TyroCity: Major English XII 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.”

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

The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden

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

by Thornton Wilder

Plot summary

Almost the entire play takes place during an automobile journey from Newark to Camden, New Jersey by a family on their way to visit a married daughter, who has recently lost a baby in childbirth. Very little happens, but the father, mother, and children reminisce, joke, and sight-see and somehow, in classic Thornton Wilder fashion, capture something of the universal joy and sadness of life as they motor along.

Further Understanding

A comedy
3 men, 3 women

A father, mother and two of their three surviving children drive from Newark, New Jersey to Camden to visit their married daughter, who has recently lost her baby in childbirth. Their journey is punctuated by talk, laughter, memories (some mundane, some happy, some painful), and appreciation of the Now – ham and eggs, flowers, family, sunsets and the joy of being alive. In this family drama, nothing much happens-and yet everything important happens. As Ma Kirby says, “There’s nothin’ like bein’ liked by your family.””

The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden requires no scenery-just a curtain back-drop, a cyclorama, or an empty stage. It was first produced November 25, 1931, at the Yale University theater in New Haven, Connecticut, by the Yale Dramatic Association and the Vassar College Philalethis, with The Long Christmas Dinner, Love and How to Cure It, and Such Things Only Happen in Books.

“It should constantly be borne in mind that the purpose of this play is the portrayal of the character of Ma Kirby, the author at one time having even considered entitling the play ‘The Portrait of a Lady.’ Accordingly, the director should constantly keep in mind that Ma Kirby’s humor, strength and humanity constitute the unifying element throughout. This aspect should always rise above the merely humorous characteristic details of the play.”

-Thornton Wilder, “Notes for the Producer,” 1931

“My earlier one-act plays, before Our Town, were free of scenery too and things went back and forth in time. . . In my plays I attempted to raise ordinary daily conversation between ordinary people to the level of the universal human experience."

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.

The Jar

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

by Luigi Pirandello

An examination of the source of joy in a person’s life, The Jar is a thoughtful drama with a strong positive message. Where does joy come from? At a young age, Anna is presented with a mysterious jar and thinks its contents are hers to keep. As she gets older, she finds that her life is not all she expected and questions the gift that the rest of her family seems to enjoy. Meanwhile, she has neglected the opportunity to connect with others around her, including an elderly neighbor in need. Only when she reaches out for help is the secret meaning of the jar revealed.

The Mad Gardener’s Song

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

by Lewis Carroll

Summary and Critical Analysis

The poem ‘The Mad Gardener’s Song’ by Lewis Carroll contains the several disjointed stanzas which have a stupid mad logic as a common factor. The first line of each stanza begins with “He though he saw….” And the third line of each stanza with “He looked again, and found it was”. This revised vision leads the personal to a conclusion in the last two lines of each stanza. However, the conclusion does not match the premise from which it is drawn.
The poem starts in a common way that the speaker thinks that he saw an elephant practicing a flute but suddenly the stanza encounters with something very uncommon that the elephant practicing the flute comes to be the letter form his wife which is the bitterness of life, for him. Similarly the poem begins and ends with nonsense rhyme. The speaker says in the second stanza he thinks he saw a buffalo on the chimney but when he looks it again he finds the buffalo was his sister’s husband’s niece whom he doesn’t like because he was burden for him that’s why he wanted to send him to Police Station.

Similarly, the speaker thinks that he saw a rattle snake which questioned him in Greek but latter on next look it was the middle of next week and he has regret for it that it cannot speak. Again, he thinks that he saw a Banker’s clerk descending from the bus but he finds it was a hippopotamus and if he stay for the dinner, there won’t be enough food left for them. Similarly, he thinks he saw a Kangaroo working at a coffee-mill but in real it was a Vegetable- Pill which can make him ill if he eats it. Next he imagines a coach driven by four horses standing besides his bed but it turns out to be a bear without head. He pities upon it thinking that it is waiting to be fed.

