One of the exercises I've been looking forward to doing with my Intro to Journalism and Nonfiction students was a structuring activity. The plan was to take a short-ish published story and cut it into pieces by paragraph, then ask them to put it together in the best order (or purposefully thwart that order, which no one ended up attempting). The problem was that I hadn't found a story that would work.
As I was reading Hemingway's "The End of the Ambulance Run" for our class, it struck me as a good subject for the activity. One of the things my students are struggling with as they write their first project (an immersion piece) is chronology and whether/when to step away from a strict retelling of events. Hemingway avoids what I've seen them doing: "Next, I saw...Then somebody did X..." I figured piecing together someone else's structure would help.
I let them break into groups of four for the activity. Their results were fascinating. Most of them sorted the pieces by subject matter or story (so George's story was quickly assembled, as was the robber's, and so on). Then they used clues to figure out the order of these smaller stories, mostly ordering them the same as Hemingway. The lynchpin seemed to be the paragraph that says "But it is not all violence and sudden death that comes to the attention of emergency physicians. They attend the injuries of ills and charity patients."
To figure out what came next, some of the groups looked for what patient was most likely to receive charity. Some initially thought the story of the "negro" (interesting in itself), until they noticed that he later kills his assailant. Clearly, they said, that went before the "violence and death" remark. What I realized through watching my students work is that the "not all violence and death" remark basically redirects the story.
After that remark, Hemingway makes an interesting decision about the order of his stories. I want to spend a moment here. First, we get a short non-lethal tale about a burned foot, then a slightly longer one about corn in a kid's nose. Then he narrows down to an expanded story about the printer. It's almost as if he starts his story over, like there's a second inverted pyramid: the first half being stories of death and violence in the ER, the second being the non-lethal, and perhaps more importantly as we'll see in a minute, not-on-purpose-injury/outcome stories. From general (attendants in the corridor) to specific (the black man being sliced and the assumptions about ethnicity that are drawn from different injuries). Then it begins again from an anonymous laborer with a burned foot to a printer we spend some time getting to know during his loss of livelihood.
This was where my students' ordering got interesting. The paragraph following "take the whole damn works" comment became what I dubbed "the mystery paragraph."
They were intserting this paragraph all over the place. How does it fit with the "violence and death" bisection? One group began with it (which spurred a good discussion on why that wouldn't quite be right), another put it just before the "death and violence" remark, one ended with it. It doesn't seem to fit. The key, I think, is the time period of this piece.
Before I comment on this paragraph further, I want to mention the other paragraph that nobody got "right" was the final paragraph.
Everyone put it in the exact same place, just after George's story at the beginning of the article (not an unreasonable spot, I'd say). My immediate question was why were these two pieces, especially the final paragraph, such misfits? Usually when part of a story feels out of place, I'm either not reading closely enough or it truly doesn't fit. Since I worship at the altar of Hemingway, I'll go with the former.
The paragraph in between them--about the work going on, about prescriptions and potters' field and the equanimity with which the surgeons act--was a popular choice to end on. It's got the feeling of an ending ("And so the work goes on") and it addresses the earlier conflicts in the story ("The skill of the surgeon is exercised just the same" regarding earlier suggested issues of race, gender, age, class). It certainly could be an ending. I think, though, it's not quite broad enough.
To figure out the ending, I think it's useful to ask what the purpose of this story is. Hemingway's telling us about a stream of patients flowing through a Kansas City hospital. It's not about the people or the fairness of the facility. It's an end of the line, the end of an ambulance journey for these people (a journey we never get to directly see). To send us off with the ambulance, heading back into the city, into the mysterious darkness, is one way to make sense of the preceding information. We come in with the ambulance; we leave with it.
We see the array of "tragedy--and even comedy" during the night shift in the "dispensary." The order of the patients, who knows if they really came in this way? That's not the point. This is after WWI, a time where tragedy had found a new benchmark, where expectations of order had been shaken.
Despite the millions killed in war, Hemingway's showing us that personal tragedy can still exist. "Spoiled" clothes, street violence, joblessness--they're powerful in their small scale. "[L]ittle "debauch[s]" will be found out. Everyone is aching and worried. And yet here we are, funneled right back into that dark night. Just like the woman who poisoned herself, we too must live. And the survivors don't tell their terrible stories unless someone does it for them.
As I was reading Hemingway's "The End of the Ambulance Run" for our class, it struck me as a good subject for the activity. One of the things my students are struggling with as they write their first project (an immersion piece) is chronology and whether/when to step away from a strict retelling of events. Hemingway avoids what I've seen them doing: "Next, I saw...Then somebody did X..." I figured piecing together someone else's structure would help.
