TyroCity: Major English Notes

A Day in the Life of "Salaryman"

Major English XII Notes — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 05:41:42 +0000

A Day in the Life of “Salaryman”
– John Burgess

Background (With the compassion of 2 different stories)

A slave is a person who works extremely hard under a horrible condition. He also needs to work for a long time but with very limited benefit. In George Orwells Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell says that the dishwasher is a slave. However, is not salary-man in A Day in the Life of Salary-man by John Burgess also a slave? Actually, the answer is no. In my opinion, dishwasher is a slave, but salary-man is not.
First of all, their working hours are distinctly different. According to Orwell, George works from seven in the morning until a quarter past nine at night for six days a week. Sometimes he has to go to work on his off day too. Differently, salary-man only works from ten past nine in the morning till seven in the evening for only five days, and he does not need to work on his off days. The lunch break of Salary-man and dishwasher are different too. As George says, This was our slack time-only relatively slack, however, for we had only ten minutes for lunch, and we never got through it uninterrupted (Orwell 64). In contrast, salary-man has much more time than dishwasher during the lunch break. The salary-man does more things during this break than the dishwasher does. Over lunch, they talk of their passion, golf At lunch, salary-man sometimes manages to stop into a driving range on the roof of a building near his company (Burgess 255). Moreover, salary-man and dishwashers lives after work are totally different. For dishwasher, he has nothing to do after work because he has only few hours left and not even enough for sleeping. Nevertheless, the salary-man has a good life after work. He may have been included in a dinner at a nearby restaurant and enjoy his moment.

And the writer thus, compares and tabulates a single day life in the story by giving the following distinct background in the lines that follows.

The Penalty of Death

Major English XII Notes — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 05:41:42 +0000

The Penalty of Death
by H.L. Mencken

Analysis

At last, a writer who fully understands that all society wants from the justice system is “a healthy letting off of steam” (Mencken). In his satirical essay The Penalty of Death, H.L. Mencken, through use of humor, exaggeration, and mocking euphemisms and anecdotes, satires America’s use of capital punishment. His essay attacks in particular the purpose of the death penalty and the public’s light treatment of “hanging a man (or frying or gassing him)” (Mencken). Mencken’s informal essay is persuasive in the sense that it is satire and uses irony to support his thesis.

Should The Penalty of Death be taken literally, the thesis would explicitly be: “What I contend is that one of the prime objects of all judicial punishments is to afford the same grateful relief (a) to the immediate victims of the criminal punished, and (b) to the general body of moral and timorous men” (Mencken). As a satire however, Mencken ridicules this statement as he supports it, and therefore his thesis is implicit, expressing his criticism of the American treatment of the death penalty. Mencken speaks satirically in the essay as an upstanding citizen patriotically supporting his country’s justice system while, also patriotically, offering helpful suggestions to improve it. The syntax is kept simple and many colloquialisms and clichés are used to give the speaker a personal, conversational voice. Mencken writes mainly for the pro-death penalty audience, as this “patriotic” perspective is exaggerated to the point where it mocks these advocates. This tone is achieved through exaggeration, such as the first “argument against capital punishment” that is discussed, saying “that hanging a man…is degrading to those who have to do it and revolting to those who have to witness it” (Mencken). Mencken does not mention the obvious arguments against the death penalty, such as a person’s right to life, instead exaggerating the American priority on a person’s own comfort. Also contributing to the sarcastic, mocking tone is euphemism, such as the repeated use of “katharsis” as a blatant replacement for “revenge”.

The essay is structured at first in a problem-solution form. Mencken wastes no time refuting the two “arguments against capital punishment” that open the essay, and offers his satirical thesis about “grateful relief” as a solution to the problem of the death penalty’s apparent uselessness. The “grateful relief” solution is, of course, ironic; it implies that that absurd goal is the only real reason that American uses the death penalty. Through example, he supports his argument of katharsis until arriving at the issue of a prisoner’s lengthy stay on death row. Here, Mencken’s true intentions start to emerge as he begins sympathize with the condemned criminals. He describes how it is unjust that “a murderer, under the traditional American system, is tortured for what, to him, must seem a whole series of eternities” (Mencken). Now that the criminal is being viewed as human again, the Mencken’s moral argument of whether the death penalty is right becomes apparent. This ends the essay with the message that all people should be treated ethically, which is effective after the completion of four or five paragraphs that claim the death penalty is not ethical. The essay’s abrupt end, without any sort of conclusion, may be jarring to the reader but also ensures that the reader is actively thinking about Mencken’s final message when the essay is put down.

In these final paragraphs, Mencken uses strong imagery such as being “tortured…a whole series of eternities” as an appeal to pathos and ethos, stimulating the reader’s emotions and sense of ethics. While this appeal to pathos closes the essay on a serious note, the rest of the satire appeals mostly to ethos and logos. Logos is present everywhere, particularly in Mencken’s refute of an executioner’s misery and his introduction of katharsis as a reason for the penalty, which he, in sarcasm and irony, supports heavily. As the essay is a satire, ethos is called on in nearly every point Mencken makes, as he suggests “you’re not anything like the people I’m mocking, are you?”

