Split At The Root by Adrienne Rich (Questions & Answers)

 

Split At The Root

by Adrienne Rich

(Questions & Answers) 

 

1. In order to write an essay on Jewish Identity what has the writer to do?

- She has to claim her father as she has got her Jewishness from him. She has to break his silence, his taboos. She has to face the sources and the presence of her own ambivalence as a Jew.

 

2. How does Rich describe herself in the long poem “Reading History” written in 1960?

- She describes herself as the following: Split at the root, neither gentile nor Jew Yankee nor Rebel.

 

3. What is specific about the hospital in the Black ghetto in Baltimore?

- Its lobby contained an immense white marble statue of Christ.

 

4. Name the only souvenirs of Samuel Rich, the author’s grandfather?

- The only souvenirs of Samuel Rich were the ivory flute, his thin gold pocket watch and his Hebrew Prayer book.

 

5. What did the writer find in the prayer book?

- She found a newspaper clipping of her grandparents wedding, which took place in a synagogue.

 

6. For what did Arnold Rich’s parents send him into dominant WASP culture?

- They sent him to prove himself an exception to enter the professional class.

 

7. Did Arnold ever speak of having suffered?

- No, never. He never complained of loneliness, cultural alienation, or outsider hood.

 

8. What is the theme of Karl Shapiro’ poem?

- Shapiro’s poem is based on Apartheid and anti-Jew feelings. Its theme is racial discrimination.

 

9. Describe Arnold Rich’s physical structure?

- He looked Jewish, was short and thin with dark wiry hair and deep set eyes, high torched and curved nose.

 

10. Why can the writer not consider herself a Jew?

- She cannot consider herself a Jew according to the ideas of Virginia Woolf and Lesbian theory.

 

11. Describe the social world of Rich’s childhood?

- It was full of Christian imagery, music, language, symbols, assumptions everywhere. It was a genteel, white, middle class world.

 

12. What was the mental framework in the 1930s and 1940s of the writers?

- The mental framework of that period did not allow naming the hated identity – a Negro or a Jew.

 

13. What is the theme of The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine?

- It is against institutional religion.

 

14. What are the considered synonyms of the word Christian?

- Virtuous, just, peace-loving, generous etc.

 

15. What was the general impression got about the mistake done by the Jews?

- They failed to recognize the true Messiah, Christ. That is why they were less advanced in moral and spiritual sensibility.

 

16. Why did Arnold Rich never talk about his being a Jew?

- As he was a scientist and a deist, it was not important for him to be a Jew. He considered himself ‘a person’, not simply a Jew.

 

17. Why was Arnold’s appointment to the professorship at John Hopkins medical school de-layed for years?

- Because he was a Jew and there was no Jew ever having held a professional chair in that medical school.

 

18. What was Arnold’s best claim for professorship?

- He believed in the redeeming power of excellence, brilliance and inspiration.

 

19. Who is Portia?

- She is the female protagonist of Shakespeare’s romantic comedy The Merchant of Venice.

 

20. What was constantly urged to the author, her sister and her mother?

- They were urged to speak quietly in public, to dress without show off, to repress vividness to assimilate with a world which might see them as too flamboyant.

 

21. What were the Riches proud of?

- They were proud of their knowledge, books, travel, languages known, culture, music, poetry, intellect and talent.

 

22. Why did the author’s parent refuse to attend her marriage?

- Because she was marrying a Jew of the “wrong kind” from an Orthodox Eastern European background.

 

23. What happened in 1968 in the history of America and in A Rich’s life?

- The author’s father died, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, the Columbia strike happened.

 

24. What is the expected role of a Jewish woman, a Jewish mother?

- She was to be perceived in the Jewish family as an entirely physical being, a producer and nourisher of children.

 

25. Why could the writer not tell certain things done to the Jew to her children?

- Because these things were too indistinct in her own mind.

 

26. How does the writer criticize the permissive liberalism of Cambridge?

- She criticizes how Christian Myth and Calendar organize the year at Cambridge.

 

27. What was the effect of the Civil Rights movement on the writer?

- It removed a sense of personal frustration and hopelessness. The effect the racism in the form of the silences, negations, cruelties, fears, superstitions was removed. The political & social freedom of the Blacks inspired the writer, too.

 

28. Name the two writers who influenced A. Rich the most.

- James Baldwin & Simon de Beauvoir.

 

29. Name the three famous movements of the sixties.

a) Civil Rights Movement

b) Women’s Liberation Movement

c) Lesbian Movement, A movement within a movement.

 

30. What do you mean by the Holocaust?

- Systematic state sponsored killing of Jewish men, women and children and others by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. The Nazi’s made no secret of their anti-Semitism before coming to power in 1933.