Thanks That's All I Needed (Reading Comprehension)

When I was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, I worked in the English Department Writing Lab as a tutor. One day a young student came in, thunked his heavy first-year Literature textbook down onto the desk, sat down and opened it. If I may venture to say so, he was an Asian young man majoring in Engineering.

BLOOD WEDDING

"What's a symbol" he asked me in a no-nonsense voice.
I looked at the reading selection. It was a play I had never read before. I didn't even know the plot. I was nervous- how could I help him without knowing anything about it?

When faced with the impossible, a tutor always continues, with the hopes that "something will turn up." And turn up it did, right in the opening lines.

The play was Blood Wedding by Lorca. Here are the first few lines:

BRIDEGROOM: (entering) Mother.

MOTHER: What?

BRIDEGROOM: I’m off.

MOTHER: Where to?

BRIDEGROOM: To the vineyard (He makes as if to leave)

MOTHER: Wait.

BRIDEGROOM: What is it?

MOTHER: Your lunch, my son.

BRIDEGROOM: Never mind. I’ll eat grapes. Give me a knife.


Do you see the symbol?!

The dialogue continues in a way that makes the symbol much more obvious. Not to mention the title! But the only thing I needed was that knife.

I said, "Is someone going to die at the end?" He said yes. Then I pointed out the lines. "Well," I said, "See that knife?" Yes, he nodded. I concluded: "In the beginning, he's only using it for his breakfast. But someone is going to die by the end- that's a symbol."

I had no time to say any more. He reacted like lightening had hit. He popped up like a jack in the box, slamming shut the book as he rose, and tossing it in his bookbag. "Thank you" he said as he headed out the door. I guess that was all he needed.

This is from one of the recommendations I received from professors while tutoring there:
". . . Eve has an instinctive feeling for diagnosing writing weaknesses and finding a means to eradicate them. Perhaps because she is such an attentive listener, she got to the bottom of many student problems that had eluded me. . . In my experience, she is the single best Writing Lab staff member that I have come across."