Similarly, the poem moves ahead with disjoint stanzas and mad logic. The speaker thinks that he saw an Albatross fluttering round the lamp but it was a Penny-Postage-Stamp in real and he advised it to go home because the nights are very damp. The garden door opening with a key turns out to be double role of three and he thinks that all its misery is clear to him. Finally the argument that proved he was the Pope turns out to be a bar of soap and he thinks that it takes away all the hope.

The Mad Gardener’s Song is composed in nine disjointed stanzas. These stanzas are similar and related only in that they follow the rhyme scheme ab ab db and all of them have a mad logic. The first line of each stanza begins with “He thought he saw….” And the third line of each stanza is “He looked again and found it was….” The last two lines carry the conclusion of the stanza but the conclusion does not match the premise from which it is drawn.

In conclusion, the whole poem is nonsense. It is simply a humorous poem written for the purpose of laughing and entertaining. If we see it deeply, it somehow turns as a satire for those people whom the poet doesn’t like and wants to show his anger to them.

Whatever is the reason, but in common this is a nonsense poem written with mad logic. The poem associates disparate elements without any intention of making sense. Although the cause and effects don’t match some stanza seems to be meaningful. Hence, the use of the uncommon style and nonsense logic as a common factor, this poem has become the example of a nonsense rhyme.

The Romancers

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

by Edmond Rostand

Pasquinot and Bergamin are neighbors, but the relations are not good. Their parks are divided by a big wall. The former’s daughter Sylvette and the latter’s son Percinet are madly in love. But their fathers do not like it all.

When the play starts, Percient is reading Romeo and Juliet to Sylvette who is listening from the other side of the wall. They identify themselves with Romeo and Juliet and sympathize their conditions. They wish that their love could unite their families. They think of means to bring the same about.

The father’s know that their children are not going to regard their enmity as a force between their love. So they silently decide to arrange a make-believe drama to hand over Sylvette to Percinet. For this they invite a paid killer Stafforel.

One afternoon, when the romancers are exchanging their love, Scafforel and his team act of kidnapping Sylvette. Percinet, mad in love comes and attacks the kidnappers and delivers Sylvette. This is explained as a great case of bravery for love, and hence every one approves their marriage. This way, the enmity between the families falls and their love prevails.

Plot Summary

Nick Carraway grew up in the Midwestern United States and went to school at Yale University. After this, he was stationed in France during World War I. Returning home after travelling a great deal, he is discontent and decides to move to the East at the beginning of the Summer of 1922, renting a ramshackle house in Long Island’s West Egg section. He begins working in nearby New York City as a bondsman and it is here that his story begins.

Jay Gatsby is a wealthy neighbor living next door in a lavish mansion where he holds many extravagant weekend parties. His name is mentioned while Nick is visiting a relative, Daisy, living in the East Egg section on the other side of Long Island with her millionaire husband, Tom Buchanan. As it turns out, Jay Gatsby had met Daisy five years before while in the military and was rejected by her due to his lack of wealth and because he had been sent so far away in Europe for the war. Daisy was attracted by Tom’s riches and his distinguished family background and married him. Meanwhile Gatsby spent all of his effort after the war to buy his mansion through shady business dealings in order to be nearer to Daisy in the hope that she would leave Tom for him. Nick is chosen to be the “matchmaker” and arranges a reunion for the two at his home. Daisy is impressed by Gatsby’s wealth and the two begin spending much time together, raising the suspicions of Tom who had also upset Daisy by carrying on an affair with a gas station owner’s wife, Myrtle Wilson. Jay no longer holds his weekend parties since Daisy hadn’t liked them and he allows her desires to control his actions. Nick distances himself from this mess by becoming close to Jordan Baker, a long time friend of Daisy.