The Penalty of Death is very effective in its delivery of Mencken’s opinions. Mencken’s sense of humor makes it clear from the beginning what he intends to discuss and how he will do it, and his detailed support of his satirical thesis “katharsis” makes his message enjoyable as well as informative. His satirical voice is believable as pro-death penalty American, but his meaning is clearly driven home when the essay, like the life of a doomed prisoner, is ended before its natural close. As Mencken suggests, maybe the judicial system needs a new “healthy letting off of steam”.

Zeroing in on Science Friction

Major English XII Notes — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 05:41:42 +0000

Background: From Physics to Fiction

As a physics major in the 1960s, Goshgarian and a few friends were drawn to their English professor, the late James Hensel, whom he calls “the teacher of all teachers.” Goshgarian named a character in Elixir for Hensel, and another is named for former WPI president Harry P. Storke.

“We were literature geeks in an otherwise science geeky kind of place,” Goshgarian says. “In the afternoon, after classes were out, we would meet up in Jim Hensel’s office to talk about everything from Charles Dickens to Tolstoy to Albert Einstein.” The young Goshgarian put his writing talents to use as an editor of Tech News and the Peddler, and started an offbeat humor magazine called Absolute Zero.

“I was reading science fiction by the pound,” he says. By his sophomore year, Goshgarian knew that he would work with words rather than atoms. “I liked words. I could see them and manipulate them. I could not see atoms, didn’t quite believe in them.” After earning a master’s degree and doctorate in English, he joined the English faculty at Northeastern University.

In the early 1970s Goshgarian’s department head challenged him to create a new elective to boost enrollment. He saw his chance to teach quality science fiction as a reputable literary form. Some 30 years later, his courses are popular and well-respected, although parents occasionally balk, “My child is taking what?” In addition to science fiction, Goshgarian teaches a detective fiction class and has developed courses in horror fiction and modern bestsellers. He also offers a graduate-level creative writing seminar.

Required reading for Goshgarian’s classes ranges from Edgar Allen Poe to Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clark and Dean Koontz. A centerpiece of the science fiction curriculum is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Discussions are supplemented with movies and guest speakers, which have included best-selling authors Stephen King, Tess Gerritsen, Robert B. Parker and Michael Palmer.

Goshgarian wants his writing students to learn “the ability to look at another person’s writing the way a carpenter looks at a house–to study the architecture of it, the freshness of the language, the narrative thrust that keeps the story going. And to see that the bones have flesh on them, that you have characters who are interesting and aren’t cardboard cut-outs.

“My goal is to make them better readers, too. That’s the secret of good writing. We do a lot of close reading. That’s what Jim Hensel taught me, way back at Worcester Tech.”

Major Characters of The Great Gatsby

Major English XII Notes — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:41:42 +0000

Jay Gatsby

The title character of The Great Gatsby is a young man, around thirty years old, who rose from an impoverished childhood in rural North Dakota to become fabulously wealthy. However, he achieved this lofty goal by participating in organized crime, including distributing illegal alcohol and trading in stolen securities. From his early youth, Gatsby despised poverty and longed for wealth and sophistication—he dropped out of St. Olaf’s College after only two weeks because he could not bear the janitorial job with which he was paying his tuition. Though Gatsby has always wanted to be rich, his main motivation in acquiring his fortune was his love for Daisy Buchanan, whom he met as a young military officer in Louisville before leaving to fight in World War I in 1917. Gatsby immediately fell in love with Daisy’s aura of luxury, grace, and charm, and lied to her about his own background in order to convince her that he was good enough for her. Daisy promised to wait for him when he left for the war, but married Tom Buchanan in 1919, while Gatsby was studying at Oxford after the war in an attempt to gain an education. From that moment on, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, and his acquisition of millions of dollars, his purchase of a gaudy mansion on West Egg, and his lavish weekly parties are all merely means to that end.

Fitzgerald delays the introduction of most of this information until fairly late in the novel. Gatsby’s reputation precedes him—Gatsby himself does not appear in a speaking role until Chapter 3. Fitzgerald initially presents Gatsby as the aloof, enigmatic host of the unbelievably opulent parties thrown every week at his mansion. He appears surrounded by spectacular luxury, courted by powerful men and beautiful women. He is the subject of a whirlwind of gossip throughout New York and is already a kind of legendary celebrity before he is ever introduced to the reader. Fitzgerald propels the novel forward through the early chapters by shrouding Gatsby’s background and the source of his wealth in mystery (the reader learns about Gatsby’s childhood in Chapter 6 and receives definitive proof of his criminal dealings in Chapter 7). As a result, the reader’s first, distant impressions of Gatsby strike quite a different note from that of the lovesick, naive young man who emerges during the later part of the novel.

