“The Brown Wasps”

                                                                                      by Loren Eiseley

                                                                                       Study Guide 

As you study “The Brown Wasps,” keep in mind Eiseley’s academic training and professional interest – they inform this essay.  You may have found this assignment a pleasurable rather than a provocative reading experience as hooks might have been for you.  Perhaps the attraction of this essay is the mystery that seems at once elusive and revealed in these questions:  what is this thing called memory; how reliable is it; why do we need to “fix” ourselves in time and place in order to know who we are. 

            Questions to Consider While Reading 

1.         What “direction” in time does Eiseley take in this essay?  Where in time does it begin, where in time does it end? 

2.         Wasps and birds are similes for the old homeless people in the station waiting room.  What do these animals and that place symbolize?  Why is the image of the brown wasp so evocative?  

3.         “It is as though all living creatures, and particularly the more intelligent, can survive only by fixing or transforming a bit of time into space. . .”  Express this idea in your own words.  What do you think the author wants you to understand by this statement? 

4.         Can you identify any parallelism between Eiseley’s musings and Kleege’s? 

5.         There is no question that Eiseley’s view of the life of man is that it is fleeting as well as transient.  How do you view your life – how do you view the impact of mankind as one of the animals in Nature? 

6.       Why does Eiseley tell us the story of the field “mouse. . .in exile from its home”?  The story of the pigeons and the El? 

7.         Perhaps the core mystery in this essay is the clause “. . .my life had been passed in the shade of a nonexistent tree. . .”  How have you come to understand what the author means? 

8.         One of the most vivid examples of figurative language in this essay is the following description, “A boy with the hard bird eye of youth. . .”  Why did Eiseley choose to describe a child in this way? 

9.         Find the “ah hah!” of the essay – quote it as Eiseley writes it, then restate it in your own words. 

10.       Why is the title effective; how do you understand Eiseley’s choice to give it to this essay?