TyroCity: Major English XI Notes

The Valvet Homgover

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

The Valvet Homgover
by Vaclav Have

Summary of The Valvet Homgover

In 1990 the Czech Republic became a democracy. Vaclav Havel was elected its President. It was an exciting time for the country because a new government system was being made. However, when Havel started working as President after the elections he didn‘t know what to do. He felt lost and tired. He was afraid he would not be good enough for the task of rebuilding his country.

Someone asked Havel to write a speech, but he found this difficult. He decided to write about fear and how it affected the Czech people. He wrote, “The people are afraid now as they face an uncertain future. They have won freedom, but fear it.” He also wrote, “Although life was difficult before, everyone understood the system. Now there are many questions. People who fear the past also fear the future. And people who fear the future also fear the past. Everyone must learn to be honest, because truth destroys fear.” Fear and negative feelings can also cause people to act in a good way. Havel ends his speech by asking people to look into the past, present and future with confidence, not fear.

In the speech Havel refers to four different types of fear:

fear of ourselves and our own ability,
fear of unknown things,
fear of the past present and future and
fear of lies and the truth.

Note
Velvet Revolution refers to a revolution in which there is no violence. In 1990 Czechoslovakia had a velvet revolution. A hangover is the feeling of illness caused by drinking too much alcohol. In this essay Havel describes his hangover like feeling after the velvet revolution.

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.

Paper

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

Paper
by Catherine Lim

Summary of Paper

Tay Soon dreamed of having a beautiful house with a swimming pool. His wife, named Lee Yian, and his children also dreamed of having a wonderful house. At the time of the story they were living in the house of Tay Soon’s mother, but Lee Yian was unhappy there. Tay Soon and his wife had already saved 40,000 dollars, and they wanted to borrow the rest of the money that would be needed to buy the house.

At that time, the stock market became very popular. People were buying shares in companies and then selling them when the price of the shares went up, They were becoming rich doing this. Tay Soon and Lee Yian bought shares and soon the value of their money doubled. They told Lee Yian’s sister to buy shares, and she also made money. Tay Soon‘s mother, however refused to buy shares.

After some time, just as Tay Soon was dreaming of being very nice. The price of shares went down, and he began to lose his money. He did not sell his shares because he thought the price would go back up again. However, the value of his shares continued to go down until he had lost all his money. Lee Yian and Yee Yeng’ also lost their money.

Tay Soon went mad. His dream of owning a beautiful house had been destroyed. He stopped going to work and he beat his children. Finally, he had to go to hospital.

Tay Soon’s mother said she would pay for his funeral. She asked a man to make a paper house to look exactly like the one Tay Soon had dreamed of owning. The house was made of the best quality paper. It was beautiful. It had a paper swimming pool and paper cars like the ones Tay Soon had dreamed of owning.

The paper house was burned at Tay Soon’s funeral. It burnt in three minutes.

A Small Place

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

A Small Place
by Jamaica Kincaid

Summary of A Small Place

This essay is about the Island of Antigua. In the essay, the author is addressing The Tourist. The Tourist is referred to using “you”.

The essay has the following themes:

The way tourists see Antigua is different from the way local people see it.
What tourists think of themselves is different from the way local people view them.
Antigua is a poor country and tourists come from rich countries.
There is corruption in Antigua.

These themes are developed in the following ways:

Tourists see the clean airport but do not see the poor schools and hospitals.
Tourists do not want rain. Antiguan farmers want rain.
The taxi driver drives dangerously. They live in small houses, but they drive expensive Japanese cars. This is because the Japanese banks will lend them money to buy Japanese cars.
Antigua is in a bad way. When the Prime Minister is ill he goes to the U.S. A because the local hospital is very bad. In 1974 the library was destroyed by an earthquake. It has never been repaired.
Antigua used to belong to Britain and the British people used Antiguan people as slaves. Now rich foreigners and drug dealers own most of Antigua.
The food the tourists eat was brought in from other places.
The tourists love the sea, but they do not know it is much polluted.
Tourists travel because they want to get away from their own countries.
Antiguans hate tourists and laugh at them.
Antiguans are poor and do not have enough money to travel.
The tourists come to the place that the Antiguans want to get away from.

Major English XI

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

Mosaic: Family

Mosaic: Initiation

Mosaic: General Role

Mosaic: Identity

Mosaic: Class Conflict

Mosaic: Power

Alienation

Of Cocks and Men

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

Of Cocks and Men
by Clifford Geertz

Summary of Of Cocks and Men

Men in Bali love cocks and cock-fighting. A lot of Balinese language refers to cocks. And Balinese men spend a lot of time taking care of their cocks. They get special food, baths with herbs and their feathers are brushed.

