Première English Name:__________________________

“The Village Watchman,” by Terry Williams (p. 623)

Reading Guide Class:________________

The author, looking at a totem pole in Alaska, is reminded of her uncle Alan. Alan was mentally disabled. The totem pole story is of a boy who was kidnapped by the Salmon People; when he returned home, he was recognized as a holy man. Alan was unique, unpredictable, and unable to learn in a traditional way. In addition, he had painful, powerful seizures. The author, Terry Tempest Williams, saw Alan as a mentor—he expressed his emotions freely, was honest and loving, and he showed her that appearances do not matter, but a person’s character does.

20 Questions:

1. There is a photograph of the totem pole called the Wolf Pole on page 623. What is it about the totem pole that first reminds the author about her Uncle Alan?

2. What is one medical reason Alan was mentally disabled?

3. What does the author say is the “story” that “our culture” tells about people like her uncle? Why is it, to her, a story? (This eventually relates to question 17, below.)

4. What similes do the doctors use to Alan’s mother to describe Alan?

5. What simile does the author use to describe Alan? Tell the difference between the author’s simile and the doctors’ similes.

6. Describe Alan’s seizures.

7. Why was Alan placed in an institution, the American Fork Training School?

8. How much older was Alan than the narrator?

9. Describe Alan when he was out in public, for example when he was bowling.

10. What can this paradox mean: “I am very happy and very sad.”

11. What does this mean: “He offered us shelter from the conventionality of a Mormon family.”

12. What was Alan’s reaction when his family came to visit him in the institution?

13. “His unquestioning belief in us as children, as human beings, was in startling contrast to the way we watched the public reaction to him. It hurt us…It was an unspoken rule in our family that the character of others was gauged in how they treated Alan.” The quotes suggest—but do not really say—how most people in the public treated and reacted to Alan. Describe how the public probably treated him.

14. Describe the dormitory at the institution where Alan lives.

15. What is Alan’s relationship to God, as he sees it?

16. What happens to Alan on his way in to be baptized into the church? What happens in the baptism?

17. According to the first pages of the reading, there is a Tlingit story about “a boy who was kidnapped from his village by the Salmon People…When returned many years later to his home, he was recognized by his own as a holy man, privy to the mysteries of the unseen world.” How could Alan be like that boy?

18. What can this mean: “He reminds me of…how nothing is sacred, how everything is sacred.”

19. Tell about the dream the author describes at the end of the reading. What meaning do you think the dream has?

20. Why is this reading in our unit of readings about Education? What points does it make, indirectly, about education?