Please check my answers to the reading.
Reading:
MY MOTHER NEVER WORKED By Bonnie Smith-Yackel
“Social Security Office.” (The voice answering the telephone sounds very self-assured.)
“I’m calling about ... I ... my mother just died ... I was told to call you and see about a ... death benefit check, I think they call it ...”
“I see. Was your mother on Social Security? How old was she?” “Yes ... she was seventy eight ...”
“Do you know her number?”
“No ... I, ah ... don’t you have a record?”
“Certainly. I’ll look it up. Her name?”
“Smith. Martha Smith. Or maybe she used Martha Ruth Smith.
... Sometimes she used her maiden name ... Martha Jerabek Smith.”
“If you’d care to hold on, I’ll check our records – it’ll be a few minutes.”
“Yes ...”
Her love letters – to and from Daddy – were in an old box, tied with ribbons and stiff, rigid-with-age leather thongs: 1918 through 1920; hers written on stationery from the general store she had worked in full-time and managed, single-handed, after her graduation from high school in 1913; and his, at first, on YMCA or Soldiers and Sailors Club stationery dispensed to the fighting men of World War I. He wooed her thoroughly and persistently by mail, and though she reciprocated all his feelings for her, she dreaded marriage ...
“It’s so hard for me to decide when to have my wedding day – that’s all I’ve thought about these last two days. I have told you dozens of times that I won’t be afraid of married life, but when it comes down to setting the date and then picturing myself a married woman with half a dozen or more kids to look after, it just makes me sick. I am weeping right now – I hope that some day I can look back and say how foolish I was to dread it all.”
They married in February 1921, and began farming. Their first baby, a daughter, was born in January 1922, when my mother was 26 years old. The second baby, a son, was born in March 1923. They were renting farms; my father, besides working his own fields, also was a hired man for two other farmers. They had no capital initially, and had to gain it slowly, working from dawn until midnight every day. My town-bred mother learned to set hens and raise chickens, feed pigs, milk cows, plant and harvest a garden, and can every fruit and vegetable she could scrounge. She carried water nearly a quarter of a mile from the well to fill her wash boilers in order to do her laundry on a scrub board. She learned to shuck grain, feed threshers, shuck and husk corn, feed corn pickers. In September 1925, the third baby came, and in June 1927, the fourth child – both daughters. In 1930, my parents had enough money to buy their own farm, and that March they moved all their livestock and belongings themselves, 55 miles over rutted, muddy roads.
In the summer of 1930 my mother and her two eldest children reclaimed a 40 – acre field from Canadian thistles, by chopping them all out with a . In the other fields, when the oats and flax began to head out, the green and blue of the crops were hidden by the bright yellow of wild mustard. My mother walked the fields day after day, pulling each mustard plant. She raised a new flock of baby chicks – 500 – and she spaded up, planted, d, and harvested a half-acre garden.
During the next spring their hogs caught cholera and died. No cash that fall.
And in the next year the drought hit. My mother and father trudged from the well to the chickens, the well to the calf pasture, the well to the barn, and from the well to the garden. The sun came out hot and bright, endlessly, day after day. The crops shrivelled and died. They harvested half the corn, and ground the other half, stalks and all, and fed it to the cattle as fodder. With the price at four cents a bushel for the harvested crop, they couldn’t afford to haul it into town. They burned it in the furnace for fuel that winter.
In 1934, in February, when the dust was still so thick in the Minnesota air that my parents couldn’t always see from the house to the barn, their fifth child – a fourth daughter – was born. My father hunted rabbits daily, and my mother stewed them, fried them, canned them, and wished out loud that she could taste hamburger once more. In the fall the shotgun brought prairie chickens, ducks, pheasant, and grouse. My mother plucked each bird, carefully reserving the breast feathers for pillows.
In the winter she sewed night after night, endlessly, begging cast-off clothing from relatives, ripping apart coats, dresses, blouses, and trousers to remake them to fit her four daughters and son. Every morning and every evening she milked cows, fed pigs and calves, cared for chickens, picked eggs, cooked meals, washed dishes, scrubbed floors, and tended and loved her children. In the spring she planted a garden once more, dragging pails of water to nourish and sustain the vegetables for the family. In 1936 she lost a baby in her sixth month.
In 1937 her fifth daughter was born. She was 42 years old. In 1939 a second son, and in 1941 her eight child – and third son.
But the war had come, and prosperity of a sort. The herd of cattle had grown to 30 head; she still milked morning and evening. Her garden was more than a half acre – the rains had come, and by now the Rural Electricity Administration and indoor plumbing. Still she sewed – dresses and jackets for the children, housedresses and aprons for herself, weekly patching of jeans, overalls, and denim shirts. Still she made pillows, using the feathers she had plucked, and quilts every year – intricate patterns as well as patchwork, stitched as well as tied – all necessary bedding for her family. Every scrap of cloth too small to be used in quilts was carefully saved and painstakingly sewed together in strips to make rugs. She still went out in the fields to help with the haying whenever there was a threat of rain.
