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Analyzing What You Read

Site: Saylor Academy
Course: PRDV002: Professional Writing
Book: Analyzing What You Read
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Date: Wednesday, 30 April 2025, 3:29 PM

Description

Read this chapter for a detailed discussion of analytical writing. When do you use analytical writing in your current professional context?

Table of contents

Introduction


Figure 16.1

Consider the subject of this painting, Man on the Street, by Russian artist Olga Rozanova (1886–1918). Now, consider how the subject is presented: cool colors, fragmented lines, and distorted perspective.

What is the artist saying about the man on the street by presenting him in this way? As soon as you begin to answer this question, you are analyzing a visual text. When you read a story, you might ask the following questions: Why does this character act this way? How would the story be different if it were set in another time or place? What is the author saying about life in general? How does the author make these points? When you begin to answer these questions about a work of fiction or literary nonfiction, you are analyzing a literary text.

In the real world, you are surrounded by text – both visual and print. It appears in media, advertising, and even text messages. Often, the text is not one-dimensional in the sense that words and the ways in which they are used or arranged can have different meanings depending on the relationship between the text and the reader. In such cases, a text is open to analysis and interpretation.

Usually, there is no one right way to analyze and interpret a text; readers, like viewers, may understand elements in different ways and draw different conclusions. Whatever they are, however, will be the result of reading critically: examining parts of the text as they relate to the whole, supporting ideas with evidence, and drawing conclusions on the basis of analysis.

The practice of analysis will benefit you in several ways. It can help you enter an ongoing conversation with a new and fresh perspective. It also can help you understand meaning beyond the surface of a text – including historical contexts and cultures, new approaches to thinking, and new knowledge.

Although the word text tends to imply words, writing, or books, virtually all works created by human beings can be considered texts that are open to analysis – films, plays, music and dance performances, exhibits, paintings, photographs, sculptures, advertisements, artifacts, buildings, and even whole cultures. In this chapter, you will focus on the analysis of print texts. In Image Analysis: What You See, you will move to the analysis of visual and digital texts.

Source: Michelle Bachelor Robinson, Maria Jerskey, and Toby Fulwiler, https://openstax.org/books/writing-guide/pages/16-introduction
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

An Author's Choices: What Text Says and How It Says It

You may already be familiar with textual analysis in academia. In fact, you do it frequently when you read or interact in other ways with language. However, it is important to distinguish between what textual analysis is and what it is not. For example, imagine you and a friend have just finished watching a TV show or movie. You will probably say whether you liked it and what in particular prompted your opinion. This brief and casual opinion-based conversation is just that, a casual conversation. It is not analysis, which goes far beyond liking or disliking a text.

Perhaps you continue your conversation. Do you and your friend agree that everything in the show is obvious and clear or is inconsistent and muddy – characters' motivations, their development over the course of the story, how the setting affects the story, the point the story is making, the extent to which the characters seem realistic or relatable, whether the dialogue seems natural, or any other elements? Or do you and your friend view some of these elements differently? Do you have different views about what you think is the main idea or what a character represents? For instance, do you think the main character represents a force of good, while your friend thinks the main character is a boring wimp? 

If you agreed on everything – and everything seems straightforward – then that is that: the film offers little to interpret and most likely is not a strong text for analysis because it does not invite interpretation. However, if you do have questions about some of the elements or disagree about them, then you are on your way to analyzing and interpreting a text.


Analyzing and Interpreting

What exactly, then, is textual analysis? To analyze a text is to examine its various parts to explain its meaning. Analyzing a text implies that the text can be read in more than one way. Your analysis is your reading of it: your explanation of various text elements, your understanding of the text, and how you understand it in a larger context. Others may read and understand it differently. To find out what a text – fiction or nonfiction – means, you look at its language, examine how it is put together, perhaps compare or contrast it with similar texts or other works, and notice how it affects you or how it fits into events outside it, and you keep asking why. Always keep in mind, however, that textual analysis is not about whether you like a text; it is about the meaning of the text – how the author created it and intended it to be understood.

Any written work can be analyzed as a text. But an editorial or opinion piece or something written, for example, as part of an ongoing argument of viewpoints, is more likely to be looked at for the rhetorical or persuasive strategies it employs to create or change an opinion. (This kind of rhetorical analysis is the focus of Rhetorical Analysis: Interpreting the Art of Rhetoric). Literary works, whether fiction or nonfiction, film or text, print or digital, are those analyzed as texts. Their impact on real events in real life is likely less direct than that of rhetorical or persuasive writing, but many characters and themes that "live" in these works tend to exist for a very long time and are open to analysis as part of a person's growth and education – and even more, a part of and a reflection of the human condition.