Fitzgerald uses this technique of delayed character revelation to emphasize the theatrical quality of Gatsby’s approach to life, which is an important part of his personality. Gatsby has literally created his own character, even changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby to represent his reinvention of himself. As his relentless quest for Daisy demonstrates, Gatsby has an extraordinary ability to transform his hopes and dreams into reality; at the beginning of the novel, he appears to the reader just as he desires to appear to the world. This talent for self-invention is what gives Gatsby his quality of “greatness”: indeed, the title “The Great Gatsby” is reminiscent of billings for such vaudeville magicians as “The Great Houdini” and “The Great Blackstone,” suggesting that the persona of Jay Gatsby is a masterful illusion.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.

As the novel progresses and Fitzgerald deconstructs Gatsby’s self-presentation, Gatsby reveals himself to be an innocent, hopeful young man who stakes everything on his dreams, not realizing that his dreams are unworthy of him. Gatsby invests Daisy with an idealistic perfection that she cannot possibly attain in reality and pursues her with a passionate zeal that blinds him to her limitations. His dream of her disintegrates, revealing the corruption that wealth causes and the unworthiness of the goal, much in the way Fitzgerald sees the American dream crumbling in the 1920s, as America’s powerful optimism, vitality, and individualism become subordinated to the amoral pursuit of wealth.
Gatsby is contrasted most consistently with Nick. Critics point out that the former, passionate and active, and the latter, sober and reflective, seem to represent two sides of Fitzgerald’s personality. Additionally, whereas Tom is a cold-hearted, aristocratic bully, Gatsby is a loyal and good-hearted man. Though his lifestyle and attitude differ greatly from those of George Wilson, Gatsby and Wilson share the fact that they both lose their love interest to Tom.

Nick Carraway

If Gatsby represents one part of Fitzgerald’s personality, the flashy celebrity who pursued and glorified wealth in order to impress the woman he loved, then Nick represents another part: the quiet, reflective Midwesterner adrift in the lurid East. A young man (he turns thirty during the course of the novel) from Minnesota, Nick travels to New York in 1922 to learn the bond business. He lives in the West Egg district of Long Island, next door to Gatsby. Nick is also Daisy’s cousin, which enables him to observe and assist the resurgent love affair between Daisy and Gatsby. As a result of his relationship to these two characters, Nick is the perfect choice to narrate the novel, which functions as a personal memoir of his experiences with Gatsby in the summer of 1922.

Nick is also well suited to narratingThe Great Gatsbybecause of his temperament. As he tells the reader in Chapter 1, he is tolerant, open-minded, quiet, and a good listener, and, as a result, others tend to talk to him and tell him their secrets. Gatsby, in particular, comes to trust him and treat him as a confidant. Nick generally assumes a secondary role throughout the novel, preferring to describe and comment on events rather than dominate the action. Often, however, he functions as Fitzgerald’s voice, as in his extended meditation on time and the American dream at the end of Chapter 9.

Insofar as Nick plays a role inside the narrative, he evidences a strongly mixed reaction to life on the East Coast, one that creates a powerful internal conflict that he does not resolve until the end of the book. On the one hand, Nick is attracted to the fast-paced, fun-driven lifestyle of New York. On the other hand, he finds that lifestyle grotesque and damaging. This inner conflict is symbolized throughout the book by Nick’s romantic affair with Jordan Baker. He is attracted to her vivacity and her sophistication just as he is repelled by her dishonesty and her lack of consideration for other people.

Nick states that there is a “quality of distortion” to life in New York, and this lifestyle makes him lose his equilibrium, especially early in the novel, as when he gets drunk at Gatsby’s party in Chapter 2. After witnessing the unraveling of Gatsby’s dream and presiding over the appalling spectacle of Gatsby’s funeral, Nick realizes that the fast life of revelry on the East Coast is a cover for the terrifying moral emptiness that the valley of ashes symbolizes. Having gained the maturity that this insight demonstrates, he returns to Minnesota in search of a quieter life structured by more traditional moral values.

Daisy Buchanan

Partially based on Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, Daisy is a beautiful young woman from Louisville, Kentucky. She is Nick’s cousin and the object of Gatsby’s love. As a young debutante in Louisville, Daisy was extremely popular among the military officers stationed near her home, including Jay Gatsby. Gatsby lied about his background to Daisy, claiming to be from a wealthy family in order to convince her that he was worthy of her. Eventually, Gatsby won Daisy’s heart, and they made love before Gatsby left to fight in the war. Daisy promised to wait for Gatsby, but in 1919 she chose instead to marry Tom Buchanan, a young man from a solid, aristocratic family who could promise her a wealthy lifestyle and who had the support of her parents.

