Chapter VII: Act V: Define: smacked, hoar, frore

PAGE 68

=1.= Revealed the havoc of the living flood, etc.

Point out each word and statement that pictures the havoc
wrought in the valley by the herd.

=9.= A food-devouring plethora of food

Devouring what food? What plethora?

=10.= Had come to make a starving solitude!

What idea is modified by the word “starving”?

=16.= That still the weak might perish.

Express this idea in other terms. Note unusual use of the word
“still.” State the biological “law of evolution.”

=24.= Within himself the oldest cause of war

What is the “oldest cause of war”? The newest?

Define: plethora, raucous, guerdon.

PAGE 69

=8.= He saw a bison carcass black with crows, etc.

This picture is unique, cruel, almost revolting, but wonderfully
true.

=18.= To die contending with a living foe,

=19.= Than fight the yielding distance and the lack.

To engage in a short struggle with a visible foe with a definite
end near and certain is far easier than to endure the long drawn
and indefinite. This is because man is primarily well equipped
for the immediate struggle of hunting and war, but is not gifted
by nature with power to endure.

PAGE 70

=5.= The wolf’s a coward, who, in goodly packs, etc.

The wolf pack symbolizes the mob. The law of mob life is
cruelty, and cruelty is always cowardly.

=10.= How some great beast that shambled like a bear

Why “shambled like a bear”?

=24.= Woe in the silken meshes of the friend,

=25.= Weal in the might and menace of the foe.

The friend often weakens his friend. The opposition of the enemy
develops his strength.

Define: lacerated, vituperative, prodigious, frenzy, weal.

PAGE 71

=14.= When sleep is weirdest and a moment’s flight,

Dreams often come just before waking.

=20.= Hoof-smitten leagues consuming in a dust.

What is the syntax of “leagues”? Explain the line.

=23.= A corpse, yet heard the muffled parleying etc.

Note how the idea that he was really dead haunts Hugh both
sleeping and waking. Find other places in the poem where this is
true.

PAGE 72

=3.= The babble flattened to a blur of gray—

A comparison of sound to light.

=15.= Could they be the Sioux?

The Sioux had been allies in the Leavenworth Campaign, while the
Rees were enemies. Note page 1.

Note on this page the vivid picture of the Indians riding in the
fog.

=24.= The outflung feelers of a tribe a-stir

Meaning of “feelers”?

PAGE 73

=8.= And wasna!

Bison meat, shredded, dried, and mixed with bison tallow and
dried bullberries, the mixture being packed in bladders.

=11.= But kinsman of the blood of daring men.

Actual “blood brotherhood” between Indian and White was not
uncommon and bravery and loyalty were the basis of such
relation.

=13.= O Friend-Betrayer at the Big Horn’s mouth, etc.

Note how Hugh’s imagination rushes on to the killing of Jamie.

=17.= From where a cloud of startled blackbirds rose

What startles the blackbirds?

Note on this page, and the next, various hints of the coming of
the Indians and how important the matter was to the starving
watcher from the bluff.

=20.= Embroiled the parliament of feathered shrews?

What are the “feathered shrews”?

=22.= Flackering strepent; now a sooty shower, etc.

“Flackering strepent”—fluttering and noisy, a fitting
description of the startled flock; onomatopœia.

The entire picture of the blackbirds is notable. They are a
“boiling cloud,” “a sooty shower,” with big flakes and driven by
a squall, they are “cold black fire.” All these terms are
startling but exact.

Define: parfleche, panniers, maize, parliament, shrews.

PAGE 74

=4.= What augury in orniscopic words

=5.= Did yon swart sibyls on the morning scrawl?

A rhetorical question to indicate the dread interest Hugh felt
in the question “Sioux or Ree?”

Note the fancy that words are written on the sky.

=13.= In their van

=14.= Aloof and lonely rode a gnarled old man etc.

“Gnarled” like a tree. A most vivid picture of Elk Tongue, a
famous Ree chief.

=16.= Beneath his heavy years, yet haughtily

=17.= He wore them like the purple of a king.

His great age is like a royal robe. “Gray hairs are a crown of
glory.”

=18.= Keen for a goal, as from the driving string etc.