Writers have many options when considering what to say and how to say it. The best texts for analysis are those that are most problematic – texts whose meanings seem elusive or complex – because these texts give you the most room to argue for one meaning over another. Like your goal in rhetorical analysis, your goal in textual analysis is to make the best possible case to demonstrate to readers that your analysis is reasonable and deserves serious attention. Remember, too, that argument in academic terms means taking a position and supporting it. Therefore, when you analyze a text, you take a position on an aspect (or several aspects) of that text and support it with evidence from the text itself and, if applicable, from borrowed sources that you acknowledge.

Textual analysis is a complex task that draws on your critical reading, reasoning, and writing skills. Depending on your topic and thesis, you may have to describe real or fictional people and situations, retell events, define key terms, analyze passages and explain how they work in relation to the whole, and examine and interpret contexts and themes – perhaps by comparing or contrasting the text with other texts. Finally, you will "argue" for the meaning as you understand it rather than another possible meaning. In other words, as you do for most academic writing, you develop a thesis and defend it with sound reasoning and convincing textual evidence.

Textual Analysis Trailblazer: bell hooks

Figure 16.2 bell hooks

Figure 16.2 bell hooks

"Writing and performing should deepen the meaning of words, should illuminate, transfix, and transform."

Talking Back

Born Gloria Jean Watkins, bell hooks adopted the name of her great-grandmother, a woman known for speaking her mind. In choosing this pen name, hooks decided not to capitalize the first letters so audiences would focus on her work rather than her name. However, this stylistic choice has become as memorable as her work.

She is well known for her approach to social critique through textual analysis. The writing interests and research methods hooks uses are wide-ranging. They began in poetry and fiction writing and eventually developed into critical analysis. She started writing at an early age, as her teachers (in the church) impressed on hooks the power of language. With this exposure to language, hooks began to understand the "sacredness of words" and began to write poetry and fiction.

Over time, hooks's writing became more focused on advancing and reviving the texts of Black women and women of color, for even though "Black women and women of color are publishing more… there is still not enough" writing by and about them. Texts live on through others' analyses, hooks argues. Therefore, she believes the critical essay "is the most useful form for the expression" between her thoughts and the books she is reading. The critical essay allows hooks to create a dialogue or "talk back" to the text. The critical essay also extends "the conversations I have with other critical thinkers." It is this "talking back" that has advanced hooks's approach to literary criticism. This action, for which hooks eventually named a volume of essays, refers to the development of a strong sense of self that allows Black women to speak out against racism and sexism.

Although young hooks continued to write poetry – some of which was published – she gained a reputation as a writer of critical essays about systems of domination. She began writing her first book, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, when she was 19 and an undergraduate student at Stanford University. The book is titled after Sojourner Truth's (1797–1883)"Ain't I a Woman" speech given at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851.

In this work, hooks examines the effects of racism and sexism on Black women, the civil rights movement, and feminist movements from suffrage to the 1970s. By "talking back" to formerly enslaved abolitionist Sojourner Truth throughout, hooks identifies ways in which feminist movements have failed to focus on Black women and women of color. This work is one of many in which thorough analysis "uncovered" the lived experiences of Black women and women of color.

Glance at Genre: Print or Textual Analysis

As a genre – or literary category in which works feature similar forms, styles, or subject matter – textual analysis is less of a genre in itself and more of an exploration and interpretation of other genres. That is, textual analysis is explanatory and interpretive. When you receive an assignment to analyze a text, you focus on the elements that give it meaning.

Usually, your instructor will assign a specific writing task: to analyze and explain certain aspects of a text, to compare or contrast certain elements within a single text or in two or more texts, or to relate certain text elements to historical context or current events (as student writer Gwyn Garrison has done in the Annotated Student Sample). These writing tasks thus explore genre characteristics of fiction, drama, poetry, literary nonfiction, film, and other forms of literary language.

Figure 16.3 Beakers in a chemistry lab.

Figure 16.3 Like scientists who analyze components of a substance, writers of textual analysis examine a fiction or literary nonfiction work to understand and interpret its meaning by looking at its components.


