Personal Response to the Red Son
Personal Response to Texts Assignment
THE RED SON
I LOVE your faces I saw the many years
I drank your milk and filled my mouth
With your home talk, slept in your house
And was one of you. But a fire burns in my heart.
Under the ribs where pulses thud
And flitting between bones of skull
Is the push, the endless mysterious command, Saying:
"I leave you behind--
You for the little hills and the years all alike,
You with your patient cows and old houses
Protected from the rain,
I am going away and I never come back to you;
Crags and high rough places call me,
Great places of death
Where men go empty handed
And pass over smiling
To the star-drift on the horizon rim.
My last whisper shall be alone, unknown;
I shall go to the city and fight against it,
And make it give me passwords
Of luck and love, women worth dying for,
And money. I go where you wist not of Nor I nor any man nor woman. I only know I go to storms Grappling against things wet and naked."
There is no pity of it and no blame.
None of us is in the wrong.
After all it is only this: You for the little hills and I go away.
Carl Sandburg
THE ASSIGNMENT
What idea(s) does this text suggest about the significance of a journey or quest on the direction of an individual’s life? Support your idea(s) with reference to the text and to your previous knowledge and/or experience.
(Note: typically a Personal Response to Texts Assignment will offer you three texts to respond to: a visual text, a poem, and a prose text.)
Initial Planning
To which of the provided texts are you responding? What is the connection between the text(s) and your response?
THE RED SON
I LOVE your faces I saw the many years
I drank your milk and filled my mouth
With your home talk, slept in your house
And was one of you. But a fire burns in my heart.
Under the ribs where pulses thud
And flitting between bones of skull
Is the push, the endless mysterious command, Saying:
"I leave you behind--
You for the little hills and the years all alike,
You with your patient cows and old houses
Protected from the rain,
I am going away and I never come back to you;
Crags and high rough places call me,
Great places of death
Where men go empty handed
And pass over smiling
To the star-drift on the horizon rim.
My last whisper shall be alone, unknown;
I shall go to the city and fight against it,
And make it give me passwords
Of luck and love, women worth dying for,
And money. I go where you wist not of Nor I nor any man nor woman. I only know I go to storms Grappling against things wet and naked."
There is no pity of it and no blame.
None of us is in the wrong.
After all it is only this: You for the little hills and I go away.
Carl Sandburg
THE ASSIGNMENT
What idea(s) does this text suggest about the significance of a journey or quest on the direction of an individual’s life? Support your idea(s) with reference to the text and to your previous knowledge and/or experience.
(Note: typically a Personal Response to Texts Assignment will offer you three texts to respond to: a visual text, a poem, and a prose text.)
Initial Planning
To which of the provided texts are you responding? What is the connection between the text(s) and your response?