After 1919, Gatsby dedicated himself to winning Daisy back, making her the single goal of all of his dreams and the main motivation behind his acquisition of immense wealth through criminal activity. To Gatsby, Daisy represents the paragon of perfection—she has the aura of charm, wealth, sophistication, grace, and aristocracy that he longed for as a child in North Dakota and that first attracted him to her. In reality, however, Daisy falls far short of Gatsby’s ideals. She is beautiful and charming, but also fickle, shallow, bored, and sardonic. Nick characterizes her as a careless person who smashes things up and then retreats behind her money. Daisy proves her real nature when she chooses Tom over Gatsby in Chapter 7, then allows Gatsby to take the blame for killing Myrtle Wilson even though she herself was driving the car. Finally, rather than attend Gatsby’s funeral, Daisy and Tom move away, leaving no forwarding address.

Like Zelda Fitzgerald, Daisy is in love with money, ease, and material luxury. She is capable of affection (she seems genuinely fond of Nick and occasionally seems to love Gatsby sincerely), but not of sustained loyalty or care. She is indifferent even to her own infant daughter, never discussing her and treating her as an afterthought when she is introduced in Chapter 7. In Fitzgerald’s conception of America in the 1920s, Daisy represents the amoral values of the aristocratic East Egg set.

Lady Clare

Major English XII Notes — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:41:42 +0000

Poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Summary and Critical analysis

In spring lilies grow, and there are clouds in the sky. At that time Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe to give it to his cousin, Lady Clare. They had promised to marry each other for a long time and they were going to marry the following morning. Lady Clare was sure that Lord Ronald loved her for her own real value, not for her family origin and for her land.

When Ronald went out, Alice, her nurse, asked her who he was, and then she replied that he was her cousin and that they were going to marry the following morning. The nurse thanked God because he was going to be the heir of Clare’s property. But Alice told her a secret that she was not the Lady Calare. She insisted that it was the truth and that she was not mad as Clare has supposed her to be so.Then the nurse told her a story. She would take care of the old Earl’s daughter. But when the Earl’s daughter died, Alice buried her as her own daughter and put her child in her place. So Clare was Alice’s daughter.

Clare was unhappy with her mother because she had done so unfaithfully. Clare was also sorry because she had deceived Ronald for so many years. But the mother told her to keep it secret all her life. Clare did not like to tell a lie. She planned to go to him and tell him everything. She pulled off the gold ornament and threw the diamond necklace. Alice repeatedly asked her not to tell the secret. But Clare added that she would know if there was any faith in the man. When her mother kissed her and said that she had sinned for her. Clare found it so strange. She kissed her mother and asked her to bless her by laying her hand on her head before she went.

Then she dressed like an ordinary girl and did not look like a lady. She had only a single rose in her hair. The lily-white doe that Ronald had given her also followed her. They passed by valley and by hill. When they reached Ronald’s tower, he came down and asked why she had disgraced her value by dressing like a village girl. Then she replied that she was born in the poor family and that it was her fate. Ronald did not understand her puzzle and asked her not to play him any tricks. Then she boldly looked into his eyes and told him the nurse’s tale. When he heard all this, he laughed happily and scornfully. He turned and kissed her. Then he said that they would marry the following morning even if she were not an heiress and his cousin.

‘Lady Clare’ is a narrative poem that tells of how lovers can rise above social and economic status and are able to remain faithful to each other. Ronald and Clare loved each other, and were about to marry. Clare was sure that he loved her, not her birth or property. Then Alice, the nurse, told her that she was not a lady, but her own daughter. After the old Earl’s daughter died, she buried her and put her daughter in her place. She asked Clare not to tell it to Ronald. But Clare went to Ronald wearing like a village girl. After Ronald heard the story, he declared that he would marry her even if she was not his cousin and she might be poor.

It is a ballad and it has twenty-two stanzas. In nine stanzas the first line rhymes with the third line and the second line with the fourth line. In the remaining stanzas the poet uses the ballad stanza rhyming abcb. This comic ballad unfolds mostly through dialoguer and action. We find refrain and repetition here. It begins suddenly with Ronald’s gift to Clare. The phrase ‘lily-white’ means ‘pure-white’. A person of lily-white character is described as a person of very pure and honest character. The gift suggests that both the lover and the beloved are pure and honest to each other. The language is simple. Like most ballads, it does not use a tragic theme. The episode is single. Events lead quickly to crisis. Setting is minimized and dramatic element is strong.

Poem

It was the time when lilies blow,
And clouds are highest up in air.
Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe
To give his cousin, Lady Clare.

I trow they did not part in scorn:
Lovers long betrothed were they;
They two will wed the morrow morn;
God’s blessing on the day!

“He does not love me for my birth
Nor for my lands so broad and fair;
He loves me for my own true worth,
And that is well,” said Lady Clare.

In there came old Alice the nurse,
Said, “Who was this that went from thee?”
“It was my cousin,” said Lady Clare;
“To-morrow he weds with me.”

“Oh, God be thanked!” said Alice the nurse,
“That all comes round so just and fair:
Lord Ronald is heir of all your lands,
And you are not the Lady Clare.”

“Are ye out of your mind, my nurse, my nurse,”
Said Lady Clare, “that ye speak so wild?”
“As God’s above,” said Alice the nurse,
“I speak the truth: you are my child.

