TyroCity: Major English Notes

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.”

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”.

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.

Buffalo’s Bills

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

Buffalo’s Bills
by E. E. Cummings

Summary of Buffalo’s Bills

Buffalo Bill’s by e. e. cummings plays with more than one possibility of meaning and attitude of the poet towards the subject, the dead hero, Buffalo Bill. In one sense, the poem is an expression of respect towards the heroic personality of the man. But if we read the poem critically, we sense that the poet is satirizing the traditional heroism of killing the arm-less and harmless animals with guns, from a distance! The reader is left free to interpret in his own way.

Even after reading the poem it is difficult to say for certain whether the poet is writing about Buffalo Bills life or death, heroism or cruelty on animals, his achievements or the irony that he also died the same death, or something else. Whatever the poet’s intention, we also know that he has left it deliberately untold, and so we are entitled to make multiple interpretations of the poem. The theme of the heroism is also true, but the theme of the irony of Cody’s un-heroic death is also equally true. This is truly a modernist poem in which one and certain meaning is neither intended nor possible.

After all, Cummings attitude toward William Cody could really have been ambivalent (mixed). This unique ‘concrete poem’ is based on the legend of Buffalo Bill, or the American Cowboy William F. Cody. It is partly a tribute to the legendary hero who ruthlessly killed buffalo as well as pigeons, and partly it is an ironic poem that tells us that no one is heroic in front of death. The poem’s typography (typing on the page) is alike a pistol and a gun. Its “howness”, as modern critics say, is more striking than its themes and meanings (or whatness).

Buffalo Bill is “defunct” or dead. The poet remembers how he used to ride a horse and go hunting. In his hunting spree, he would shoot down many pigeons or buffalo at a time, in a series. The poet laments: “Jesus”. This handsome man is no more. What he wants to know now is whether death liked the “blue-eyed boy” or Buffalo Bill. He addresses to death formally as “Mr. Death” and asks this curious personal question. Of course death doesn’t discriminate. The question turns out to be very ironic on a second thought.
The poem begins with the news of the hero’s death. But the word ‘defunct’ is unusually inappropriate. Defunct means “no longer operating, functioning or being used” as in the case of a machine or a law. This is unsympathetic. May be heroism has died with the hero! No one is mortal or even forever famous. The hero used to kill so many animals recklessly. William Cody, a former scout, became a hunter and killed thousands of American brown buffalo, which was almost pushed into extinction. This man was death for the animals. But his own death would not leave him. Cody later became an actor and stereotyped hero of hundreds of novels. He also became the cowboy symbolizing the Wild West. All this popularity and power of the “blue-eyed”, handsome Cody did not last. The poet becomes intimate with Mr. Death at the end of the poem, and he asks pretending not to know that death takes everyone whether it likes them or not. The question is rhetorical.

The poem is inconsistent in tone and theme. It begins with a neutral tone, which on a closer attention is actually ironic. Then it develops into serious lament at the word “Jesus”. But again, the address to death makes it ironic. The poet “I” establishes a closer relation with “you” or “Death” than with “he” or Buffalo Bill. Thus, the somehow sincere regard indirectly paid to the legendary hero is also complemented by a satire on his reckless killing, and the irony of his death that didn’t spare him.

The visual or typographical dimension of the poem is notable. If we draw lines around the two halves of the poem, the upper half up to the word ‘Jesus’ males the shape of a gun. But the gaps and line breaks are indicators of pause. The typography is also a direction for the reader as to how to read the poem.

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.

The Valiant Woman

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

by J.F. Powers

Exclusive Summary:

Set in 1944, Valiant is a woodland pigeon who wants to become a great hero someday. When he hears they are hiring recruits for the Royal Homing Pigeon Service, he immediately sets out for London. On the way, he meets a smelly but friendly pigeon named Bugsy, who joins him, mainly to get away from clients he cheated in a game of find-the pebble, and helps him sign up for the war.

Complete Summary

The Catholic priesthood was a favorite subject of J. F. Powers. In “The Valiant Woman,” he gives a sly and witty account of an ongoing struggle between a priest and his housekeeper. This small and ironic comedy is quite successfully set off against larger and darker issues involving human needs and limitations, and the theology that guides the characters.

Quite against his inclinations, Father Firman, a celibate priest, has “married” Mrs. Stoner by passively allowing her to assume the role of his domestic partner. Unlike the suggestion buried in his name, he has been anything but firm and has steadily dwindled into the role of a husband. Without asking for these responsibilities he has allowed them to overtake him, and he can no longer in good conscience back away. He cannot divorce her, just as his religion forbids divorce. In his fantasy, a Filipino housekeeper would give him the life of freedom he craves—not sexual freedom, but freedom from responsibility in his personal life. The priest is thrust into the commitment his theology teaches, and which he has no doubt preached to others.