In how many and significant ways his face is described in these
lines: keen for a goal, like a flinty arrow-head, with a
brooding stare. Directions for a statue could scarcely be more
exact or more full of suggestion.

Define: ruck, augury, orniscopic, swart, sibyl, attenuated,
gnarled, piebald.

PAGE 75

Read the entire description of the Indians at one sitting and get the unified effect.

=12.= Such foeman as no warrior ever slew.

Hunger.

=18.= And hurled them shivering back upon the beast.

According to the Greek myth men were little better than beasts
until Prometheus brought fire to them from heaven in a reed.

How nearly does the myth accord with truth?

=21.= Hope fed them with a dream of buffalo etc.

With primitive man feast and famine were often close together.

=23.= Home with their Pawnee cousins on the Platte,

Locate the Platte. The Rees and Pawnees speak the same tongue
with slight variations.

Define “ravelled.”

PAGE 76

=2.= The rich-in-ponies rode, etc.

The first scene in the moving picture shows the contrast of rich
and poor that existed even in the most primitive society.

=3.= For much is light and little is a load etc.

What is meant? The sentence is a paradox.

=10.= Whining because the milk they got was thinned etc.

The squaws with their crying babies are the material of the
second scene, followed by the striplings.

=14.= How fair life is beyond the beckoning blue, etc.

“Distance lends enchantment.”

=15.= Cold-eyed the grandsires plodded, for they knew, etc.

Note contrasting words: striplings, grandsires; strutted,
plodded.

One group saw visions, the other was disillusioned.

=17.= In what lone land.

What is meant?

=20.= Stooped to the fancied burden of the race;

What is the “burden of the race”?

=25.= The lean cayuses toiled.

Cayuse, a broncho, originally one bred by the Cayuse Indians.

=27.= To see a world flow by on either side,

How does the world “flow by”?

PAGE 77

The dog was an ever present feature of Indian life. Note the author’s familiarity with the dog.

=12.= Yielded to the squaws’

=13.= Inverted mercy and a slow-won grave.

“The female of the species is more deadly than the male.” Why?

For the sake of the protection of the young. Indian fighters had
a special horror of falling into the hands of the squaws.

Hate and love are opposite sides of the same shield. In
proportion as woman loves her children and the protectors of
them she hates anybody and anything that menaces them.

=14.= Since Earth’s first mother scolded from a cave

A true picture of social origins.

=17.= To match the deadly venom brewed above

=18.= The lean, blue, blinding heart-fires of her love.

Note the witches’ cauldron that bubbles here and the fire that
burns below it.

=20.= But thrice three seasons yet should swell the past, etc.

Glass was killed by the Rees in 1832.

=21.= So was it writ, ere Fate’s keen harriers etc.

Why is Fate capitalized?

Define: palimpsest, harriers.

PAGE 78

=3.= For that weird pass whereto the fleet are slow,

The fleet are the young, but the old reach the “weird pass”
first.

=16.= Scarce had he crossed the open flat, and won etc.

On this page and the next we have the temptation of Hugh to kill
the squaw. (_a_) Do you feel that Hugh will kill her? (_b_)
Would he be justified in so doing? (_c_) Would you be satisfied
to have the hero of the story slay a weak old woman, though an
Indian?

Whom does Hugh see sitting haloed like a saint? (page 79)

What impression on Hugh does the whole adventure make?

PAGE 80

=3.= He reached a river. Leaning to a pool etc.

Was the reaction against his own pity natural?

=14.= That somehow some sly Jamie of a dream

=15.= Had plundered him again;

Again the obsession concerning Jamie. There seems a suggestion
of insanity in this. Is the pursuit of vengeance always insane?

=18.= Now when the eve in many-shaded grays etc.

Another prairie sunset. Note that every description of the
prairie is woven directly into the story. No two are alike.

=21.= Hugh paused perplexed. Elusive, haunting, dim, etc.

A comparison of pure sense to pure idea is unusual but true, for
ideas rest upon sense perception.

Define: crone, fleered.

PAGE 81

=4.= It seemed the sweet

=5.= Allure of home.

Association by sense of smell—smoke, fire, home in the evening.

=12.= Hearth-lit within, its windows were as eyes etc.

The comparison of an old farmhouse to an old mother. Point out
pathos in each.