While in a New York City hotel room one evening late in the summer with Jordan, Nick, Daisy, Tom, and Gatsby, there is a massive confrontation during which Tom exposes Gatsby’s corrupt business dealings. Jay and Daisy leave to drive back to Long Island together with her driving Gatsby’s car “to calm her down” until she accidentally hits and kills Tom’s mistress running out in front of the gas station after her own jealous husband had locked her inside. The car doesn’t stop after the accident and speeds on towards Long Island. Gatsby’s charm has faded with his exposed corruption while Tom refocuses on Daisy since his mistress has been killed, assuming Gatsby to have been the car’s driver. Nick is disgusted by this entire mess of love affairs and even ignores Jordan, worried about Gatsby since he continues to yearn for Daisy even though it is clear that he has failed. While Nick goes off to work in New York City the next day, the dead woman’s vengeful husband, assuming Gatsby to have been driving his car that night and told that it had been Gatsby’s car by a vengeful Tom Buchanan, shoots Gatsby to death in his own swimming pool and then kills himself.

Gatsby’s funeral has few in attendance aside from Carraway and Jay’s father who has come all the way from the Midwest where Jay grew up. Disgusted that so few had come, including Tom and Daisy who had abruptly moved away, and the hundreds who had attended Gatsby’s parties, Nick distances himself fromJordan for good. Finally, tired of this gross scene of wealth and pettiness , he moves back home to theMidwest. His fond memories of the East remain only of Gatsby, and it is for him that this story is told.

contributed by Mahesh Paudyal

Chapter 4: The Great Gatsby

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

Summary

Nick lists all of the people who attended Gatsby’s parties that summer, a roll call of the nation’s most wealthy and powerful people. He then describes a trip that he took to New York with Gatsby to eat lunch. As they drive to the city, Gatsby tells Nick about his past, but his story seems highly improbable. He claims, for instance, to be the son of wealthy, deceased parents from the Midwest. When Nick asks which Midwestern city he is from, Gatsby replies, “San Francisco.” Gatsby then lists a long and preposterously detailed set of accomplishments: he claims to have been educated at Oxford, to have collected jewels in the capitals of Europe, to have hunted big game, and to have been awarded medals in World War I by multiple European countries. Seeing Nick’s skepticism, Gatsby produces a medal from Montenegro and a picture of himself playing cricket at Oxford.

Gatsby’s car speeds through the valley of ashes and enters the city. When a policeman pulls Gatsby over for speeding, Gatsby shows him a white card and the policeman apologizes for bothering him. In the city, Gatsby takes Nick to lunch and introduces him to Meyer Wolfshiem, who, he claims, was responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series. Wolfshiem is a shady character with underground business connections. He gives Nick the impression that the source of Gatsby’s wealth might be unsavory, and that Gatsby may even have ties to the sort of organized crime with which Wolfshiem is associated.

After the lunch in New York, Nick sees Jordan Baker, who finally tells him the details of her mysterious conversation with Gatsby at the party. She relates that Gatsby told her that he is in love with Daisy Buchanan. According to Jordan, during the war, before Daisy married Tom, she was a beautiful young girl in Louisville, Kentucky, and all the military officers in town were in love with her. Daisy fell in love with Lieutenant Jay Gatsby, who was stationed at the base near her home. Though she chose to marry Tom after Gatsby left for the war, Daisy drank herself into numbness the night before her wedding, after she received a letter from Gatsby. Daisy has apparently remained faithful to her husband throughout their marriage, but Tom has not. Jordan adds that
Gatsby bought his mansion in West Egg solely to be near Daisy.

Nick remembers the night he saw Gatsby stretching his arms out to the water and realizes that the green light he saw was the light at the end of Daisy’s dock. According to Jordan, Gatsby has asked her to convince Nick to arrange a reunion between Gatsby and Daisy. Because he is terrified that Daisy will refuse to see him, Gatsby wants Nick to invite Daisy to tea. Without Daisy’s knowledge, Gatsby intends to come to the tea at Nick’s house as well, surprising her and forcing her to see him.

