Literacy Narrative

Literacy Narrative
Brandon Eady
3/9/09
Dr. Donovan

Sorry Jack, Call of the Wild is Mr. Eady’s

In 1995 I was in the third grade with Mrs. Hornsby at Chalkville Elementary School in Chalkville, Alabama just outside the Birmingham City limits. It was this year that I wrote my first piece of prose. Mrs. Hornsby had required each student in the class to write a story on whatever we chose;there were no limitations. I was able to find out about this earlier than other students because my sister, who was a sixth grader, was Mrs. Hornsby’s assistant. We would stay after class and prepare the classroom for the next day while we waited on our bus to take us home. This is a rather exciting task for an imaginative nine year old student who spent his summers watching film adaptations of Jack London novels, and then read the novels barely understanding the details of each character and missing almost every key detail making up fantastical images of what he thought was taking place. Other boys would rather have gone out to play football than write a story. I probably would have too, but my mother would not allow me near a football field. I was so skinny I had been dubbed “Skeletor.” Due to maternal concerns about my well being, I was obsessed with Jack London’s canine centric novels.
I was drawn to London because his novels took place in an exotic, yet familiar setting – the wilderness. My home in Chalkville was on top of an Alabama mountain, which is an old mountain which at a time was covered with trees, but since has been developed into a suburban community. Still, some of the forest was untouched, and where my property ended the woods began. I spent much of my time playing in the woods, running up and down the mountainside, exploring the small patch of wilderness and eventually making it to the entrance road to our neighborhood. While venturing through the woods, I would pretend I was a dog. It was a fantasy driven by my relationship with my two dogs. When I would read London’s novels, I would envision the dogs that I knew running in the forest that I ran through in his stories. It was a way of relating that which was familiar to me to what was present on the pages. It was this experience that caused me to become obsessed with Jack London.
So when Mrs. Hornsby asked that I write a story, I wrote my own nine-year-old version of Call of the Wild. Really I plagiarized the story, but did not know what plagiarism was or that it was even wrong to copy a piece of literature from another author. What I actually did was a disservice to Jack London because I could not remember any of the characters’ names except for the dog protagonist, Buck. So, I solved the problem of names by completely omitting them except for Buck. It was a choppy, plagiarized story without proper names. “The man saved Buck from the other man. Then the second man rode the sled on the ice with the third man and sank. Buck was happy with the man.” I must have had at least four “other men.” I wrote a very short plot summary of Call of the Wild. I crammed in all I could remember about London’s story, Buck being stolen from his home, his voyage north, how he was saved from the inexperienced travelers, and how he pulled the 1,000 pound sled. I was focused more on Buck and what happened to the dog than any human character. It was far from Hemmingway, even a nine year old Hemingway. Although I had plagiarized, my pre-pubescent literary crime, I had taken a complex story and put at least a portion down on paper in my own words. I do not believe Mrs. Hornsby was a Jack London aficionado from her lack of recognition of the plot.
This was a significant moment for me because this was the first time I had put pen to paper and wrote a narrative, not just simple sentences to practice grammar, but a full page of handwritten narrative with a protagonist, supporting characters, antagonist (sans names), conflict, rising action, dénouement, and the whole schebang! And I did not even realize what I was doing! This is a landmark in my life because this is the first time I expressed myself creatively with words. It is like the leap in coloring, the first time a child colors and stays completely inside the lines, it marks a level of craftsmanship, expertise, of mastery. Now, at the age of nine, I was able to not only string together words to make a sentence, not only was I able to string together sentences to make paragraphs, I was able to tie together paragraphs to make a story. This marked transcendence into the world of adults, what every child wants to be – adult. I had surpassed some adults in the United States, I was fully literate. Literacy, a skill that marks a person as possessing great potential, was mine.
I recall when Mrs. Hornsby returned my story. She was impressed at the story marked with several positive comments. I was used to this as I was always cocky about my academic ability in elementary school since I had straight A’s all the way through 5th grade. I remember the only time I hadn’t gotten a perfect score on a spelling quiz in 1st grade. I misspelled “money.” I was shocked when my quiz was not posted on the board where all my 100, A+, smiley face quizzes were. I was certain it was an error on her part. So when I was returned my story I took it calmly and knew I would have a comment about the lack of names. I was glad to have succeeded, though.
Since my forgery of Jack London’s Call of the Wild I have done some creative prose writing, most significantly one short screenplay and another full length screenplay. It is a tremendous feeling to know that I am capable of writing a fictive narrative, with intricate details, and it is quite an accomplishment. Maybe one day it will lead to my own publishing. Or maybe I just keep stealing from Jack London and enjoy his work.