When you write a textual analysis, ask yourself questions such as these:

  • In what ways can this text be read?
  • What are some different ways of reading it?
  • Which reading makes the most sense to me?
  • Which passages in the text support this reading?
  • Who does my analysis need to convince? (Who is my audience?)


Textual Analysis and Interpretive Communities

How you read and analyze a text depends on who you are. Who you are depends on the influences that have shaped you or the communities to which you belong. Everyone belongs to various communities: families, social and economic groups (e.g., students or teachers, middle or working class), organizations (e.g., Democratic or Republican Party, Masons, Habitat for Humanity), geographic locales (e.g., rural or urban, north or south), and institutions (e.g., school, church, fraternity). Your membership in one or more communities may determine how you view and respond to the world. The communities that influence you most are called interpretive communities; they influence the meaning you make of the world. People who belong to the same community may well have similar assumptions and therefore are likely to analyze texts in similar ways.

Before writing an interpretive or textual analysis essay, it is helpful to ask, Who am I when writing this piece? Be aware of your age, gender, race, ethnic identity, economic class, geographic location, educational level, or political or religious persuasion. Ask to what extent and for what purpose any of these identities emerge in your writing. Readers will examine the biases you may bring to your work, understanding that everyone views the world – and, consequently, texts – from their own vantage point.

College is, of course, a large interpretive community. The various smaller communities that exist within it are called disciplines: English, history, biology, business, art, and so on. Established ways of interpreting texts exist within disciplines. Often when you write a textual analysis, you will do so from the perspective of a traditional academic interpretive community or from the perspective of one who challenges that community.

Whether you deliberately identify yourself and any biases you might bring with you in your essay depends on the assignment you are given. Some assignments ask you to remove your personal perspective as much as possible from your writing; others ask that you acknowledge and explain it, and others fall somewhere in between.

Figure 16.4

Figure 16.4 The individuals in this group of student volunteers and staff represent both similar and different cultural and interpretive communities.


Conventions of Textual Analysis

When asked to analyze or interpret a literary work, whether fiction or nonfiction, you will likely focus on some of these literary elements to explain how an author uses them to make meaning.

  • Alliteration: a literary device consisting of repetition of initial consonant sounds. (Away from the steamy sidewalk, the children sat in a circle).

  • Analysis: the close examination and explanation of a text, supported by reasoning and evidence.

  • Antagonist: a character or force opposing the main character (protagonist) in a story.

  • Climax: a moment of emotional or intellectual intensity or a point in the plot when one opposing force overcomes another, and the conflict is resolved.

  • Epiphany: a flash of intuitive understanding by the narrator or a character in a story.

  • Figurative language: a language that suggests special meanings or effects. Similes and metaphors are examples of figurative, rather than literal, language. (She stands like a tree, solid and rooted).

  • Imagery: a language that appeals to one (or more) of the five senses. (The cicadas hummed nonstop all day, but never loud enough to dull the roar of the leaf blowers).

  • Metaphor: a direct comparison between two unlike things. (She is a sly fox in her undercover work for the government).

  • Narrator: someone who tells a story. A character narrator is a part of the story, whereas an omniscient narrator tells a story about others.

  • Persona: a mask to disguise or cover the author's real self when presenting a story or other literary work.

  • Plot: a sequence of events in a story or play.

  • Point of view: the vantage point from which a story or event is perceived and told. The most frequently used points of view are first person and third person. In the first person, the narrator is a character or observer in the story (fiction) or the author of it (nonfiction). In the third person, the narrator has no part in the story other than telling it.

  • Protagonist: the main character or hero in a story.

  • Rhyme: the repetition of sounds, usually at the ends of lines in poems, but also occurring at other intervals in a line.

  • Rhythm: the rise and fall of stressed sounds within sentences, paragraphs, and stanzas.

  • Simile: an indirect comparison of unlike things using the word as or like. (When he does undercover work, he is as sly as a fox).

  • Symbol: an object that represents itself and something else at the same time. For example, a red rose is both a rose of a certain color and a suggestion of something romantic.

  • Theme: the meaning or thesis of a literary text.

Annotated Student Sample: "Artists at Work" by Gwyn Garrison

Introduction

Student Gwyn Garrison wrote this textual analysis for a first-year composition class. In the essay, Garrison extends her analysis beyond the texts to discuss outside events and real individuals, making connections among them.