=21.= A two-tongued herald wooing hope and fear,

Meaning? Compare Æneid, Book I, 661.

Select a lyric from this page.

Define: troll, recrudescent.

PAGE 82

=2.= And reached a bluff’s top. In a smudge of red etc.

Another sunset picture. Where were the “pools of gloom”?

How comes the “mottled” effect?

=10.= He lay upon the bare height, fagged, forlorn,

Hugh is again near to collapse.

=17.= Then with a start etc.

How well the first stage of the finding and appropriation of
fire has been pictured as the effect of smell! Now comes the
second stage. The whole incident epitomizes in wonderful way the
meaning of fire to mankind. Note the beauty of the comparison of
the flame to a lily.

Define: mottled, pluming.

PAGE 83

=4.= With pounding heart Hugh crawled along the height

Why “with pounding heart”?

=15.= Keen to possess once more the ancient gift.

Of Prometheus to man.

Define: doddering, burgeoning, tenuous.

PAGE 84

=1.= Arose, and made an altar of the place.

Fire worship is as old as the race. Hugh is the priest, the East
Wind a religious novice who sings in the ceremonials, the night
is the temple, and in response to the worship, “Conjuries of
interwoven breath,” the fire god appears in the burning wood.

=5.= The Wind became a chanting acolyte.

Why have an East Wind?

=10.= Once more the freightage of the fennel rod

Prometheus used a fennel rod to bring fire to mortals.

=11.= Dissolved the chilling pall of Jovian scorn.

Jove despised men and refused them fire.

=13.= The face apocalyptic, and the sword

=14.= The glory of the many-symboled Lord

=17.= Voiced with the sound of many waters,

All this is from Revelations, Chapter I.

Define: acolyte, epiphanic.

PAGE 85

=11.= Then set about to view an empty camp

=12.= As once before, etc.

See pages 29 and 30.

PAGE 86

=1.= Among the ash-heaps; and the lean dogs ran

=2.= And barked about him, for the love of man etc.

Some one has said that the dog was a candidate for humanity and
just missed it.

=8.= For ‘tis the little gifts of grudging Chance,

=9.= Well husbanded, make victors.

This is a principle of economy often illustrated.

=18.= Scarce more of marvel and the sense of might, etc.

Tennyson makes poetry out of a miraculous sword, Neihardt out of
a man-made knife. One is romanticism, the other realism.

Which is more poetic?

PAGE 87

=1.= Not having, but the measure of desire etc.

“A man’s riches consist of what he can do without.” Socrates
taught this philosophy.

=2.= Who gaining more, seek most, etc.

Explain.

=7.= That twain wherewith Time put the brute to school,

Who was the “brute”? How “put to school”?

=6.= What gage of mastery in fire and tool!—

The control of fire was the first great step in civilization and
someone has said that the invention of the bow and arrow wrought
greater changes in human life than any other invention. By
enabling man to kill at a greater range it increased his supply
of meat and so made it possible to live in larger groups.

PAGE 88

Why didn’t Hugh roast the dog instead of boiling? Note details of preparation. Hugh ate the entire dog. Two starved Indian hunters have been known to eat the whole carcass of a deer at one sitting.

=13.= Hugh slept. And then—as divers, mounting, sunder etc.

A vivid expression of a common experience on waking from
especially profound sleep.

Define: bulimic, gage.

PAGE 89

=3.= And was the friendlike fire a Jamie too? etc.

The natural return of a monomania.

=12.= The sting of that antiquity of pain

After a long rest, his former suffering seemed ancient.

=14.= That yielding victor, fleet in being slow

Always more space to be conquered, hence slow and certain to win
over Hugh.

=16.= So readily the tentacles of sense, etc.

Thinkers are just beginning to realize something of the hypnotic
power of habit and custom in the individual and in society. The
loss of the accustomed may disintegrate the life. Our author
shows keen understanding when he likens the effect upon Hugh of
the loss of fire to that of the loss of a dear one by death. A
moment ago he was here, vital, real. Now he is gone. How strange
is the world without him!

PAGE 90

=7.= A yelping of the dogs among the bluffs, etc.