The old earl’s daughter died at my breast;
I speak the truth, as I live by bread!
I buried her like my own sweet child,
And put my child in her stead.”

“Falsely, falsely have ye done,
O mother,” she said, “if this be true,
To keep the best man under the sun
So many years from his due.”

“Nay now, my child,” said Alice the nurse,
“But keep the secret for your life,
And all you have will be Lord Ronald’s,
When you are man and wife.”

“If I’m a beggar born,” she said
“I will speak out, for I dare not lie,
Pull off, pull off the brooch of gold,
And fling the diamond necklace by.”

“Nay now, my child,” said Alice the nurse,
“But keep the secret all you can.”
She said, “Not so; but I will know
If there be any faith in man.”

“Nay now, what faith?” said Alice the nurse,
“The man will cleave unto his right.”
“And he shall have it,” the lady replied,
“Though I should die to-night.”

“Yet give one kiss to your mother, dear!
Alas, my child! I sinned for thee.”
“O mother, mother, mother,” she said,
“So strange it seems to me!

“Yet here’s a kiss for my mother dear,
My mother dear, if this be so,
And lay your hand upon my head,
And bless me, mother, ere I go.”

She clad herself in a russen gown,
She was no longer Lady Clare:
She went by dale, and she went by down,
With a single rose in her hair.

The lily-white doe Lord Ronald had brought
Leapt up from where she lay.
Dropped her head in the maiden’s hand.
And followed her all the way.

Down stepped Lord Ronald from his tower:
“O Lady Clare, you shame your worth!
Why come you dressed like a village maid,
That are the flower of the earth?”

“If I come dressed like a village maid,
I am but as my fortunes are:
I am a begger born,” she said,
“And not the Lady Clare.”

“Play me no tricks,” said Lord Ronald,
“For I am yours in word and in deed;
Play me no tricks,” said Lord Ronald,
“Your riddle is hard to read.”

Oh, and proudly stood she up!
Her heart within her did not fail:
She looked into Lord Ronald’s eyes,
And told him all her nurse’s tale.

He laughed a laugh of merry scorn:
He turned and kissed her where she stood;
“If you are not the heiress born,
And I,” said he, “the next in blood–

“If you are not the heiress born,
And I,” said he, “the lawful heir,
We two will wed to-morrow morn,
And you shall still be Lady Clare.”

In Another Country

Major English XII Notes — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:41:42 +0000

by Ernest Hemingway

In the fall in Milan, a group of soldiers wounded in World War I receives treatment at a hospital not far from the front. The narrator is Nick Adams, an American former football player, who has been wounded in the knee. He sits in a row of machines that exercise his leg with a middle-aged Italian officer who was once a fencing champion but who now has a withered hand. Despite the encouragement of his doctor, the Italian has no confidence in the machines.

Nick describes the group of friends he has made at the hospital: three wounded Italian officers who had planned to be a lawyer, painter, and soldier before the war, respectively. All three, like Nick, have won medals from the Italian government for their service during the war. The aspiring lawyer, in fact, has three, and is admired for it.

Another young wounded soldier tags along with Nick and his group, but has to wear a handkerchief over his face as most of it was damaged and rebuilt during the war. Nick feels a kinship with the officers because they have all, to a certain extent, been through the same experiences, and because it is safer for officers to stick together in Milan as the local people despise and taunt them.

At the same time, there is a wall between Nick and the Italians because, as he says, he received his medal for being an American, and they actually performed feats of bravery to receive theirs. Nick feels closer to the boy with the handkerchief because he was wounded before he had a chance to prove himself in the war.

As Nick returns to the hospital daily to sit in the machines that exercise his leg, the major with the withered hand teaches him Italian. One day, the major becomes angry when Nick mentions he plans to marry, saying that men must not marry because they will inevitably lose their wives. Then he apologizes to Nick, explaining that his young wife has just died.

Thereafter, each time the major returns to the hospital to use the machines, he stares out the window rather than paying any attention to his treatment.

Analysis of In Another Country

Though its narrator is never named, “In Another Country” is widely accepted as one of Hemingway’s series of stories featuring Nick Adams, a largely autobiographical character, as the protagonist. It was based on Hemingway’s own experiences recuperating in a Milanese hospital after being wounded in World War I. This experience also gave rise to A Farewell to Arms.

Though the story begins with Nick’s relieved announcement that he and his fellow wounded soldiers are out of the war and recuperating at a military hospital, it becomes clear that they are in need of more than physical treatment in order to erase the war’s effects. Though the tone of the narration is superficially sanguine and the setting seemingly reassuring, there are strong underlying currents of dislocation, conflict, emptiness, and futility that indicate Nick has been deeply marked with more than shrapnel, and that his recovery cannot be effected by physical therapy.