The Balinese people see animality (being like an animal) as the opposite of humanity (being like a person). They hate behavior that is like an animal. So children are not allowed to crawl on the ground and when children become adults their teeth are made smooth so that they do not look like an animal. Balinese people think that eating and going to the toilet are disgusting. So these actions are done very quickly and privately. Balinese people hate and are fascinated by the “Powers of Darkness“, the double nature of man being both animal and human. Cocks make Balinese men think of these things.

The Balinese use the cockfights as a way of calming evil demons. They are thought to be a form of sacrifice. Cockfights are held for natural disasters and religious festivals. The lights are very violent, and they always end in the death of one cock. The owner of the winning cock takes the body of the dead cock to his home. An owner who has a losing cock may become mad and curse the gods for his bad luck.

Pandora’s Box

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

Pandora’s Box
by Rosalind Vallance

Summary of Pandora’s Box

In this play only The Chorus and The Leader of the Chorus speak. The Chorus is made up of l2 people. Normally they all speak at the same time. Sometimes only 6 of them speak-this is called The Semi-Chorus.

The other characters are Pandora (a girl). Epimetheus(a boy) and Hermes(a god). They do not speak. They only mime. The chorus and the stage directions describe what they do.
Pandora enters first alone and plays with an imaginary ball. Epimetheus enters and they throw the ball to each other. They are playing. They are happy.

The Leader of the Chorus is worried. Then Hermes enters and The Leader thinks he has come to bless the children. Hermes is carrying an imaginary box. Pandora is fascinated by the box. Hermes warns her, then smiles and leaves.

Pandora and Epimetheus begin to play again but Pandora is still fascinated by the box. She hears a voice coming from it. She lifts the box up and then opens it. The Troubles escape from the box and begin to attack her. Epimetheus and Pandora manage to beat The Troubles away.

The Chorus explains that Pandora has let evil out of me box and it is impossible to put it back again. Pandora hears another voice from the box. She listens carefully and, even though she is frightened she opens the box again. This time, Hope flies out.

Explanation

At the beginning of the play the world is trouble-free. It is a perfect world where children can play safely. The Troubles of the world are trapped in the box. Hermes brought the box with The Troubles inside and left it near Pandora. The god did not open the box; a human being opened the box. In other words, The Troubles would not have been released into the world unless a human being (Pandora) had not been curious.

When the box was opened, The Troubles came out into the world. This was the worst situation, because there was no hope. However, when the box was opened a second time, Hope was released. This explains the world as it is today. There are troubles, but there is also hope.

The Elephant

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

The Elephant
by Slawomir Mrozek

Summary of The Elephant

The director of the zoo did not care about the animals that lived there. The zoo had many small animals like rabbits but it did not have an elephant. The news came that the zoo could buy an elephant if it wanted to. The director thought an elephant was too expensive, so he decided to make an elephant out of rubber and blow it up like a big balloon. The rubber elephant was made and two zoo workers were told to breathe air into it to blow it up. This was too difficult for them. So they decided fill the rubber elephant from the gas pipe instead.

The next day the rubber elephant full of gas was put into the zoo. In front of the elephant was a notice that said, “Particularly sluggish Hardly moves.” Some children and their teacher were looking at it. Suddenly the elephant rose up off the ground and floated away. The children who saw the elephant stopped believing their teacher and started to drink a lot of alcohol.

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.

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.

Friday Morning

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

Friday Morning
by Val Gielgud

Summary of Friday Morning

This play is about some people who are on a plane from London to Paris. Halfway through the journey the place’s engines stop. The different people react in different ways to the realization that the plane will probably crash.

The first part of the play introduces the different characters. The most important of these are Basil and Shirley, a young couple planning to fly to Paris to get married. The other characters include a travelling salesman who drinks a lot of alcohol (McLaurin), two American (Hannah and Janet Seward), a rich and important businessman (Sir Edward Harwood) and an older married couple (Mr. and Mrs. Briars. Basil, Shirley, Hannah and Mr. and Mrs. Briars are flying in a plane for the first time and make them nervous. McLaurin and Harwood regularly fly.

Sir Edward Harwood borrows a newspaper from Basil, and they arrange to have lunch together when they get to Paris. The plane takes of Shirley is nervous. Basil is also nervous. He holds Shirley’s hand very tightly, but they also have fun looking at how small things on the ground look from the plane. One of the engines stops. Basil thinks up reasons why this does not mean anything is wrong, but the plane continues to lower than it should.
A Steward says they have to return to London and the engines completely stop working.