Living by Their Own Words


The Power of Language

Language is the medium through which the communication of ideas takes place. One of language's many attributes is its ability both to reflect and to shape social attitudes. Language has the power to perpetuate oppression when dominant social groups choose the ways in which rebellious behavior is described. Thus, people in power historically have used language as propaganda to perpetuate the ideas that they want to reiterate. For example, if a woman in modern society is described as ladylike, the message is that she conforms to traditional gender expectations of politeness, modesty, and deference. However, if a woman is called a whore, the message is that the woman does not conform to these traditional gender standards. In recent years, oppressed social groups have learned that they can reclaim the language of the oppressor by redefining such words and their connotations.

Gwyn Garrison uses reaction – reflection or thinking – to introduce the "big idea" of the thesis: language has the power to shape cultural and social attitudes.

American authors such as Kate Chopin and Shirley Jackson, sociopolitical activists such as Hillary Clinton and Chrissy Teigen, and California rape survivor Chanel Miller – artists/writers in their own ways – take on this essential work of reclaiming language on behalf of all women. This confiscation of the tools of the oppressor is an essential step toward building a society in which women may be free to be who they are. Negative stereotypical labeling no longer has the effect of disempowering women because language can be reclaimed from the oppressor as a form of empowerment.

Garrison's thesis statement highlights her analytical approach. She makes a connection between women's rights and a series of texts by significant women.

Writers can use the short story form to shift perception away from the lens of the status quo and focus perception in a new way. In Kate Chopin's 1898 short story "The Storm" (text follows this discussion), protagonist Calixta engages in a passionate extramarital affair with an old friend, Alcée. Readers may argue that Calixta's actions should be labeled as immoral by both societal and religious standards because she breaks the social and religious contract defined by her marriage vows. Yet every other action of Calixta's complies with traditional gender roles: she is a wife, mother, and caretaker. In some ways, committing this one social transgression seems completely out of character when she meets traditional gender expectations in all other areas of her life.

Garrison provides publication information as well as a brief plot summary and context for the story. You can read "The Storm" in its entirety at the end of this feature.

When Calixta acts outside of societal norms, however, she discovers the freedom of self-expression and passion.

This transitional topic sentence supports the overall thesis while also identifying what the paragraph will be about.

All parts of her womanhood that have no place in the society in which she lives have been repressed until this one moment. In this scene, Chopin takes possession of the term whore and redefines Calixta's behavior as a transformative awakening.

This explanation makes a reference to the language of the text and explains the significance of the scene as it relates to the entire story and to Garrison's thesis.

Chopin's diction evokes a spiritual transcendence that allows Calixta to live momentarily outside social norms present only in the physical plane of existence: "When he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life's mystery."

Here, Garrison correctly cites textual evidence – an example of the protagonist's diction – to support her reasoning.

The affair becomes a vehicle that allows Calixta to get to a place of true self-expression. The storm, an aspect of nature or the natural world, acts as the catalyst in Calixta's natural self-realization of womanhood. As the storm breaks externally, it also breaks internally for Calixta. Chopin's depiction of Calixta's sexual liberation and fulfillment outside of her marriage is an early step in the fight to bridge the gap between women's bodies and their sociopolitical lives. By presenting female sexuality in a way that is enlightening rather than degrading, Chopin helps destigmatize labels such as whore, which have been used to shame women for acting outside of traditional gender expectations.

Garrison further elaborates on the significance of the textual evidence and connects it to the topic sentence and thesis. In this case, it is the storm – an element of both plot and setting as well as a symbol.

In Shirley Jackson's novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Merricat and her sister Constance are rumored to be witches who, according to village gossip, eat children. The label of the witch has long been a device to oppress women who do not conform to traditional gender roles. In Salem, Massachusetts, during the 17th-century witch trials, women who could read or write, who refused marriage, or who practiced alternative religions often were labeled as witches and burned to death.

Introducing a second text for comparison, Garrison revisits the idea of language reclamation introduced earlier.

In Jackson's novel, Merricat embraces the notion of being labeled a witch. In fact, she facilitates the rumors by burying talismans, identifying magical words, and talking to her cat, Jonas. In contrast to the witch trials, Merricat burns her own house to rid it of her male cousin. And she survives the fire, purging herself and her sister of the family's patriarchal tendencies. By claiming the role of the witch, Merricat insulates herself and her sister from their patriarchal family and society. In the end, Merricat creates a space where she and Constance can live together in a woman-centered territory outside the reach of the villagers.