The one sound in the desolate night, the yelping of the dogs,
starts a train of ideas. The power of abstraction has made man
able to survive where less intelligent forms have perished.

Flint can be used to skin a dog, so can steel, the two smitten
together make fire, so Hugh found his “unlocked door to life.”

=22.= Spilled on it from the smitten stone a shower

=23.= Of ruddy seed; and saw the mystic flower

=24.= That genders its own summer, bloom anew!

Explain the metaphor.

An absolutely new figure regarding fire.

PAGE 91

=10.= Set laggard singers snatching at the tune.

What “laggard singers”?

=13.= And, pitching voices to the timeless woe,

Life fundamentally sad.

=14.= Outwailed the lilting. So the Chorus sings etc.

In the Greek theater the Chorus sang after the actor had spoken,
always taking an opposite tone. So Hugh’s joyous song is drowned
in the wailing of the dogs.

PAGE 92

=8.= He hobbled now along a withered rill etc.

Note the quiet of the autumn spell over the secluded place, and
the onomatopœia indicating the falling of the plums and
whispering leaves; also the crying of the lonesome dog that
makes the stillness more intense and sad.

=10.= A cyclopean portal yawning sheer.

“Cyclopean portal,” Homer’s Odyssey.

=25.= Above the sunset like a stygian boat,

The boat of Charon on the Styx, the river of the underworld.

PAGE 93

=1.= The new moon bore the spectre of the old,

Explain.

=3.= The valley of the tortuous Cheyenne.

Locate the Cheyenne.

=4.= And ere the half moon sailed the night again, etc.

How long since Hugh left the forks of the Grand?

=17.= Grown Atlantean in the wrestler’s craft.

Explain “Atlantean.”

Read “The River and I,” Chapter I, by the same author, to get
his feeling for the Missouri.

THE RETURN OF THE GHOST

PAGE 94

=1.= Not long Hugh let the lust of vengeance gnaw

Note that the first line of the division of the poem rhymes with
the last line of the former. How often does this happen in the
poem? This device keeps the mind on a stretch and so keeps
interest alive. The same device is often used by the author in
passing from one paragraph to the next.

=5.= I can not rest; for I am but the ghost etc.

The old obsession that he actually died by the Grand, though
here used less seriously than in other places.

=12.= With such a blizzard of a face for me!

The epithet reveals how Hugh’s gray “ruined face” impressed men.

=13.= For he went grayer like a poplar tree, etc.

The simile of the face of Glass in mentioning Jamie’s treachery
and the poplar tree shaken by the first wind of a storm is true
to nature, for a poplar turns the gray side of its leaves when
shaken.

Define: fend, kenneled.

PAGE 95

=1.= From where the year’s last keelboat hove in view

The keelboat, shaped with keel and hence so called, from forty
to sixty feet long, carrying as much as sixty tons and pulled by
fifteen to twenty-five men, was used on the Missouri and other
navigable rivers before the day of the steamboat.

=10.= Until the tipsy Bourgeois bawled for Glass

The head of a trading post in the fur trading period was called
Bourgeois, a French word meaning tradesman.

=12.= The graybeard, sitting where the light was blear, etc.

The whole account of Hugh’s telling of this great tragedy is of
the highest excellence. We already know that Hugh is a story
teller; we have seen him composing this very tale (page 58), and
we know how his imagination sometimes carries him beyond the
actual, as when he saw Jamie dead (page 60). The effect of his
face, with its changing expressions suiting all the moods
associated with love and betrayal, his chanting songlike tones,
is shown in the muscular responses of the listeners and their
shudders when the story ends. The supreme touch comes when Hugh
tells of the slaying of Jamie as if already done.

=19.= And his the purpose that is art’s, etc.

To centre attention on human experience at the crucial moment
and so render it immortal.

=20.= Whereby men make a vintage of their hearts etc.

Turn sorrow into beauty. Is there comfort in a sad story well
told?

PAGE 97

Select the lines on this page that convey a sense of monotony.

=16.= Past where the tawny Titan gulps the cup

Titan, the Missouri.

=22.= And there old times came mightily on Hugh, etc.

Do you believe Hugh capable now of killing Jamie?

=24.= Some troubled glory of that wind-tossed hair

Hugh’s memory of Jamie is sad, not bitter.

