The Men We Carry On Our Minds

Thinking About the Text



1. What does Sanders immediately acknowledge about the physical conditions of the men he knew when he was a boy? Cite specific illistrations from sanders' essay.



2. How does Sanders characterize the "other sort of men," the soldires that Sanders knew when he was growing up?



3. When Sanders was young, he saw a number of men who were dfferent from the hard-working laborers or the soldiers. Explain why the author could not imagine aspiring to become one of these men.



4. In what way did Sanders' father's fate seem a partial escape from the fate of most of the men he knew?



5. A college scholarship provided Sanders an escape from the paths of most men that he knew in his childhood. In college, Sanders met women whose thoughts about gender he had not expected and, as he admits, he was slow to understand. What specific contrasts between the college men's and women's lives did he eventually understand? Which gender has the better life, according to Sanders?



6. In what ways do the deliminating realities of social and economic class bring lower-class men and women together? What specific realities do they have in common?



7. What do college-educated women from the upper class have in common with the author of this essay?