Focusing on language and its implications, Garrison discusses the use of witch, a label the character is happy to embrace as a means of asserting her womanhood.

With this story, Jackson does the important work of reclaiming the word witch, stripping it of its oppressive power and redefining it for womankind.

In the section that follows, Garrison moves outside literary texts and extends her analysis to language use in contemporary political situations, thus connecting literature with reality. Notice that Garrison has used the literary present tense in discussing both Chopin's and Jackson's fiction. She switches and uses mostly past tense now in discussing nonliterary events.

Similarly, in a more recent political climate, former U.S. President Donald Trump employed stereotypical derogatory language against women whom he considered dissenters. He used phrases like "such a nasty woman" (Ali) to describe former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and "filthy-mouthed wife" (@realDonaldTrump) to describe model Chrissy Teigen to try to shame women with social influence into submission. It is noteworthy, too, that he describes Teigen by her role in relation to a man rather than by her name, which would indicate her individuality.

Both Clinton and Teigen, along with millions of women around the world, have worked to empower women by redefining such language. Almost immediately following the accusation of "such a nasty woman," women and girls around the country donned t-shirts and ball caps with the phrase, showing their pride in being "nasty" (Ali). In this context, the term came to describe women who speak truth to power.

Although Teigen acknowledges that she had previously been blocked by Trump for trolling him, she shot back defiantly at him with a tweet that read in part: "lol what p – a – b – " (@chrissyteigen). Shortly thereafter, the phrase was trending as a Twitter hashtag (Butler). In this instance, people, particularly women, appreciated Teigen's ability to respond to female shaming with language that Trump himself was recorded using and that is also traditionally used to shame and degrade women. This time, however, it was directed toward a powerful man. This reclamation of power through language is one step women have taken to revise the social gender narrative for a modern context.

Again, Garrison introduces texts for comparison, bringing her argument regarding the reclamation of language into the modern day.

After four years of being known as "the girl raped by Stanford swimmer Brock Turner," sexual assault survivor Chanel Miller has reclaimed the narrative of her story with the publication of her memoir Know My Name. After a Stanford University fraternity party in January 2015, Turner assaulted (with intent to rape) an intoxicated and unconscious Miller behind a dumpster at approximately 1:00 a.m. Some passing students interrupted the act, and Turner was taken by the police after the students restrained him. He was later brought to trial and found guilty.

The sympathetic male judge sentenced Turner to only six months in county jail, from which he was released after three months for good behavior. When speaking on television to 60 Minutes on September 22, 2019, Miller expressed outrage that media coverage during the trial had focused not on what Miller had already lost but on what Turner had to lose if found guilty – his education, his swimming career, his Olympic prospects (Miller). Because Miller remained anonymous during the trial, the media and Turner's lawyers controlled how she was perceived by the world – as a girl who got drunk and put herself into a compromising situation.

Garrison emphasizes the role of language in Miller's telling her story and ceasing to feel ashamed.

This male-centric characterization of events left Miller feeling ashamed and disempowered. By writing her book and reclaiming her story, Miller took a vital step in healing and trauma management, emphasizing that she now controls the language of her narrative. She is not a girl who deserves what she got, as some would argue. Miller readily acknowledges she deserved a hangover for her actions but never a rape.

Notice the switching of tenses to indicate events in the past and present. Notice, too, that Garrison returns to the literary present tense in the paragraph that follows.

Miller's story is all too common in the college partying scene, and the regularity of such attacks contributes to the perpetuation of an environment in which women are made to feel responsible for being attacked, and men are free to act as they choose. The awareness of Miller's story and, more importantly, her published story reframe the narrative around rape culture so that the victims are not further victimized, as women work to educate men so that these attacks stop.

Garrison introduces a final contemporary text for comparison. By citing multiple texts across time, Garrison strengthens her argument.

Artists and writers such as Chopin, Jackson, Clinton, Teigen, and Miller engage in the gritty work of social reform that cannot be achieved through any other medium because culture cannot change unless the language in which people talk about the culture changes. This socially reformed reality is conceived only from the creativity of intelligent minds that are able both to envision and then to describe the world as it is yet to exist. In this way, artists who work with the medium of language become prophets.

This conclusion looks to the future, which is a productive rhetorical or persuasive technique to give the audience an idea about what they can take away from this project.

For Reference: "The Storm" by Kate Chopin (1850–1904)

Kate Chopin was an American author of short stories and novels.

