Reading Aloud
Listen and read the following sentences, paying attention to the pauses between sense groups.
1. When I was ten / I was suddenly confronted with the anguish of moving from the only home / I had ever known.
2. “It isn’t easy, / is it, Billy?” / he said softly, / sitting down on the steps beside me.
3. I was standing by his rosebush / when an uncle came to tell me / that my grandfather had died.
4. It’s that special place in your heart / that makes them so.
5. “ ... We seem to have so many ways of saying goodbye / and they all have one thing in common: / sadness.”
Cultural Information
Quotes:
Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it — so at least it seems to me — is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal.
---Bertrand Russell
The failures and reverses which await men — and one after another sadden the brow of youth — add a dignity to the prospect of human life, which no Arcadian success would do.
--- Henry David Thoreau 
Audiovisual Supplement
Watch a video clip and answer the following questions.
Main Idea
Structural Analysis
The story is related in a chronological order with a flashback in the middle part.
There are words and phrases which indicatea chronological order, such as:
when I was ten, When the final day came, I continued to, a year and half later, then, when it came to my turn, …
And there are words and phrases which indicate a flashback, such as:
a long, long time ago, one day, …
Based on the time phrases found above, divide the text into parts by completing the table.
Time | paragraph(s) | Event |
when I was ten, | Part I | The author was to leave his big old house. |
When the final day come |
Part II | The author was anguish about the move. His grandfather advised him not to use the word “goodbye” to friends, for it implied sadness. |
I continued to | Part III | The author’s grandfather took him to see the huge red rosebush in the front yard. |
a long, long time ago | Part IV | Grandfather recalls the death of his first son and his response to it. |
a year and half later |
Part V | The dying old man parted with his grandson calmly and even cheerfully without saying the word “goodbye”. |