The next section of the play contains long speeches from all the characters. They are talking to themselves about what they are thinking.

Basil is drinking of ways he can save Shirley horn dying. Harwood is hopeful. He thinks the pilot may be able to save them, but he hopes no-one will panic. He says how much he liked Basil and Shirley.

Mr. Chapman is worried about his wife, Mrs. Chapman. He is also worried that his death will cause problems for his nephew. He does not seem to worried about his own death.
Mrs. Chapman is worried that Shirley will scream and that it will be embarrassing.

McLaurin wishes he had more alcohol to drink. He thinks about his wife. Hannah is worried she will be injured badly. She would prefer to die.

Janet is worried that the shock of the crash will kill the sister (Hannah’s mother. She is not on the plane.

Shirley is very frightened and wants to scream-but she doesn’t.
The next section is a conversation between a newspaper editor (Marriott) and a young journalist (Miss James). The editor is told a plane has crashed but no one was killed. He is disappointed by this and even more disappointed when he hears there were no famous people on board. The journalist wants to know if the story will be the top story on the front page, but the editor says news about the news is much more important.

Shirley and Basil go to France by train and ferry boat. They were two men talking about the crash, but one of them is more interested taking about football. The first man says he thinks it would be fun to be in a plane crash if you weren’t killed.

Note:
This play was written to be performed on the radio. In the text the words in italics are directions to the actors and the radio technicians.

I am a Cat

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

I am a Cat
by Natsume Soseki

‘It is painfully easy to define human beings. They are beings who, for no good reason at all, create their own unnecessary suffering.’

I’d like to start by saying, don’t be deterred by the title, despite that it sounds like something from the oeuvre of Dr Seuss. This book is in fact near 500 pgs in length and narrated by one suspiciously eloquent cat. The title is also allegedly a tricky one for translators; the term of self-address in Japanese is apparently most akin to our regal plural, which (to my knowledge) isn’t really in use anymore (though who knows what goes on in those corridors of power?). Basically, the original Japanese carries a more deeply ridiculous tone, not fully conveyed by “I Am a Cat.” I would suggest “One Is a Cat” as another possible title but then, I’m not a translator and don’t know more than a smattering of Japanese. I’ve also smattered my fair share of English (“resin” and “hyperbole” spring to mind), so we’ll let it lie for now. Natsume Sōseki was, contrariwise, proficient in both languages and had even studied in London briefly – something rare in an era when Japan had only just joined in the world soirée and had yet to break the ice with a good quip.

There is every possibility that I Am a Cat was Sōseki’s good quip at the expense of his own countrymen, and perhaps even himself. We have a cat without a name – a mewling stray taken into the household of Mr Sneaze, a teacher of English and, in the words of his own cat, a pretty feeble specimen of his unperceptive kind. Through the cat’s eyes we receive impressions of the world: Sneaze’s family, Sneaze’s friends and callers, and of course other neighborhood cats like Rickshaw Blacky and Tortoiseshell. I’m not sure how these names have been translated from Japanese, but they often come across as highly eccentric when organised Sneaze’s closest friends are a young scientist named Avalon Cold-moon (contender for the best name in fiction) and an aesthete named Waver-house a Wildean figure who, as the cat tells us, would interrupt the announcement of his own death sentence just to hear his own beautiful voice. Waver-house can submerge any awkward silence with a well-placed witticism or completely misguide a conversation, usually for his benefit and ours. In them and other figures (Beauchamp, Singleman Kidd, Suzuki) we are let, like the nameless cat, to eavesdrop on what is mostly scholarly chitchat, or childish gossip. In fact, that is most of the book.

I Am a Cat is hence mostly set in Sneaze’s cony drawing room, though it does venture out with the cat occasionally, most notably to spy on a neighbor in the best interests of his master – or his own curiosity. This episode concerns also the planned marriage of Cold-moon to the neighbor’s daughter. Cold-moon in fact provides the novel’s closest semblance of an overarching plot. Sneaze also descends deeper into philosophical parquetry and misjudges his own and others’ mental well-being.

