxury merchandise, including an ornate handcrafted toy sailboat that costs over a thousand dollars—an amount exceeding what their families require for basic survival needs like rent and food.
Sylvia feels a sudden, uncomfortable wave of shame and disorientation when entering the lavish store, reacting with hostility and anger to mask her emotional discomfort.
Upon returning to the neighborhood, Miss Moore asks the group what conclusions they drew from observing the extreme prices.
Sugar outspokenly states the lesson: equal participation in American society is impossible when some people spend on a toy what others need to feed an entire family.
Sylvia steps on Sugar's foot to silence her and refuses to validate Miss Moore openly, but the experience profoundly disrupts her worldview; the narrative concludes with Sylvia racing off to reflect privately, asserting that "ain't nobody gonna beat me at nuthin."
Themes:
Severe economic stratification and structural class inequality.
The political power of education and critical social consciousness.
Racial and economic barriers regulating access to wealth and public spaces.
Anger, pride, and resistance as natural defensive mechanisms against systemic injustice.
Symbols and Key Details:
The Toy Sailboat: Serves as a glaring emblem of economic disparity, contrasting grotesque consumer luxury with working-class survival needs.
The Taxi Fare and Tip: Practical demonstration used by Miss Moore to teach basic arithmetic and the real-world value of money.
Sylvia’s Internal Defiance: Indicates that her silence is not ignorance, but a profound internal realization of social injustice that hardens her resolve to survive and succeed.
Keyword Clues:
Miss Moore; Sylvia; Sugar; FAO Schwarz; Fifth Avenue; expensive toy sailboat; taxi; class inequality; “the lesson.”
Ellen Gilchrist — “Rich” (1981)
Narrative Point of View:
Narrated from a specific viewpoint within New Orleans high society (confirm assigned course copy for exact technical perspective).
Setting:
The wealthy, cloistered, aristocratic uptown social circles of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Main Characters:
The Father: A wealthy patriarch belonging to the New Orleans upper crust whose psychological unraveling culminates in violence.
The Daughter: The child of the wealthy father who becomes the victim of domestic murder.
Uptown Elite Social Circle: Supporting background figures illustrating the decadent environment of Southern aristocracy.
Plot and Central Conflict:
The story examines an affluent family established in elite New Orleans society that appears outwardly blessed with wealth and privilege.
Underneath the polished exterior of luxury, the family suffers from profound emotional dysfunction, alienation, and psychological instability.
The father commits an act of domestic violence by murdering his daughter and then committing suicide.
Gilchrist composed the work in direct response to a real-world rash of suicides and private tragedies that swept across affluent New Orleans social circles during the 1970s.
The narrative charts the disintegration of human empathy and psychological stability in an environment insulated by generational wealth.
Themes:
The dark, self-destructive underside of immense wealth and high social status.
Severe family pathology and emotional disconnection disguised by social standing.
The inability of material wealth to protect against depression, mental illness, and suicide.
The radical division between public aristocratic respectability and horrific private tragedy.
Symbols and Key Details:
The Title “Rich”: An intensely ironic title highlighting that immense monetary wealth often masks deep moral, emotional, and spiritual impoverishment.
The Murder-Suicide: Represents the complete, violent implosion of an elite household unable to address underlying psychological trauma.
Keyword Clues:
Affluent New Orleans; father and daughter; murder-suicide; wealth; family tragedy; title’s irony.
Ellen Gilchrist — “The President of the Louisiana Live Oak Society” (1981)
Narrative Point of View:
Third-person narration exploring the social spheres, behaviors, and worldviews of adolescent youths from opposing economic backgrounds.
Setting:
Uptown New Orleans, specifically centered under a historic, massive 200-year-old live oak tree situated outside the palatial estate of Dr. Alton Ochsner near Audubon Park, juxtaposed with the adjacent St. Thomas housing project.
Main Characters:
Gus: A fourteen-year-old Black teenager residing in the impoverished St. Thomas Housing Project.
Robert: Gus’s affluent, white adolescent friend who navigates elite private-school circles.
Dr. Alton Ochsner: A prominent, wealthy doctor whose sprawling residence provides the backdrop for the live oak.
Private-School Students: Privileged youth who purchase recreational drugs from Gus and Robert.
Plot and Central Conflict:
Gus spends large portions of his daily life under the canopy of an ancient live oak tree located on the perimeter of Dr. Alton Ochsner's grand mansion.
Gus and Robert form an unconventional cross-class and cross-racial friendship that bridges the social division between the public housing project and uptown privilege.
The two boys utilize their complementary social positions to operate an illicit enterprise, selling marijuana directly to wealthy private-school students.
The narrative explores the pragmatic alliances, moral ambiguity, and mutual dependencies formed between impoverished youth seeking survival and bored, affluent teenagers seeking rebellion.
Themes:
Racial boundaries and socioeconomic stratification in urban New Orleans.
The complex negotiations of adolescent friendship across class lines.
Economic opportunism and illicit survival mechanisms among marginalized youth.
The proximity and tension between excessive privilege and urban poverty.
Symbols and Key Details:
The 200-Year-Old Live Oak Tree: Known by its grand honorary title as the "President" of the Louisiana Live Oak Society, it serves as a natural sanctuary and historical landmark whose timeless grandeur contrasts with the transient, unequal lives of the youths gathered below.
Marijuana Transactions: Represents the transactional, uneasy economic bridge linking the St. Thomas Project with the sheltered world of private academies.
Keyword Clues:
Gus; Robert; St. Thomas Project; Dr. Alton Ochsner; Audubon Park; huge 200-year-old live oak; private-school students; marijuana.
Comprehensive Matching Guide and Quick Practice
“The Man Who Loved Levittown”:
Keyword Clues: Ginger; Tommy DiMaria; Scotty; “FOR SALE” sign; Levittown; postwar housing; Army veteran; aerospace worker; real-estate agents; burning the house.
“Jumper Down”:
Keyword Clues: Henry; paramedic; Brooklyn Bridge; retirement party; “jumper up” / “jumper down”; “magnificent” jump.
“Sticks”:
Keyword Clues: Pole in the yard; holiday decorations; the father; children moving away; wife’s death; sticks and strings; apologies.
“Good Country People”:
Keyword Clues: Hulga/Joy; Manley Pointer; Bible salesman; hollow Bible; wooden leg; hayloft/barn; Mrs. Freeman; “good country people.”
“Everything That Rises Must Converge”:
Keyword Clues: Purple-and-green hat; matching hat; Julian; Carver; penny; bus; reducing class/YMCA; family history of a plantation and enslaved people.
“The Lesson”:
Keyword Clues: Miss Moore; Sylvia; Sugar; expensive toy sailboat; FAO Schwarz; Fifth Avenue; taxi; class inequality; “the lesson.”
“How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again”:
Keyword Clues: Detroit; House of Correction; sixteen-year-old girl; stolen gloves; wealthy parents; private school; fragmented notes; running away.
“Ten Words or More”:
Keyword Clues: Widow; insurance call; hospital; “ten words or more”; having to prove she is not “crazy”; marbles/sanity; razor.
“Rich”:
Keyword Clues: Affluent New Orleans; father and daughter; father murders daughter then himself; murder-suicide; wealth; family tragedy; title’s irony.
“The President of the Louisiana Live Oak Society”:
Keyword Clues: Gus; Robert; St. Thomas Project; Dr. Alton Ochsner; Audubon Park; huge 200-year-old live oak; private-school students; marijuana.