Although the reader need not accept any particular religious view to appreciate its argument, the story is deeply rooted in its Catholic theology. None of the three characters has an unusual spiritual gift. With her garrulous and trivial nature, Mrs. Stoner is indeed a millstone around the neck of the priest. Father Firman, although conscientious in his duties, seeks only a comfortable and trouble-free life, an ideal that Father Nulty urges on him. The author thus creates limited human beings who are confused and frustrated by their needs and fantasies. On the surface, their religion is only a social framework into which they have fallen. However, the demands of that religion make Father Firman stand larger than he ever could on his own. Husbands, as well as priests, take vows before God. Father Firman finally begins to realize that his responsibility is not simply defined by the vows he took as a priest. In becoming a “husband,” he is bound by the spirit as well as the letter of the law.

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.

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

When I Am Dead, My Dearest

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

by Christina Georgina Rossetti

The first stanza of the poem describes the world of the living people. The poet addresses her dearest one and asks him not to sing sad sons for her when she is dead. She does not want others to plant roses or shady cypress tree at her tomb. She likes her tomb with green grass associated with showers and dewdrops.

Normally, we find that after the death people express their grief by singing sad songs and by planting roses and cypress tree. But the poet thinks that they are just showing off. She does not like showy behavior. She rather thinks that if people are really sorry at the death of their loving person they should be humble like grass and only few drops of tears will be sufficient. As the showers and dewdrops make the grass green for ever, so the tears will make their love eternal. Afterwards she does not force him to remember. If he likes he will remember and if he does not like he will forget.

After her death she will be buried in the grave, and she will go into the world of the dead. She will not see the shadows of the cypress planted by her dearest one. She will not feel the rain or tears. However, sadly one may sing, but she will not hear it. The sweet and sad song of the nightingale will not touch her. She will pass the rest of her time dreaming through the never-ending evening when the sun neither rises nor sets. Perhaps she will remember it. Perhaps she will forget it.

The entire poem consists of two stanzas and of two varying significance. The first stanza deals with the world of living and the second with the poets experience in the grave. The poet may be trying to be realistic regarding her death. She is against any short of mourning that sings like of showing off. When she is dead, she won’t be able to hear any songs, see any roses, or feel the Cypress shade. Therefore, the better way to mourn someone’s death is by expressing the love as immortal as the green grass through the drops of tears as pure as the dew drops. It is also equally meaningless to insist someone to remember him/her after his/her death. Therefore, she gives her dearest one the freedom to remember of forgets as he/she wishes. The poem also suggests us that no one can escape from the torturous grip of the death. If reflects a quite melancholic and inflicted heart of the speaker.

By questioning the mourning ritual a poet had criticized the showing of behavior and suggested some more sincere ways to express one’s sadness. Similarly, she also seems to be giving more importance to life than after death rituals. Many people neglect their loved one when they are alive, but try to show their grief by spending lot of time and money, when they are dead. The poet seems to be against such attitude and conduct. Rather people should be humble in expressing their love and their sadness for the departed ones.

The poem is published under the title ‘song’ elsewhere. It can be sung to the accompaniment of some musical instrument. It has expressed the feelings and thoughts of the poet in a very personal and subjective way. The rhymes, me and tree, and rain and pain please us. Similarly, the rhymes wet and forget, and set and forget have the harsh sound‘t’ which reminds us the harsh reality in life. The repetition of ‘s’, ‘w’ and ‘sh’ sound makes this song perfect. The music of the stanzas of this poem rises like a gesture of the hand.

Poem

When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply I may forget.

Dream Variations

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

Dream Variations
by Langston Huges

Summary of Dream Variations

The poem Dream Variations by Langston Hughes is a nostalgic lyric which poignantly expresses the singer’s wish for a carefree life away from color persecution and racial discrimination. This poem is notable for its musical changes. In Hughes’s own words, his poetry is about “workers, roustabouts and singers, and job hunters… in New York, ….in Washington or… in Chicago- people up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten…”

The poet wants to enjoy different types of games in some sunny place. He likes to move and dance until the end of the happy day. Then in the evening he wants to rest under a tall tree until it is dark. This is his dream. But the reality is different. He has to work in spite of the hot sun. He keeps on working as if he were dancing and moving round. Because he is very busy, the day passes so quickly. He feels weak in the evening and wants to have a rest. But his desire to take a rest is incomplete. His desire to find a tall, slim tree remains incomplete in the city.

The night comes painfully reminding him that he is black, not white; like the night which nobody likes. In this poem the poet longs for the freedom of a less complicated world. This nostalgic look at Africa was typical of the work of many writers at that time.