Nick is alone in a foreign country and feels isolated. He states that people on the street hate officers and yell at him as he walks past. The effect of this harassment is partially offset by Nick’s association with three other officers and the boy with the handkerchief over his face. The five men, brought together by necessity, walk together through the town, and feel a certain friendship born of their status as wounded veterans. Even in this distinguished company, however, Nick is not fully accepted. He feels inferior to the three other officers with medals as they proved their bravery in battle and he received his medal merely for being an American. His citation is, in a sense, hollow, and the Italians subtly shun him for this reason. He feels that he was injured before he could prove his courage, and this gnaws at him.

Yet another source of discontent for Nick is the fact that the hospital, with its newfangled physical therapy machines, doesn’t seem to be doing any of the soldiers much good. Nick explains that the surgeons at the hospital were not able to rebuild satisfactorily the face of the boy with the handkerchief. He came from an old family and his nose was never the same after the wound and surgery, so he had to immigrate to South America after the war.

Waterloo

Major English XII Notes — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:41:42 +0000

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Plot Summary

After defeating France and imprisoning Napoleon on Elba, ending two decades of war, Europe is shocked to find Napoleon has escaped and has caused the French Army to defect from the King back to him. The best of the British generals, the Duke of Wellington, beat Napolean’s best generals in Spain and Portugal, but has never faced Napoleon. Wellington stands between Napoleon with a makeshift Anglo-Allied army and the Prussians. A Napoleon victory will plunge Europe back into a long term war. An allied victory could bring long term peace to Europe. The two meet at Waterloo where the fate of Europe will be decided.

The Hunter Gracchus

Major English XII Notes — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:41:42 +0000

by Franz Kafka

Summary

Kafka’s stories often deal with the power that either drives man beyond himself into the spiritual sphere or pulls him back into a primitive, this-worldly realm. (Compare the “assault from above” and the “assault from below” in “A Hunger Artist.”) In several of his stories, he uses the symbol of the hunt to illustrate that wherever there is life there is also persecution and fighting. Nobody can escape it. A man may allow himself, it is true, to be driven in one direction by the hunt (as does the chief dog, for instance, in “Investigations of a Dog”), but having gone as far as he can, he will have to allow the hunt to drive him in the opposite direction and take him back if he wants to survive. Man remains the battleground of opposing forces, and this is why he roams the vague realms of life and death without being firmly anchored in either.

Few of Kafka’s stories convey such a dense atmosphere of vagueness, remoteness, and dreamlike absurdity. This absurdity is intensified by the highly realistic description of Riva and the factual setting of the opening paragraphs, accenting a total lack of any common frame of reference between the townspeople of — Riva and the newcomer. A touch of uncertainty and mysteriousness hovers over the story: the death ship glides into the harbor “as if” borne by “invisible means”; a man who is “probably dead” was “apparently” lying on a bier. Yet there can be no doubt about the “realness” of the story. To make this clear, Kafka has the hunter Gracchus remind us that, by contrast to the “real” world, “aboard ship, one is often victimized by stupid imaginations.” In other words, the events taking place in Riva are not imagined by its inhabitants or by the hunter. In sober diction and short punctuated sentences, Kafka enumerates facts which, because of their almost meticulous factuality, stand in eerie contrast to the incredible occurrence itself.

Yet if the stranger’s arrival is incredible, nobody really troubles about him or pays the least bit of attention to him. “Without any mark of surprise,” the Burgomaster tells the visitor his name and profession, and the stranger’s reply is equally calm. This contrast does not merely increase the impact of the story, but it also carries its own logic, in the sense that it reflects the impossibility of penetrating the story rationally.

It is of some interest that in a fragment belonging to the story, Kafka argues that Gracchus may be seen as an interpreter between earlier generations and those living today; he can transcend all limits of time and space ordinarily imposed upon a human being. Gracchus is capable of doing so because, as a dead person who is nevertheless “alive” in a certain sense, he has universal knowledge of everything that was and is. Comprised of both life and death during his travels in “earthly waters,” Gracchus represents the totality of being, the universal elements of existence of all forms of being. This view is the only possible starting point for a logical explanation of how the hunter knows (or remembers) the Burgomaster’s name. According to this explanation, the Burgomaster also participates in the timeless, universal quality of the hunter.

Who is the hunter Gracchus? Where is he coming from? We hear that he is “dead,” and yet “in a certain sense” also alive. For hundreds of years he has sailed “earthly waters” ever since the day he fell into a ravine hunting chamois in the Black Forest. His barge was to take him to the realm of the dead, but it got off its course and has been aimlessly roaming the shadowy regions between life and death ever since.

