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"The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced
—James Baldwin, A Dialogue, 1973
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved
—Helen Keller, Helen Keller's Journal, 1938
Nonfiction is factual prose writing. Since all prose that isn't fiction is called nonfiction, nonfiction takes many forms. Three of the most important are essays, biographies, and autobiographies. Nonfiction writers may use many of the techniques of fiction. However, readers expect nonfiction to present facts. Readers also expect nonfiction to have one or more specific purposes: to describe, explain, persuade, entertain, tell, or do several of these.
In this unit, you will read about a real sea monster, a wise grandfather, a dignified businessman, an embarrassing experience, an awakening, and a dangerous adventure on the highest mountain in the world.
Unit 6 Selections Page
· From Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl 292
· 'A Celebration of Grandfathers" by Rudolfo A. Anaya 302
n "Of Dry Goods and Black Bow Ties" by Yoshiko Uchida 314
n From Gather Together in My Name by Maya Angelou 325
n From The Story of My Life by Helen Keller 331
n From Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer 336
Nonfiction Unit 6 289
Nonfiction is a very broad category of literature. In general, every form of prose writing that is not fiction is nonfiction. A work of fiction comes from the author's imagination. Nonfiction concerns real people, facts, and true experiences.
Nonfiction writers use many of the techniques found in fiction. Nonfiction works may have
suspense, irony, imagery, conflict, symbols, repetition, and humor. Authors may interpret experiences in personal ways and give personal opinions. However, readers expect nonfiction to deal with real events that happened to real people.
Readers also expect that nonfiction literature will have one or more specific purposes. The purpose of a nonfiction work is its central idea: the author's reason for writing. Works may describe, tell a story, persuade, explain, entertain, or do several of these at once.
Biographies and autobiographies are forms of nonfiction. They are true accounts of people's lives. A biography is written by someone other than the person whose life is being described. An autobiography is written by the person. From both,
readers expect to learn about the actual events of a person's life, and how that person feels and thinks about what happened.
Essays are another kind of nonfiction literature. The form of the essay was developed by the sixteenth-century French writer Michel de Montaigne. For his short, nonfiction works intended to explain his ideas, Montaigne used the French term
r essai, which means "I try." Like short stories, essays are brief. In essays, authors try to communicate an idea, explain information, express an opinion, or explore how they feel. Reflective essays explore many sides of a topic about which an author has deep feelings. Biographical essays select a few important events from a person's life that show the person's character.
A nonfiction narrative tells a true story, usually in chronological order. A personal account, which can be longer than an essay, is written by someone who has had an experience he or she wants to explain and
interpret. Two people who have had
the same experience may see that experience in very different ways. Sometimes, personal accounts are in the form of a diary.
290 Unit 6 Nonfiction
The nonfiction literature in this unit shows how today's authors continue to use essays and other forms to communicate their own thoughts on many different subjects. A neverbefore-seen world of strange fish and stranger experiences awaits readers of the excerpt from Thor Heyerdahl's book Kon-Tiki. Rudolfo Anaya, in "A Celebration of Grandfathers," presents a touching reflective essay about what his grandfather and all older people can teach us. Yoshiko Uchida's "Of Dry Goods and Black Bow Ties" is a biographical essay about an unusual man with unusual
dignity. An excerpt from Maya Angelou's autobiography, Gather Together in My Name, describes an embarrassing experience that proved important to the course of her life. In the excerpt from Helen Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life, readers learn how Anne Sullivan awoke young Helen's desire to learn about the world around her. The final selection, an excerpt from Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, is a personal account of one of the greatest disasters in the history of climbing Mount Everest.
Left: Self-Portrait, Tsing-Fang Chen
Below: America, Maria Angelica Iluiz-Tagle
Nonfiction Unit 6 291
Kon-Tiki
Thor Heyerdahl
Thor Heyerdah
1914—
Literary Terms
excerpt a short passage from a longer piece of writing
narrative a story, usually told in chronological order
nonfiction prose writing about real people and true experiences
sequence the order of events
About the Author
Thor Heyerdahl is an explorer and an adventurer. Born in southern Norway in 1914, he studied zoology—animal science—in college. In 1936, he traveled to the islands of Polynesia to study the wildlife there. As he worked, Heyerdahl wondered how people first came to these islands. At the time, it was believed that the first settlers in Polynesia came from Asia. Heyerdahl noticed that the winds and water currents ran from east to west. Because of this, he decided the first settlers could have come from South America.
In 1947, he and five friends set out to test his theory. They built a balsa-wood raft, named the Kon-Tiki, that was like the rafts used by ancient South Americans. The crew set sail from Peru. After 101 days and more than four thousand miles, they arrived in Polynesia. Heyerdahl had the proof he needed: South Americans might have settled Polynesia.
Heyerdahl led other voyages. In one he sailed a papyrus boat to prove that ancient Egyptians could have sailed to South America and founded the Aztec and Incan cultures there.
Heyerdahl has written about these and other adventures in his books Kon-Tiki, Aku-Aku, The Secret of Easter Island, and Expedition of the Ra.
About the Selection
This selection is an excerpt, or short passage, from
Heyerdahl's nonfiction account of the voyage of the Kon-Tiki.
It tells of the crew's sightings of strange ocean wildlife as they sailed across the Pacific in their raft.
Heyerdahl's book is a narrative, or story. Like most narratives, its sequence is chronological, or in time order.
292 Unit 6 Nonfiction
Not a day passed but we, as we sat floating on the surface of the sea, were visited by inquisitive guests which wriggled and waggled about us, and a few of them, such as dolphins and pilot fish, grew so familiar that they accompanied the raft across the sea and kept round us day and night.
