Document Information
- Chapter: Chapter 24
- Scene: Grant gives Jefferson the scrap wood lesson
- Draft: Typescript
- File location: Box 10, folder 55
Discussion Questions
- In the published copy O’Farrell’s name is changed to Farrell. What is the significance of this change? Does it change the character or Grant’s lesson?
“I need someone to tell me what to do. I need you to tell me, to show me. I’m no hero, I just want to give something small. That’s all I have to offer. It is the only way that we can chip away at that myth. You, you can be bigger than anyone you have ever met. Please listen to me, because I would not lie to you now. I speak from my heart. You have the chance of being bigger than anyone who has ever lived on that plantation or come from this little town. You can do it if you try. You have seen how Mr. O’Farrell makes a slingshot handle. He starts with just a little piece of rough wood. Any little piece of scrap wood—then he starts cutting. Cutting and cutting and cutting, then shaving. Shave it down clean and smooth till it’s not what it was before, but something new and pretty. You know what I’m talking about, because you have seen him do it. You had one that he made from a piece of scrap wood. Yes, yes, because I saw you with it. And it came from a piece of old wood that he found in the yard somewhere. And that’s all we are, Jefferson all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood, until we, each one of us, individually decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be. Because we need you and want you to be. Me, her, the children, and all the rest of them in the quarter. Do you understand what I’m saying, to you, Jefferson? Do you?”