Identifying passages
Passage One
It’s shocking. This is how you would neglect your most sacred duties.
What do you consider my most sacred duties?
Do I need to tell you that? Are they not your duties to your husband and your children?
I have other duties just as sacred.
That you have not. What duties could those be?
Duties to myself.
Before all else, you are a wife and a mother.
I don’t believe that any longer. I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are—or, at all events, that I must try and become one. I know quite well, that most people would think you right, and that views of that kind are to be found in books; but I can no longer content myself with what most people say, or with what is found in books. I must think over things for myself and get to understand them.
Can you not understand your place in your own home? Have you not a reliable guide in such matters as that?—have you no religion?
I am afraid I do not exactly know what religion is.
What are you saying?
I know nothing but what the clergyman said, when I went to be confirmed. He told us that religion was this, and that, and the other. When I am away from all this, and am alone, I will look into that matter too. I will see if what the clergyman said is true, or at all events if it is true for me.
Passage Two
Eat your eggs, they gonna be cold.
(Straightening up from her and looking off) That’s
it. There you are. Man say to his woman: I got me a
dream. His woman say: Eat your eggs. (Sadly, but
gaining in power) Man say: I got to take hold of this here
world, baby! And a woman will say: Eat your eggs and go
to work. (Passionately now) Man say: I got to change my
life, I’m choking to death, baby! And his woman say— (In
utter anguish as he brings his fists down on his thighs)
—Your eggs is getting cold!
That ain’t none of our money.
(Not listening at all or even looking at her) This
morning, I was lookin’ in the mirror and thinking about
it… I’m thirty-five years old; I been married eleven years
and I got a boy who sleeps in the living room— (Very,
very quietly) —and all I got to give him is stories about
how rich white people live …
Eat your eggs, Walter.
(Slams the table and jumps up) —DAMN MY
EGGS—DAMN ALL THE EGGS THAT EVER WAS!
Passage Three
The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.
Passage Four
Many are the wonders, none
is more wonderful that what is man.
This it is that crosses the sea
with the south winds storming and the waves swelling,
Breaking around him in roaring surf.
He it is again who wears away
The Earth, oldest of gods, immortal, unwearied,
As the ploughs wind across her from year to year
When he works her with the breed that comes from horses.
The tribe of the lighthearted birds he snares
And takes prisoner the races of savage beasts
And the brood of the fish of the sea,
With the close-spun web of nets.
A cunning fellow is man. His contrivances
Make him master of beasts of the field
And those that move in the mountains.