I let them break into groups of four for the activity. Their results were fascinating. Most of them sorted the pieces by subject matter or story (so George's story was quickly assembled, as was the robber's, and so on). Then they used clues to figure out the order of these smaller stories, mostly ordering them the same as Hemingway. The lynchpin seemed to be the paragraph that says "But it is not all violence and sudden death that comes to the attention of emergency physicians. They attend the injuries of ills and charity patients."
To figure out what came next, some of the groups looked for what patient was most likely to receive charity. Some initially thought the story of the "negro" (interesting in itself), until they noticed that he later kills his assailant. Clearly, they said, that went before the "violence and death" remark. What I realized through watching my students work is that the "not all violence and death" remark basically redirects the story.
After that remark, Hemingway makes an interesting decision about the order of his stories. I want to spend a moment here. First, we get a short non-lethal tale about a burned foot, then a slightly longer one about corn in a kid's nose. Then he narrows down to an expanded story about the printer. It's almost as if he starts his story over, like there's a second inverted pyramid: the first half being stories of death and violence in the ER, the second being the non-lethal, and perhaps more importantly as we'll see in a minute, not-on-purpose-injury/outcome stories. From general (attendants in the corridor) to specific (the black man being sliced and the assumptions about ethnicity that are drawn from different injuries). Then it begins again from an anonymous laborer with a burned foot to a printer we spend some time getting to know during his loss of livelihood.
This was where my students' ordering got interesting. The paragraph following "take the whole damn works" comment became what I dubbed "the mystery paragraph."
At one time a man from out in Kansas, a fairly likable and respectable sort of man to look at him, went on a little debauch when he came to Kansas City. It was just a little incident that the folks in the home town would never learn about. The ambulance brought him from a wine room, dead from a stroke of heart disease. At another time (it happens quite often) a young girl took poison. The physicians who saved her life seldom speak of the case. It she had died her story might have been told -- but she has to live.
They were intserting this paragraph all over the place. How does it fit with the "violence and death" bisection? One group began with it (which spurred a good discussion on why that wouldn't quite be right), another put it just before the "death and violence" remark, one ended with it. It doesn't seem to fit. The key, I think, is the time period of this piece.
Before I comment on this paragraph further, I want to mention the other paragraph that nobody got "right" was the final paragraph.
The telephone bell is ringing again. "Yes, this the receiving ward," says the desk attendant. "No. 4 Police Station, you say? A shooting scrape? All right they'll be right over." And the big car speeds down the Cherry Street hill, the headlights boring a yellow funnel into the darkness.
Everyone put it in the exact same place, just after George's story at the beginning of the article (not an unreasonable spot, I'd say). My immediate question was why were these two pieces, especially the final paragraph, such misfits? Usually when part of a story feels out of place, I'm either not reading closely enough or it truly doesn't fit. Since I worship at the altar of Hemingway, I'll go with the former.
The paragraph in between them--about the work going on, about prescriptions and potters' field and the equanimity with which the surgeons act--was a popular choice to end on. It's got the feeling of an ending ("And so the work goes on") and it addresses the earlier conflicts in the story ("The skill of the surgeon is exercised just the same" regarding earlier suggested issues of race, gender, age, class). It certainly could be an ending. I think, though, it's not quite broad enough.
To figure out the ending, I think it's useful to ask what the purpose of this story is. Hemingway's telling us about a stream of patients flowing through a Kansas City hospital. It's not about the people or the fairness of the facility. It's an end of the line, the end of an ambulance journey for these people (a journey we never get to directly see). To send us off with the ambulance, heading back into the city, into the mysterious darkness, is one way to make sense of the preceding information. We come in with the ambulance; we leave with it.
We see the array of "tragedy--and even comedy" during the night shift in the "dispensary." The order of the patients, who knows if they really came in this way? That's not the point. This is after WWI, a time where tragedy had found a new benchmark, where expectations of order had been shaken.
Despite the millions killed in war, Hemingway's showing us that personal tragedy can still exist. "Spoiled" clothes, street violence, joblessness--they're powerful in their small scale. "[L]ittle "debauch[s]" will be found out. Everyone is aching and worried. And yet here we are, funneled right back into that dark night. Just like the woman who poisoned herself, we too must live. And the survivors don't tell their terrible stories unless someone does it for them.
This is a terriiiiiiiific exercise, and you recommended another restructuring exercise the other day, too, w/r/t one of your classmates posts. I love shaking order into disorder as a way of trying to find natural states, to drilil down to the most vital material. As a teaching moment if you'd like to come up with a structural exercise for us to do at the beginning or end of one class, let me know. Could be fun.
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