Figure 16.5 American author Kate Chopin, 1894


I

The leaves were so still that even Bibi thought it was going to rain. Bobinôt, who was accustomed to converse on terms of perfect equality with his little son, called the child's attention to certain somber clouds that were rolling with sinister intention from the west, accompanied by a sullen, threatening roar. They were at Friedheimer's store and decided to remain there till the storm had passed. They sat within the door on two empty kegs. Bibi was four years old and looked very wise.

"Mama'll be 'fraid, yes," he suggested with blinking eyes.

"She'll shut the house. Maybe she got Sylvie helpin' her this evenin'," Bobinôt responded reassuringly.

"No; she ent got Sylvie. Sylvie was helpin' her yistiday," piped Bibi.

Bobinôt arose and, going across to the counter, purchased a can of shrimps, of which Calixta was very fond. Then he returned to his perch on the keg and sat stolidly holding the can of shrimps while the storm burst. It shook the wooden store and seemed to be ripping great furrows in the distant field. Bibi laid his little hand on his father's knee and was not afraid.

II

Calixta, at home, felt no uneasiness for their safety. She sat at a side window, sewing furiously on a sewing machine. She was greatly occupied and did not notice the approaching storm. But she felt very warm and often stopped to mop her face on which the perspiration gathered in beads. She unfastened her white sacque at the throat. It began to grow dark, and suddenly realizing the situation, she got up hurriedly and went about closing windows and doors.

Out on the small front gallery, she had hung Bobinôt's Sunday clothes to dry, and she hastened out to gather them before the rain fell. As she stepped outside, Alcée Laballière rode in at the gate. She had not seen him very often since her marriage and never alone. She stood there with Bobinôt's coat in her hands, and the big raindrops began to fall. Alcée rode his horse under the shelter of a side projection where the chickens had huddled, and there were plows and a harrow piled up in the corner.

"May I come and wait on your gallery till the storm is over, Calixta?" he asked.

"Come 'long in, M'sieur Alcée."

His voice and her own startled her as if from a trance, and she seized Bobinôt's vest. Alcée, mounting to the porch, grabbed the trousers and snatched Bibi's braided jacket that was about to be carried away by a sudden gust of wind. He expressed an intention to remain outside, but it was soon apparent that he might as well have been out in the open: the water beat in upon the boards in driving sheets, and he went inside, closing the door after him. It was even necessary to put something beneath the door to keep the water out.

"My! What a rain! It's good two years since it rain' like that," exclaimed Calixta as she rolled up a piece of bagging, and Alcée helped her to thrust it beneath the crack.

She was a little fuller of figure than five years before when she married, but she had lost nothing of her vivacity. Her blue eyes still retained their melting quality, and her yellow hair, disheveled by the wind and rain, kinked more stubbornly than ever about her ears and temples.

The rain beat upon the low, shingled roof with a force and clatter that threatened to break an entrance and deluge them there. They were in the dining room – the sitting room – the general utility room. Adjoining was her bedroom, with Bibi's couch alongside her own. The door stood open, and the room, with its white, monumental bed and its closed shutters, looked dim and mysterious.

Alcée flung himself into a rocker, and Calixta nervously began to gather up from the floor the lengths of a cotton sheet that she had been sewing.

"If this keeps up, Dieu sait if the levees goin' to stan it!" she exclaimed.

"What have you got to do with the levees?"

"I got enough to do! An' there's Bobinôt with Bibi out in that storm - if he only didn' left Friedheimer's!"

"Let us hope, Calixta, that Bobinôt's got sense enough to come in out of a cyclone."

She went and stood at the window with a greatly disturbed look on her face. She wiped the frame that was clouded with moisture. It was stiflingly hot. Alcée got up and joined her at the window, looking over her shoulder. The rain was coming down in sheets obscuring the view of far-off cabins and enveloping the distant wood in a gray mist. The playing of the lightning was incessant. A bolt struck a tall chinaberry tree at the edge of the field. It filled all visible space with a blinding glare, and the crash seemed to invade the very boards they stood upon.

Calixta put her hands to her eyes and, with a cry, staggered backward. Alcée's arm encircled her, and for an instant, he drew her close and spasmodically to him.


The painting, "The Kiss" 1887, was created by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944).


