Reader Response
(Part 2)
Choose one of the following quotes and write a response following the format taught in
class:
1. There is no good picture of this except the one you can make in your mind. The
road is lost at either end in rain...Everything is water logged. Even bit of grass won’t
float. (TWO, 1)
2. On the outskirts of town there was an asylum for the mad - (Van Gogh had been
one of its patients) - and it was here the officers bathed in black iron tubs under high
glass windows filtering sunlight down through a century of cobwebs and dust. The place
was called Asile Desole, which means desolated or devastated refuge. (TWO, 2)
3. Riding beside him was his batman, Bugler Willie Poole. Bugler was really an
out-of-date rank and fairly meaningless but sometimes it was given to men whose age
was suspect. In other wars they might have been drummer boys. Willie Poole was proud
of his rank, however, because the fact was he actually played the bugle....He’d been
assigned to Robert two days after Robert’s arrival - his previous officer having been
killed when he’d stepped outside one evening “for a breath of air”. The breath of air had
blown his head off. (TWO, 3)
4. Robert was proud to be able to show Levitt just how real the enemy was. It made
being up there important, somehow, if you could look out and say: “Do you see that man
right there with the blue scarf round his neck ...?” and then describe how you had seen
him before on a previous occasion. It gave the war some meaning if you knew that the
men who took your fire (and returned it) wore blue scarves or had grey mittens like your
own. (TWO, 7)
5. ...Maybe you’d like to look under the bunk just here...
Robert looked.
There was a whole row of cages.
Rowena.
(TWO , 7)
6. All he wanted was a dream. Escape. But nobody dreams on a battle field. There
isn’t any sleep that long. Dreams and distance are the same. If he could run away...like
Longboat. Put on his canvas shoes and the old frayed shirt and tie the cardigan around
his waist and take off over the prairie.... but he kept running into Taffler. Throwing
stones. And Harris. (TWO, 10)
7. There are enmities in families that have to be foreborne. But oh...when it turns to
hate. (TWO, 11)
8. It may be pedestrian to say so - but the truth is often pedestrian and I think the
fact is that extremely physical men like Robert and Jamie and Taffler are often extremely
sensitive men as well. Not your local football players, mind you! They’re more apt to be
maudlin and sentimental. But the true athletes - the ones who seek beauty through
perfection. I think they seek out poets and artists just as poets and artists seek them out.
Maybe not always as lovers - though “love” has so many ways of expressing itself
outside of the physical. (TWO, 12)
9. Everyone who’s born has come from the sea. Your mother’s womb is just the sea
in small. And birds come out of seas in eggs. Horses lie in the sea before they’re born.
The placenta is the sea. And your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the
ocean - walking on the land. (TWO, 12)
10. ...you may not realize, Lieutenant Ross, that General Wolfe was born at
Greenwich. No. Robert hadn’t realized. Yes, said Barbara, Then he grew up and got
your country for us. Robert said: No, ma’am. I think we got it for him. We? Barbara
asked. Soldiers, said Robert. (TWO, 12)
EVALUATION:
Content: answers all questions in reader response format
Connects to the rest of the novel (Parts 1 through 5)
Illustrates personal anecdotes and refers to quote
Shows personal insight
/25
Style: organized logically
connections are clear
mechanics
/25
TOTAL /50