While they know each other’s names, the hunter and the Burgomaster know nothing of their respective worlds. Each is anxious to find out something but neither succeeds: the Burgomaster cannot even furnish the stranger with some desperately needed information about the town of Riva. This is, of course, a typical situation in a Kafka story: a complete lack of communication between people, or between worlds. The question arises: which world does the hunter represent? It is tempting to believe that the regions he comes from are a higher realm of reality, as opposed to the empirical world of Riva (which Kafka visited with his friend Brod in 1909). Once we analyze the hunter’s world, however, it becomes clear that his world cannot be put into any fixed category. In fact, it is the most striking characteristic of the story of the hunter Gracchus that he no longer belongs anywhere, neither in a metaphysical realm nor in an empirical one. This was not always the case: he had been happy as a hunter, following his calling. He was happy even after he bled to death. Only long afterward did his mishap throw him into this predicament of total estrangement from any sense of belonging. We hear that it all began with a “wrong turn of the wheel” of his pilot and are immediately reminded of the “false alarm of the night bell once answered — it cannot be made good” again, the tragic insight of the country doctor doomed to roam through the snowy wastes.

Alienated and excluded from this world and the one beyond, the hunter Gracchus is at home everywhere and nowhere. Asked by the Burgomaster if he is not part of the “other world,” he replies that he “is forever on the long staircase leading up to it.” Typical of so many of Kafka’s stories, this one begins with the hero’s breaking away from a limited but clearly defined order. He once enjoyed living in this world, governed by a fixed set of rules, where people referred to him as “the great hunter.” Now he who wanted nothing more than to live in the mountains must travel through all the lands of the earth and find no rest, even among the dead. All he knows is that no matter how hard he strives toward oblivion, he keeps regaining consciousness; he remains still “stranded forlornly in some earthly sea or other.” The possibility of salvation does not exist, even under the best possible circumstances, because there is no way of communicating. Hence his frightening insight; to care is every bit as futile as not to care and “the thought of helping me is an illness.”

As he so often does in his stories, Kafka drew on his own situation as a “hunter” here. The name Gracchus is derived from the Latin graculus, which means “raven,” as does Kafka’s name in Czech. Kafka repeatedly referred to himself as a “strange bird, aimlessly sailing about humans.” Once upon a time it was possible to determine man’s position in this world and the next one. As Gracchus puts it, commenting on his own death: “I can still recall happily stretching out on this pallet for the first time.” Now he circles back and forth between spheres, and his apparently universal view of things is really that of Kafka, exploring all possible modes of thinking and living, dipping into each and staying with none.

As a result, the hunter Kafka was incapable of understanding the fixed order of earthly existence. He explained this failure in terms of a sudden lack of orientation, a distraction, “a wrong turn of the wheel.” In his diary he referred to it as “self-forgetfulness,” a lack of concentration, a “fatigue” which caused him to step out of the flow of time.

This lack of orientation and subsequent isolation, however, which permeates Gracchus’ (Kafka’s) life is not to be seen as something which one can explain autobiographically or psychoanalytically, as has too often been done in connection with Kafka’s conflict with his father. The experience of such fundamental disorientation and isolation is rather the precondition for Kafka’s uncompromising prodding into the complexities of human experience. That this human experience retreats even before his literary genius and permits only approximations is to be expected: language is by definition self-restrictive. What we term Gracchus’ “totality of being” or his “transcendence
of time and distance,” for instance, we have therefore put in these terms simply because it defies any adequate description. This does not mean that “totality” and “transcendence” do not exist; the whole story illustrates that they do indeed exist. It is simply that to force Kafka’s attempts to penetrate to the very core of the mystery of existence into a set of ready-made definitions would be tantamount to violating his intentions.

In this context, it is important to recall that Kafka himself has done everything, both in his stories and his commentaries on them, to qualify and even retract so-called clear-cut interpretations which he may have advanced or which others may have read into his writing. Naturally his stories are also interpretations and reflections, giving expression to manifold social, psychological, biographical, philosophical, and religious phenomena. But only up to a point. If interpreting were all he had had in mind, there would have been no need for him to leave his readers wondering about the answers to so many questions. The paradoxes and absurdities that abound in his works are the logical, because inevitable, expression of the fact that “reality” or “truth” on their highest level are indeed paradoxical and absurd when defined by our own limited comprehension.

Submitted by Der Jager Gracchus

Episode of War

Major English XII Notes — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:41:42 +0000

by Crane, Stephen

In this very short piece, the author plunges the reader immediately into a scene from the American Civil War. A lieutenant, never named, is wounded in the right arm while resting with his troops during an active battle. The next segment of the vignette, almost surreal in its presentation, is comprised of the lieutenant’s perceptions of the war going on around him as he walks to the rear in search of the field hospital. At the hospital, the wounded man has a brief, terse, and most unpleasant encounter with the surgeon, who is rude and lies to him. The lieutenant’s fear and despair is captured by single lines of tightly controlled metaphor and stark description.

Further Comments:

The power of this short piece resides in the author’s exquisite control of language. No word is wasted and the reader walks in the lieutenant’s shoes as he moves to the field hospital. The particular values of this piece to the medical humanities are its ability to draw the reader into the lieutenant’s reactions to his wound and the dramatic illustration of the surgeon’s absence of empathy.