Define: cutbank, wry, tawny.

PAGE 98

=2.= So haunted with the blue of Jamie’s eyes, etc.

The blue is sad but not treacherous as once.

=8.= Past where the Cannon Ball and Heart come in

Locate the Cannon Ball and the Heart.

=18.= The chaining of the Titan. Drift ice ran.

The story of the freezing of the river is worth noting for its
vividness, its alliterations and onomatopœia.

=19.= The wingéd hounds of Winter ceased to bay.

What were the “wingéd hounds”?

PAGE 99

=5.= To wait the far-off Heraclean thaw,

Heraclean—Hercules. What chained Titan did Hercules release?

=12.= His purpose called him at the Big Horn’s mouth—

Locate the Big Horn. What purpose? Who was there?

=18.= And took the bare, foot-sounding solitude

Why “foot-sounding”?

=22.= He seemed indeed a fugitive from Death etc.

Another reference to Hugh’s fancy that he had actually died.

It gives added force to that fancy to make his frosted breath
suggest a shroud.

=24.= Now the moon was young

Note the phase of the moon for later reference.

PAGE 100

=6.= With Spring’s wild rage, the snow-born Titan girl, etc.

The Yellowstone is larger at the junction than is the Missouri.

Hence the Missouri is the Titan girl rushing into the arms of
her lover. But in the winter with snow covering the ice, “A
winding sheet was on the marriage bed.” Why “snow-born”?

=15.= Gray void seemed suddenly astir with wings etc.

Note onomatopœia in the lines indicating that snow begins to
fall.

PAGE 101

=1.= The bluffs loomed eerie, and the scanty trees

Describe the appearance of the trees.

=15.= The tumbling snowflakes sighing all around,

What associations brought Hugh a dream of boyhood?

=18.= The Southwind in the tousled apple trees

=19.= And slumber flowing from their leafy gloom.

These lines are an intentional “literary echoing” of one of the
most beautiful of the Sapphic fragments,—fragment 4 in Bergk’s
text.

Define: penumbral, susurrant.

PAGE 102

The blizzard is a storm characteristic of the plains. It generally lasts three days, is terribly cold, and the whirling snow is blinding.

=4.= Black blindness grew white blindness

Indicating the slight difference between night and day.

Note in how few lines the poet pictures the passing of the day.

=5.= All being now seemed narrowed to a span, etc.

All else was shut from sight and to a degree from the mind.

PAGE 103

=7.= As with the waning day the great wind fell.

The sudden cessation of the wind at the close of the third day
of the storm is characteristic, as is also the intense cold.
Forty degrees below zero is not unusual, often even fifty
degrees.

=10.= When, heifer-horned, the maiden moon lies down

A reference to the maiden Diana, goddess of the moon.

How long was Hugh on this journey?

PAGE 104

=3.= Yon sprawling shadow, pied with candle-glow etc.

Another of the gripping memory pictures. Can a man who dreams
such a waking dream kill another, even one who has betrayed him,
in cold blood?

=21.= Or was this but the fretted wraith of Hugh etc.

The feeling that he is a ghost comes to Hugh twice in this
incident of finding the fort. His long journey, his weakened
physical condition and his exhausted emotions combine to make
life seem unreal.

PAGE 105

=14.= Joy filled a hush twixt heart-beats like a bird; etc.

Joy rather than anger comes first in his feeling about Jamie.

That is significant.

PAGE 106

=7.= “My God! I saw the Old Man’s ghost out there!”

Belief in ghosts was common among the trappers.

=12–21.= “Hugh strove to shout,” etc.

For the last time we see Hugh with the feeling that he is dead.

PAGE 108

Are you surprised that Hugh does not kill Le Bon? Would you excuse the deed if he had?

JAMIE

PAGE 109

Locate the Country of the Crows (Absaroka), the Big Horn, the Powder, Fort Atkinson.

PAGE 110

=16.= Now up the Powder, etc.

Trace the journey on the map.

Locate the Laramie.

PAGE 111

=2.= The Niobrara races for the morn—

Locate the Niobrara. It is a very swift stream. Note the entire
description of the coming of spring on the prairie. It is a
lyric and includes a description of both late and early-coming
of spring.