Figure 16.6 The Kiss, 1887, by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944)


"Bonté!" she cried, releasing herself from his encircling arm and retreating from the window, "the house'll go next! If I only knew w'ere Bibi was!" She would not compose herself; she would not be seated. Alcée clasped her shoulders and looked into her face. The contact of her warm, palpitating body when he had unthinkingly drawn her into his arms had aroused all the old-time infatuation and desire for her flesh.

"Calixta," he said, "don't be frightened. Nothing can happen. The house is too low to be struck, with so many tall trees standing about. There! Aren't you going to be quiet? say, aren't you?" He pushed her hair back from her face, that was warm and steaming. Her lips were as red and moist as pomegranate seeds. Her white neck and a glimpse of her full, firm bosom disturbed him powerfully. As she glanced up at him, the fear in her liquid blue eyes had given place to a drowsy gleam that unconsciously betrayed a sensuous desire. He looked down into her eyes, and there was nothing for him to do but to gather her lips in a kiss. It reminded him of Assumption.

"Do you remember – in Assumption, Calixta?" he asked in a low voice broken by passion. Oh! she remembered; for in Assumption, he had kissed her and kissed her; until his senses would well nigh fail, and to save her, he would resort to a desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate, a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honor forbade him to prevail. Now - well, now - her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, white throat, and her whiter breasts.

They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms. She was a revelation in that dim, mysterious chamber, as white as the couch she lay upon. Her firm, elastic flesh that was knowing for the first time its birthright was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world. The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached.

When he touched her breasts, they gave themselves up in quivering ecstasy, inviting his lips. Her mouth was a fountain of delight. And when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life's mystery.

He stayed cushioned upon her, breathless, dazed, enervated, with his heart beating like a hammer upon her. With one hand, she clasped his head, her lips lightly touching his forehead. The other hand stroked with a soothing rhythm his muscular shoulders.

The growl of the thunder was distant and passing away. The rain beat softly upon the shingles, inviting them to drowsiness and sleep. But they dared not yield.

The rain was over, and the sun was turning the glistening green world into a palace of gems. Calixta, on the gallery, watched Alcée ride away. He turned and smiled at her with a beaming face, and she lifted her pretty chin in the air and laughed aloud.


III

Bobinôt and Bibi, trudging home, stopped at the cistern to make themselves presentable.

"My! Bibi, w'at will yo' mama say! You ought to be ashame.' You oughta' put on those good pants. Look at 'em! An' that mud on yo' collar! How you got that mud on yo' collar, Bibi? I never saw such a boy!" Bibi was the picture of pathetic resignation. Bobinôt was the embodiment of serious solicitude as he strove to remove from his own person and his son's the signs of their tramp over heavy roads and through wet fields. He scraped the mud off Bibi's bare legs and feet with a stick and carefully removed all traces from his heavy brogans. Then, prepared for the worst - the meeting with an over-scrupulous housewife, they entered cautiously at the backdoor.

Calixta was preparing supper. She had set the table and was dripping coffee at the hearth. She sprang up as they came in.

"Oh, Bobinôt! You back! My! but I was uneasy. W'ere you been during the rain? An' Bibi? He ain't wet? he ain't hurt?" She had clasped Bibi and was kissing him effusively. Bobinôt's explanations and apologies, which he had been composing all along the way, died on his lips as Calixta felt him to see if he were dry and seemed to express nothing but satisfaction at their safe return.

"I brought you some shrimps, Calixta," offered Bobinôt, hauling the can from his ample side pocket and laying it on the table.

"Shrimps! Oh, Bobinôt! You too good fo' anything!" and she gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek that resounded, "J'vous réponds, we'll have a feas' to-night! umph-umph!"

Bobinôt and Bibi began to relax and enjoy themselves, and when the three seated themselves at table they laughed much and so loud that anyone might have heard them as far away as Laballière's.


IV

Alcée Laballière wrote to his wife, Clarisse, that night. It was a loving letter, full of tender solicitude. He told her not to hurry back, but if she and the babies liked it at Biloxi, to stay a month longer. He was getting on nicely, and though he missed them, he was willing to bear the separation a while longer - realizing that their health and pleasure were the first things to be considered.


V

As for Clarisse, she was charmed upon receiving her husband's letter. She and the babies were doing well. The society was agreeable; many of her old friends and acquaintances were at the bay. And the first free breath since her marriage seemed to restore the pleasant liberty of her maiden days. Devoted as she was to her husband, their intimate conjugal life was something that she was more than willing to forego for a while. So the storm passed, and everyone was happy.