A Very Special Pet

Major English XI Notes — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:41:42 +0000

A Very Special Pet
by Nicholasa Mohr

Summary of A Very Special Pet

The Fernandez family lived in New York City. They had 2 pets: a cat named Marialu and a hen called Joncrofo. The family had bought Joncrofo to get an egg, but she had never laid any. She lived in the kitchen of the house. All the children in the family loved the hen very much.

The Fernandez family was very poor. Mr. Fernandez hoped to get a better job so that the family could buy a farm. Mrs. Fernandez was worried became Mr. Fernandez was ill and was not getting any better. She decided to kill Joncrofo and cook it for the family’s dinner. She told the children to go into another room, so she could kill the hen without them knowing. She planned to say that Joncrofo had flown away.

Mrs. Fernandez chased the hen all around the kitchen. When she caught the hen, it bit her, and she had to let go. She hit the hen with a broom many times until the hen was lying on the floor without moving. The children came into the kitchen because they had heard a lot of noise. They cried and shouted because they thought their mother had killed Joncrofo.

Mrs. Fernandez was sad. She knew she would not be able to cook the hen because the children would never eat it. The hen made a noise. Mrs. Fernandez picked it up, washed it, and gave it water and alcohol. Joncrofo recovered Mrs. Fernandez told the children the hen had been sick, and she had had to catch it to give it medicine. Then she started to clean the kitchen, and she dreamed of returning to a farm in the mountains.

O My Loves Like a Red, Red Rose

Major English XI Notes — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:41:42 +0000

O My Loves Like a Red, Red Rose
by Robert Burns

Summary of O My Loves Like a Red, Red Rose

Stanza 1
O my Luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my Luve’s like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

Summary of Stanza 1
The speaker presents two similes, the first comparing his love to a rose and the second comparing his love to a melody. The speaker also uses repetition to echo his sentiments–my luve’s like in lines 1 and 3; that’s newly and that’s sweetly (pronoun, verb, and adverb combinations) in lines 2 and 4.

Stanza 2
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Summary of Stanza 2
The speaker addresses the young lady as bonnie (pretty). Bonnie is derived from the French word bon (good). In the last line of the stanza, a’means all and gang means go. This line introduces to the poem hyperbole, a figure of speech that exaggerates.

Stanza 3
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

Summary of Stanza 3
The speaker links the first line of the third stanza with the last line of the second stanza by repetition. The speaker continues hyperbole in the second and fourth lines. He also again relies on repetition in the third line by repeating the third line of the second stanza.

Stanza 4
And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve,
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ ’twere ten thousand mile!

Summary of Stanza 4
The speaker again addresses his beloved, noting that though he must leave her for a while he will return for her even if he must travel ten thousand miles. Repetition occurs in the first and second lines, and hyperbole occurs in the last line. Fare-thee-weel means fare thee well.

Chapter 2: The Great Gatsby

Major English XII Notes — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 05:41:42 +0000

Summary

Halfway between West Egg and New York City sprawls a desolate plain, a gray valley where New York’s ashes are dumped. The men who live here work at shoveling up the ashes. Overhead, two huge, blue, spectacle-rimmed eyes—the last vestige of an advertising gimmick by a long-vanished eye doctor—stare down from an enormous sign. These unblinking eyes, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, watch over everything that happens in the valley of ashes.

The commuter train that runs between West Egg and New York passes through the valley, making several stops along the way. One day, as Nick and Tom are riding the train into the city, Tom forces Nick to follow him out of the train at one of these stops. Tom leads Nick to George Wilson’s garage, which sits on the edge of the valley of ashes. Tom’s lover Myrtle is Wilson’s wife. Wilson is a lifeless yet handsome man, colored gray by the ashes in the air. In contrast, Myrtle has a kind of desperate vitality; she strikes Nick as sensuous despite her stocky figure. Tom taunts Wilson and then orders Myrtle to follow him to the train. Tom takes Nick and Myrtle to New York City, to the Morningside Heights apartment he keeps for his affair. Here they have an impromptu party with Myrtle’s sister, Catherine, and a couple named McKee. Catherine has bright red hair, wears a great deal of makeup, and tells Nick that she has heard that Jay Gatsby is the nephew or cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm, the ruler of Germany during World War I. The McKees, who live downstairs, are a horrid couple: Mr. McKee is pale and feminine, and Mrs. McKee is shrill. The group proceeds to drink excessively. Nick claims that he got drunk for only the second time in his life at this party.

The ostentatious behavior and conversation of the others at the party repulse Nick, and he tries to leave. At the same time, he finds himself fascinated by the lurid spectacle of the group. Myrtle grows louder and more obnoxious the more she drinks, and shortly after Tom gives her a new puppy as a gift, she begins to talk about Daisy. Tom sternly warns her never to mention his wife. Myrtle angrily says that she will talk about whatever she chooses and begins chanting Daisy’s name. Tom responds by breaking her nose, bringing the party to an abrupt halt. Nick leaves, drunkenly, with Mr. McKee, and ends up taking the 4 a.m. train back to Long Island.