The first stanza describes the poet’s dream. He wishes for a carefree life away from color persecution and racial discrimination. In his dream even the nigh is not black: it is only dark. In the first dream he is not in the city. He is completely engrossed in the rural area. But in the second stanza, he dreams after the tiring day’s work. The dream to take a rest under a tree remains unfulfilled. The first stanza describes his nostalgic feelings which he enjoyed in the past. In the second one his dream is incomplete. There are different types of dreams described in the poem. That’s why the poem is entitled ‘Dream Variations’

In the first stanza, there are nine lines, but in the second one there are eight lines. In the first stanza we find twenty-two stressed syllables and in the second there are twenty-one stressed ones. In the first stanza mostly we find unstressed syllables between stressed ones, but in the second stanza we find two lines where there is not an unstressed syllable between the stressed syllables.” Dance! Whirl? Whirl! … A tall, slim, tree … “This quick tempo matches with the sense. To quote Alexander Pope, “The sound must seem an echo to the sense”.

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.

A Marriage Proposal

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

by Anton Chekov

Plot synopsis

Ivan Vassiliyitch Lomov, a long-time neighbor of Stepan Stepanovitch Chubukov, has come to propose marriage to Chubukov’s 25-year-old daughter, Natalia. After he has asked and received joyful permission to marry Natalia, she is invited into the room, and he tries to convey to her the proposal. Lomov is a hypochondriac, and, while trying to make clear his reasons for being there, he gets into an argument with Natalia about The Oxen Meadows, a disputed piece of land between their respective properties, which results in him having “palpitations” and numbness in his leg. After her father notices they are arguing, he joins in, and then sends Ivan out of the house. While Stepan rants about Lomov, he expresses his shock that “this fool dares to make you (Natalia) a proposal of marriage!” This news she immediately starts into hysterics, begging for her father to bring him back. He does, and Natalia and Ivan get into a second big argument, this time about the superiority of their respective hunting dogs, Otkatai and Ugadi. Ivan collapses from his exhaustion over arguing, and father and daughter fear he’s dead. However, after a few minutes he regains consciousness, and Tschubukov all but forces him and his daughter to accept the proposal with a kiss. Immediately following the kiss, the couple get into another argument.

Further Understanding

The Play, “A Marriage Proposal”, shows how consideration of property and even our pride in property override other feelings and emotions like those generally associated with love and marriage. Even marriage is prompted by economic considerations, not by emotions.

Stepan Stepanovitch Tschubukov and Ivan Vassiliyitch Lomov were neighbours in a village. Natalia Stepanovna was the daughter of Tschubukov. Lomov a man of thirty-five wanted to marry. He thought Natalia was good at farm work and she was not bad looking. So he came to the house of Tschubukov one evening to propose to Natalia. Naturally he was in his best clothes befitting the occasion of a marriage proposal. Tschubukov received him cordially in his reception room. Like every young man going to make a marriage proposal Lomov was also excited and nervous. After some nervous stammering, he told Tschubokov that he wanted Natalia’s hand in marriage. Tschubokov was very excited and happy at the proposal. He went out and sent Natalia into the room to meet the suitor. Natalia was not told of the purpose of Lomov. Natalia and Lomov began to talk.

Lomov was more nervous as he was facing the bride. He made a strong preface before coming to the proposal. He told Natalia about how the Lomovs and the Tschubukovs had been good neighbours on good terms for many years. In this context, he mentioned that his meadow touched the birch woods of Tschubukov. Natalia was surprised to hear that the meadows belonged to Lomov. She claimed that the plot of land belonged to them, the Tschubukovs. A bitter quarrel ensued. Lomov claimed it belonged to him and Natalia too claimed it to be theirs. Lomov forgot his original purpose. They called each other names, even though a little while ago they were full of good neighbourly feelings. Tschubukov came in and heard their quarrel. He too claimed that the meadow belonged to him. The quarrel grew even bitterer. They called each other names and began to expose the scandals of each others’ families. Lomov had a weak heart. He used to have palpitation in the heart. He was excited and he fainted. He rose and left the house. At this juncture, Tschubukov remarked that such a fool had dared to come seeking the hand of Natalia.

The moment she heard that he had come to propose to her, Natalia changed her tone. She asked her father to bring back Lomov. Her self interest overruled all other considerations like her loyalty to her family. Lomov came back. Natalia was all politeness. She even conceded that the meadow belonged to Lomov. After all, if they were married, the meadow would come to be hers only. Lomov informed that he would go hunting after the harvest. He was sorry that his dog Ugadi limped and he began to praise his dog. He thought that a hundred and twenty five roubles that he had paid for it was very cheap for such a good dog. Natalia, however, thought that it was a very high price because her father had paid only eighty-five roubles for their dog Otkatai, which was a better dog than Ugadi.

Lomov disagreed and asserted that Otkatai had a lower jaw and Ugadi was a far better dog than Otkatai. Once again their pride in their dogs led to another quarrel. Tschubukov came in and joined the quarrel. Lomov once again got excited and he fainted.

Tschubukov who knew the importance of getting his daughter married, at once joined the hands of Natalia and Lomov and declared that Natalia agreed to the match. Natalia too, declared that she was willing and Lomov declared that he too, was happy. Tschubukov shouted for champagne to celebrate the intended marriage.