=3.= Here at length was born Upon the southern slopes the baby spring, etc.

A slow spring.

=6.= Not such as when announced by thunder-claps etc.

A description of a swiftly coming spring.

=9.= Clad splendidly as never Sheba’s Queen,

Sheba’s Queen—The Bible, 1st Kings.

=15.= And no root dreamed what Triumph-over-Death

=16.= Was nurtured now in some bleak Nazareth, etc.

The coming of spring suggests the resurrection.

=19.= And everywhere the Odic Presence dwelt.

“Odic”: from “od,” an arbitrary scientific term signifying the
mysterious vital force in nature.

=21.= And when they reached the valley of the Snake,

Locate the Snake.

=22.= The Niobrara’s ice began to break,

The next step in the coming of spring.

PAGE 112

=4.= The geese went over,

A sure sign that spring is almost come.

=6.= The little river of Keyapaha

Locate the Keyapaha.

=10.= To where the headlong Niobrara etc.

Locate the mouth of the Niobrara. A student in one of my classes
once wrote an interesting essay telling how her father’s farm
had been swept away by the rushing of the Niobrara into the
Missouri at the spring flood. At such times the smaller river
hurls the Missouri as much as a mile beyond its normal course.

=13.= A giant staggered by a pigmy’s sling.

What Bible story is here referred to?

=18.= There all the vernal wonder-work was done: etc.

From here on select the color words that give the picture of the
progress of spring. Another lyric.

PAGE 113

=14.= Of wizard-timber and of wonder-stuff etc.

Are day dreams built of “wizard-timber and of wonder-stuff”?

Note the alliteration.

PAGE 114

=1.= Into the North, a devil-ridden man.

The first picture of Jamie since he deserted Hugh. Will it
arouse Hugh’s pity?

=13.= Up the long watery stairway to the Horn,

What is the “watery stairway to the Horn”? Horn—Big Horn River.

=14.= And the year was shorn etc.

How long is it since the story opened?

Note the entire description of the coming of autumn.

=19.= That withered in the endless martyrdom

Why “martyrdom”?

=20.= The scarlet quickened on the plum etc.

Note the steps of the coming of autumn at the Heart, among the
Mandans, at the Yellowstone, the Powder.

PAGE 115

=1.= Was spattered with the blood of Summer slain.

A remarkable figure.

=8.= Aye, one who seemed to stare upon a ghost etc.

A second picture of Jamie’s suffering.

=14.= And to forgive and to forget were sweet: etc.

There will be no murder; our interest now is that the men may
meet and in the manner of reconciliation.

=15.= ‘Tis for its nurse etc.

Explain. Is this not true?

=20.= But at the crossing of the Rosebud’s mouth

Locate the Rosebud.

PAGE 116

=3.= Alas, the journey back to yesterwhiles! etc.

There is no going back to the old days.

=13.= He came with those to where the Poplar joins etc.

Locate the Poplar.

=22.= From Mississippi to the Great Divide

Locate the Great Divide.

PAGE 117

=5.= Upon Milk River valley,

Locate Milk River.

=7.= Above the Piegan lodges,

Piegans—one of the principal divisions of the Blackfoot tribe of
Indians. Locate the Piegan village.

PAGE 118

=7.= Lest on the sunset trail slow feet should err.

What is the “sunset trail”?

=16.= You saw no Black Robe?

Black Robe, priest, so-called by all Indians.

=18.= “Heaped snow—sharp stars—a kiote on the rise.”

The answer is true to the laconic Indian speech, but it is
beautiful.

PAGE 122

=2.= By their own weakness are the feeble sped; etc.

Three paradoxes—“He that loseth his life shall find it.”

PAGE 123

The vision of Hugh as seen by Jamie corresponds to the description of Hugh on pages 59 and 60. May we say that Jamie may indeed have seen Hugh? The Society for Psychic Research records such phenomena.

=15.= O, Father, I had paid too much for breath!

For what will a man give his life? What higher values than life
are there? It is Satan who says in Job, “All that a man hath
will he give for his life.”

Show that the principle of Katharsis is illustrated in this
poem.

Printed in the United States of America.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors. 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. 4. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Song of Hugh Glass, by John Gneisenau Neihardt