Thinking Protocol (Think Aloud)
“Hostage” by Joyce Carol Oates
Name_____________
Class Period________
Date______________
Directions: Read the following short story and notice anything your
mind reacts to. Highlight that line, phrase, or description, and off to
the side make a note of what you were thinking of. You may need to
read more than once. Try to use as many of the reading strategies
as possible: visualize, question, clarify, predict, connect, and
evaluate.
By the age of fourteen Bruno
Sokolov had the heft and
swagger of a near-grown man.
His wide shoulders, sturdy
neck, dark oily hair wetted and
combed sleekly back from his
forehead like a rooster’s crest,
above all his large head and
the shrewd squint of his pebblecolored eyes gave him an air
unnervingly adult, as if, in junior
high school, in the company of
children, he was in disguise, yet
carelessly in disguise. He wore
his older brothers’ and even his
father’s cast-off clothing, rakish
combinations that suited him,
pin-striped shirts, sweater
vests, suspenders, bulky tweed
coats and corduroy trousers,
cheap leather belts with
enormous buckles, even,
frequently, for there were
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always deaths in those big
immigrant families, mourning
bands around his upper arm
that gave him a look both
sinister and holy, to which none
of our teachers could object.
He was smart; he was tough;
the natural leader of a
neighborhood gang of boys; he
carried a switchblade knife, or
was believed to do so. He had
a strangely scarred forehead –
in one version of the story he’d
overturned a pan of boiling
water on himself as a small
child, in another version his
mother in a fit of emotion had
overturned it on him. He spoke
English with a strong accent,
musical, yet mocking, as if
these sounds were his own
invention, these queer eliding
vowels and dipthongs,1 and he
had remarkable self-confidence
for a boy with his background,
the son of Polish-Russian
immigrants – out of bravado he
ran for, and actually won, our
ninth-grade presidency, in a
fluke of an election that pitted
our teachers’ choice, a “good”
boy, against a boy whom most
of the teachers mistrusted, or
feared. . . .
1
Eliding vowels and dipthongs: vowels that
are omitted or slurred over and combinations of
vowel sounds within single syllables (as in soil).
2
On Saturday mornings in all but
the worst winter weather I took
two city buses downtown to the
public library, where, in a
windowless ground floor room
set aside for “young adult”
readers I searched the shelves
for books, especially novels, . .
The library was further invested
with romance since every
second or third Saturday I
caught sight of Bruno Sokolov
there too . . . and one day when
I was sitting on the front steps,
waiting for the bus, Bruno
stooped over me unannounced
to ask, in his oddly breezy,
brotherly manner, what I’d
checked out, and to show me
what he had - adult science
fiction by Heinlein, Bradbury,
Asimov. Did he have a card for
upstairs? for adult books? I
asked, surprised, and Bruno
said, “Sure.” Another time he
showed me a book with a dark,
lurid cover, a ghoulish face with
red-gleaming eyes, Bram
Stoker’s Dracula – he hadn’t
checked it out of the library but
had simply taken it from a shelf
and slipped it inside his coat.
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