The cat at times goes to unusual depths in his narration, even relaying characters’ thoughts, but he does provide something of a rationale (even if it is all a fabrication, it’s a clever one):

‘I am a cat. Some of you may wonder how a mere cat can analyze his master’s thoughts with the detailed acumen which I have just displayed. Such a feat is a mere nothing for a cat. Quite apart from the precision of my hearing and the complexity of my mind, I can also read thoughts. Don’t ask me how I learned that skill. My methods are none of your business. The plain fact remains that when, apparently sleeping on a human lap, I gently rub my fur against his tummy, a beam of electricity is thereby generated, and down that beam into my mind’s eye every detail of his innermost reflections is reflected…’

Still, we may question the cat’s truthfulness at almost every turn of the page.

Other questions one might raise with the narrative are: How is the cat writing this book? He even addresses the readers of the magazine (the book was originally published serially). If there is an intermediary between the cat and the written word, who is it? Is it Sōseki? And how does he know what the cat is thinking? Sōseki is obviously crafting a work of fiction and so are we to question his aims in doing so? The cat also picks mistakes in the humans’ scholarly arguments: yet, how could a cat possibly be so well-read? He is, by the book’s end, at most 2 years of age. (though I believe he does give a brief rationale on the differing conversion rate of cat-time vs. human-time). The ending may also raise a further question, but I won’t go into that. Overall though, these pragmatic concerns aside, the novel is bursting with curious dialogues (Waverhouse’s vision of a future suicide epidemic), keen perceptions (‘Every time my master notices an increase in his children’s size, he becomes as nervous as if an inexorable pursuer were catching up behind him’), character interaction (the central trio play fantastically off one another) and plenty of hilarious asides. Coldmoon’s long-drawn-out anecdote about purchasing a violin is a masterpiece in frustration and must be read to be believed. I have not laughed this much over a novel in a long time. Also, the cat’s self-deifying claims (and there are a few) make for funny, memorable pauses in the narrative flow:

‘They say that every toad carries in its fore-head a gem that in the darkness utters light, but packed within my tail I carry not only the power of God, Buddha, Confucius, Love, and even Death, but also an infallible panacea for all ills that could bewitch the entire human race.’

Another episode that stands out in my mind is when Suzuki calls on Sneaze and, invited to go in the drawing room alone to wait, finds the cat sitting squarely on the cushion meant for him. The cat is wholly aware of Suzuki’s frustration and delights in it. It is a tense, silent, hilarious encounter:

‘Of course, if he’s really irked, he ought to jerk me off the cushion by the scruff of the neck. But he doesn’t… One would make oneself ridiculous, even a figure of farce, if one degraded oneself to the level of arguing with a cat.’

The novel moves from the heights of frivolity toward a subdued, melancholy ending as the gentlemen drink and relay ideas fundamental to the novel at large: mostly, the Westernisation of Japan, the negation of progress under individualism. Meiji-era Japan, its doors newly opened to the West, was starting to see change – in Sōseki’s eyes, a confused, deformed generation mimicking foreign customs, from broad concepts and whole lifestyles down to daily habits, becoming laughable in the process (at the school where he teaches, Sneaze is jokingly addressed as ‘Savage Tea’ after a transnational blunder for ‘coarse tea,’ kind of illustrative of Japan’s early, clumsy attempts at imitation). Singlemann, usually drowning introspective, observes in one of his rare moments of lucidity:

‘We sought freedom and now we suffer from the inconveniences that freedom can but bring. Does it not follow that, though Western civilization seems splendid at first glance, at the end of the day it proves itself a bane? In sharp contrast, we in the East have always, since long, long, long ago, devoted ourselves not to material progress but to development of the mind. That Way was the right way. Now that the pressures of individuality are bringing on all sorts of nervous disorders, we are at last able to grasp the meaning of the ancient tag that “people are carefree under firm rule.” And it won’t be long before Lao Tzu’s doctrine of the activating effect of inactivity grows to seem less of a paradox. By then, of course, it will be too late to do anything more than recognize our likeness to addicted alcoholics who wish they’d never touched the stuff.’

Beneath the surface of Sōseki’s comical cat narrative, as often in animal-based allegory, is a comment on his society. One might even view the cat as watching the absurdity, the strangeness of this human interplay, with the perceptiveness that only a strange set of eyes can provide; perhaps Sōseki’s perceptiveness of Western society, and his lament for his own.

Even if you have no familiarity with Japanese culture (and mine is minimal), I would thoroughly recommend this book. The Tutted edition compounds the three volumes into one convenient novel, and though there are more than a few typing gaffs and the occasional dubious word (accidental self-relativity at work?), it’s a smooth enough translation, reads easily and conveys its ideas with clarity. And maybe, just maybe, it will also change the way you look at our feline friends. Just remember, next time a cat steals your place on the sofa…