In 1959 my mother’s last child graduated from high school. A year later the cows were sold. She still raised chickens and ducks, plucked feathers, made pillows, baked her own bread, and every year made a new quilt – now for a married child or for a grandchild. And her garden, that huge, undying symbol of sustenance, was as large and cared for as in all the years before. The canning, and now freezing, continued.
In 1969, on a June afternoon, mother and father started out for town so that she could buy sugar to make rhubarb jam for a daughter who lived in Texas. The car crashed into a ditch. She was paralyzed from the waist down.
In 1970 her husband, my father, died. My mother struggled to regain some competence and dignity and order in her life. At the rehabilitation institute, where they gave her physical therapy and trained her to live usefully in a wheelchair, the therapist told me: “She did fifteen pushups today – fifteen! She’s almost seventy-five years old! I’ve never known a woman so strong!”
From her wheelchair she canned pickles, baked bread, ironed clothes, wrote dozens of letters weekly to her friends and her “half dozen or more kids,” and made three patchwork housecoats and one quilt. She made balls and balls of carpet rags – enough for five rugs. And kept all her love letters.
“I think I’ve found your mother’s records – Martha Ruth Smith; married to Ben F Smith?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, I see that she was getting a widow’s pension...” “Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, your mother isn’t entitled to our $255 death benefit.” “Not entitled! But why?”
The voice on the telephone explains patiently:
“Well, you see – your mother never worked.”
COMPREHENSION
1. Why wasn't Martha Smith eligible for a death benefit?
Answer: She was not eligible for a death benefit because she did not work for wages outside the home.
2. How does the government define work?
Answer: The government defines work as a task done by a husband.
PURPOSE AND AUDIENCE
1. What is the essay's thesis? Why is it never explicitly stated?
Answer: I think the thesis is that society deprives women from gaining any benefit (social security) unless they earn it through their husbands' earnings. The thesis is never explicitly stated because this piece of writing is a narrative,which serves to provide examples to prove the author's argument or point.
2. This essay appeared in Ms. magazine and other journals whose audiences are sympathetic to feminism. Could it just as easily have appeared in a magazine whose audience was not? Why, or why not?
Answer: I don't think that it could just as easily have appeared in a magazine whose audience was not because the gender gap makes it difficult for men to sympathize women.
3. How can you tell that this essay's purpose is to persuade and not simply to entertain or to inform?
Answer: The author supplies a significant amount of details about her mother,and the detailed descriptions function to illustrate the author's point. Additionally, the dialogue at the beginning of the narrative characterizes the author herself and the person working in the social security office. What's more is that the dialogue gives the audience a sense of reality.
4. The author mentions relatively little about her father in this essay. How can you account for this?
Answer: I think the author mentions relatively little about her father and focuses great attention on her mother doing chores in order to demonstrate that despite the vast amount of work that women put in, they receive no benefit as opposed to men, who are eligible for the benefit regardless of how less they put in to their work.
STYLE AND STRUCTURE
1. Is the title effective? Why,or why not?
Answer: Yes, the title is effective because the hyperbole ("never") emphasizes the point that the author will illustrate throughout the narrative.
2. What constitutes the essay's introduction? Its conclusion? How are the introduction and conclusion set off from the body of the essay?
Answer: A dialogue constitutes the essay's introduction and conclusion.The introduction and conclusion are set off from the body of the essay in that it presents reality,while the body of the essay presents flashbacks.
3. The author could have outlined her mother's life without framing it with the telephone conversation. Why does she include this frame?
Answer: This frame demonstrates to the reader the society's attitude toward women.
4. What strategies does the author use to indicate the passing of time in her narrative?
Answer: To indicate the passing of time, the author uses transitional phrases (examples: "During the next spring," "And in the next spring,"etc) and specific verb tenses (the dialogue is in present tense and the flashbacks are in past tense).
5. This narrative piles details one on top of another almost like a list. For instance,paragraph 13 includes this sentence: "My town-bred mother learned to set hens and raise chickens,feed pigs,milk cows,plant and harvest a garden,and can every fruit and vegetable she could scrounge." Why does the author list so many details?
Answer: The author lists so many details in order to showcase that her mother had to do every aspect of the overwhelming jobs at home.
6. In paragraphs 20 and 21, what is accomplished by the repetition of the word "still"?
Answer: The repetition of the word "still" serves to emphasize the continuity of the author's mother work .
7. Would the point of the narrative have been made as effectively if it had been written as a straightforward essay on injustice toward women who work at home? Explain.
Answer: I do not think that the point of the narrative would have been made as effectively if it had been written as a straightforward essay on injustice toward women who work at home because contrary to the narrative essay, the straightforward essay lacks detailed descriptions and characterization technique which is achieved through dialogue, thereby making it less convincing to the audience. In other words, the narrative essay shows and does not simply tells as a straightforward essay would do.
Comprehension question 2: Is that the case, or that the mother did not work for WAGES? If she had worked for wages and paid into Social Security herself, she would have been eligible. Rethink your answer to question 4 in that light, too.
I disagree with your assertion that a gender gap makes it hard for men to sympathize with women. This essay could have appeared in any mass-market magazine with the same effect.
Otherwise, your answers seem quite reasonable. Good work!