Question

Read the following prompt and type your response in the space provided. Read the passage from "No Gumption": The one I most despised was, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." This was the battle cry with which she constantly sent me back into the hopeless struggle whenever I moaned that I had rung every doorbell in town and knew there wasn't a single potential buyer left in Belleville that week. After listening to my explanation, she handed me the canvas bag and said, "If at first you don't succeed..." Three years in that job, which I would gladly have quit after the first day except for her insistence, produced at least one valuable result. My mother finally concluded that I would never make something of myself by pursuing a life in business and started considering careers that demanded less competitive zeal. One evening when I was eleven I brought home a short "composition" on my summer vacation which the teacher had graded with an A. Reading it with her own schoolteacher's eye, my mother agreed that it was top-drawer seventh grade prose and complimented me. Nothing more was said about it immediately, but a new idea had taken life in her mind. Halfway through supper she suddenly interrupted the conversation. "Buddy," she said, "maybe you could be a writer." You will write one well-developed paragraph of at least 7-8 sentences. In your paragraph, identify one major idea in the memoir "No Gumption." Then identify one sentence in the passage that directly develops or refines that main idea. Explain how that sentence develops the main idea you identified. Make sure you are using specific evidence from "No Gumption" to support your ideas.

Answer 1

The answer is the following:

One major idea or theme of "No Gumption," by Russell Baker, is that one should set realistic expectations for oneself or others. A sentence that directly develops or refines the main idea is: "My mother finally concluded that I would never make something of myself by pursuing a life in business and started considering careers that demanded less competitive zeal." The sentence illustrates how Buddy's mother begins to change her mind about her son being a paperboy. In fact, he does not like selling newspapers at all. However, for three years his mother insists that he must keep trying. In the end, she gives up and starts to consider careers other than business that do not require great effort from Buddy. Finally, after reading his composition, she realizes that he could be a good writer.