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What does your father drink? How much?

Can you describe his attitude toward violence?

Will you call it savage?

What is your mother’s breeding?

Does she perhaps come from royal stock?

The teacher improves Lucy’s answers. Brow furrowed, he scratches out, rewrites, pauses to ask Lucy to repeat herself. On that blank page he orders her family’s story with words neatened as the schoolhouse is neatened, the parlor, the rows of coyote brush that shut out what’s unpleasant to see. Lucy’s story set down as part of the teacher’s monograph on the Western territory. One day she’ll hold that book […]. She’ll lay it before Ma. She’ll smooth its pages and hear its living spine crack.

Lessons in imagining herself better.

Explanation and Analysis:

In exchange for offering Lucy private lessons, Teacher Leigh interviews her about her family with a plan to include their story in a history book he’s writing. This passage includes several of the questions he asks Lucy. Lucy takes these sessio...

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Original

Romeo

(aside) She speaks.
O, speak again, bright angel! For thou art
As glorious to this night, being o’er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white, upturnèd, wondering eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy-puffing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.

Juliet

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art though Romeo?
Deny they father and refuse they name.
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Modern

Romeo

(to himself) She speaks. Speak again, bright angel! For tonight you are as glorious, there up above me, as a winged messenger of heaven who makes mortals fall onto their backs to gaze up with awestruck eyes as he strides across the lazy clouds and sails through the air.

Juliet

O Romeo, Romeo! Why must you be Romeo? Deny your father and give up your name. Or, if you won’t change your name, just swear your love to me and I’ll give up being a Capulet.

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