When night had fallen and the stars were twinkling in the dark tropical sky, a phosphorescence flashed around us in rivalry with the stars, and single glowing plankton resembled round live coals so vividly that we involuntarily drew in our bare legs when the glowing pellets were washed up round our feet at the raft's stern. When we caught them, we saw that they were little brightly shining species of shrimp. On such nights we were sometimes scared when two round shining eyes suddenly rose out of the sea right alongside the raft and glared at us with an unblinking hypnotic stare. The visitors were often big squids which came up and floated on the surface with their devilish green eyes shining in the dark like phosphorus. But sometimes the shining eyes were those of deep-water fish which came up only at night and lay staring, fascinated by the glimmer of light before them. Several times, when the sea was calm, the black water round the raft was suddenly full of round heads two or three feet in diameter, lying motionless and staring at us with great glowing eyes. On other nights balls of light three feet and more in diameter would be visible down in the water, flashing at irregular intervals like electric lights turned on for a moment.
As you read, notice how Heyerdahl shapes his narrative.
Phosphorescence is glowing light coming from something that has absorbed heat or light. Plankton are the tiny animal and plant life found in the ocean. The stern is the back of the raft.
rivalry a struggle to win
hypnotic causing a dreamlike state
inquisitive curious irregular uneven
Nonfiction Unit 6 293
Subterranean means being underground. In this case, from deep in the ocean.
Afathom is equal to six feet. Five fathoms is thirty feet.
The starboard side is the right, the port side is the left.
A swell is a long wave.
We gradually grew accustomed to having these subterranean or submarine creatures under the floor, but nevertheless we were just as surprised every time a new species appeared. About two o'clock on a cloudy night, when the man at the helm had difficulty in distinguishing black water from black sky, he caught sight of a faint illumination down in the water which slowly took the shape of a large animal. It was impossible to say whether it was plankton shining on its body, or whether the animal itself had a phosphorescent surface, but the glimmer down in the black water gave the ghostly creature obscure, wavering outlines. Sometimes it was roundish, sometimes oval, or triangular, and suddenly it split into two parts which swam to and fro under the raft independently of each other. Finally there were three of these large shining phantoms wandering round in slow circles under us.
They were real monsters, for the visible parts alone were some five fathoms long, and we all quickly collected on deck and followed the ghost dance. It went on for hour after hour, following the course of the raft. Mysterious and noiseless, our shining companions kept a good way beneath the surface, mostly on the starboard side where the light was, but often they were right under the raft or appeared on the port side. The glimmer of light on their backs revealed that the beasts were bigger than elephants but they were not whales, for they never came up to breathe. Were they giant ray fish which changed shape when they turned over on their sides? They took no notice at all if we held the light right down on the surface to lure them up, so that we might see what kind of creatures they were. And, like all proper goblins and ghosts, they had sunk into the depths when the dawn began to break.
We never got a proper explanation of this nocturnal visit
from the three shining monsters, unless the solution was afforded by another visit we received a day and a half later in the full midday sunshine. It was May 24, and we were lying drifting on a leisurely swell in exactly 95° west by 7° south. It
illumination a light lure to tempt
nocturnal nighttime obscure unclear
reveal to show wavering quivering
294
Heyerdahl has just hauled this shark on deck by grabbing its rough tail fin. The shark is helpless once the tail fin is above the water.
was about noon, and we had thrown overboard the guts of two big dolphins we had caught earlier in the morning. I was having a refreshing plunge overboard at the bow, lying in the water but keeping a good lookout and hanging on to a rope end, when I caught sight of a thick brown fish, six feet long, which came swimming inquisitively toward me through the crystal-clear sea water. I hopped quickly up on to the edge of
The bow is the front of the raft.
Nonfiction Unit 6 295
Aft is near the stern, or back, of the raft.
In mythology, the Old Man of the Sea is a god who rose out of his home at the bottom of the sea to give advice to sailors.
the raft and sat in the hot sun looking at the fish as it passed quietly, when I heard a wild war whoop from Knut, who was sitting aft behind the bamboo cabin. He bellowed "Shark!" till his voice cracked in a falsetto, and, as we had sharks swimming alongside the raft almost daily without creating such excitement, we all realized that this must be something extra-special and flocked astern to Knut's assistance.
Knut had been squatting there, washing his pants in the swell, and when he looked up for a moment he was staring straight into the biggest and ugliest face any of us had ever seen in the whole of our lives. It was the head of a veritable sea monster, so huge and so hideous that, if the Old Man of the Sea himself had come up, he could not have made such an impression on us. The head was broad and flat like a frog's, with two small eyes right at the sides, and a toadlike jaw which was four or five feet wide and had long fringes drooping from the corners of the mouth. Behind the head was an enormous body ending in a long thin tail with a pointed tail fin which stood straight up and showed that this sea monster was not any kind of whale. The body looked brownish under the water, but both head and body were thickly covered with small white spots.
The monster came quietly, lazily swimming after us from astern. It grinned like a bulldog and lashed gently with its tail. The large round dorsal fin projected clear of the water and sometimes the tail fin as well, and, when the creature was in the trough of the swell, the water flowed about the broad back as though washing round a submerged reef. In front of the broad jaws swam a whole crowd of zebra-striped pilot fish in fan formation, and large remora fish and other parasites sat firmly attached to the huge body and traveled with it through the water, so that the whole thing looked like a curious zoological collection crowded round something that resembled a floating deep-water reef.