Chapter 6: The Great Gatsby

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

Summary

The rumors about Gatsby continue to circulate in New York—a reporter even travels to Gatsby’s mansion hoping to interview him. Having learned the truth about Gatsby’s early life sometime before writing his account, Nick now interrupts the story to relate Gatsby’s personal history—not as it is rumored to have occurred, nor as Gatsby claimed it occurred, but as it really happened.
Gatsby was born James Gatz on a North Dakota farm, and though he attended college at St. Olaf’s in Minnesota, he dropped out after two weeks, loathing the humiliating janitorial work by means of which he paid his tuition. He worked on Lake Superior the next summer fishing for salmon and digging for clams. One day, he saw a yacht owned by Dan Cody, a wealthy copper mogul, and rowed out to warn him about an impending storm. The grateful Cody took young Gatz, who gave his name as Jay Gatsby, on board his yacht as his personal assistant. Traveling with Cody to the Barbary Coast and the West Indies, Gatsby fell in love with wealth and luxury. Cody was a heavy drinker, and one of Gatsby’s jobs was to look after him during his drunken binges. This gave Gatsby a healthy respect for the dangers of alcohol and convinced him not to become a drinker himself. When Cody died, he left Gatsby $25,000, but Cody’s mistress prevented him from claiming his inheritance. Gatsby then dedicated himself to becoming a wealthy and successful man.

Nick sees neither Gatsby nor Daisy for several weeks after their reunion at Nick’s house. Stopping by Gatsby’s house one afternoon, he is alarmed to find Tom Buchanan there. Tom has stopped for a drink at Gatsby’s house with Mr. and Mrs. Sloane, with whom he has been out riding. Gatsby seems nervous and agitated, and tells Tom awkwardly that he knows Daisy. Gatsby invites Tom and the Sloanes to stay for dinner, but they refuse. To be polite, they invite Gatsby to dine with them, and he accepts, not realizing the insincerity of the invitation. Tom is contemptuous of Gatsby’s lack of social grace and highly critical of Daisy’s habit of visiting Gatsby’s house alone. He is suspicious, but he has not yet discovered Gatsby and Daisy’s love.

The following Saturday night, Tom and Daisy go to a party at Gatsby’s house. Though Tom has no interest in the party, his dislike for Gatsby causes him to want to keep an eye on Daisy. Gatsby’s party strikes Nick much more unfavorably this time around—he finds the revelry oppressive and notices that even Daisy has a bad time. Tom upsets her by telling her that Gatsby’s fortune comes from bootlegging. She angrily replies that Gatsby’s wealth comes from a chain of drugstores that he owns.

Gatsby seeks out Nick after Tom and Daisy leave the party; he is unhappy because Daisy has had such an unpleasant time. Gatsby wants things to be exactly the same as they were before he left Louisville: he wants Daisy to leave Tom so that he can be with her. Nick reminds Gatsby that he cannot re-create the past. Gatsby, distraught, protests that he can. He believes that his money can accomplish anything as far as Daisy is concerned. As he walks amid the debris from the party, Nick thinks about the first time Gatsby kissed Daisy, the moment when his dream of Daisy became the dominant force in his life. Now that he has her, Nick reflects, his dream is effectively over.

Di Grasso: A Tale of Odessa

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

by Issac Bable

Summary

Because this brief work is a sophisticated commentary on the nature of art as well as “just a story,” it is all the more interesting for the reader to know that it is the last work Isaac Babel published in his lifetime, before he fell victim to Stalinist justice. Although the exact circumstances of Babel’s arrest in 1939 are not known, it is believed that he was charged with espionage, a patently contrived accusation; he was executed in 1941. The Jewish author, whose collections of stories were often reprinted during his lifetime, was “rehabilitated” after the death of Joseph Stalin—and his stories were reprinted again.

“Di Grasso” ostensibly focuses its attention on the Jewish theatrical world of prewar Odessa (about 1908), where one learns that the narrator as a boy of fourteen has recently “come under the sway” of the “tricky” ticket scalper Nick Schwarz and his “enormous silky handle bars.” Without looking further into the relationship between the boy and the older man who is his “boss,” the narrator instead describes (entertainingly) almost the entire action of a very bad play being newly performed by a traveling troupe of Italian actors. In this play, a “city slicker” named Giovanni temporarily lures the daughter of a rich peasant away from her betrothed—a poor shepherd played by the Sicilian actor Di Grasso. Di Grasso pleads with the girl to pray to the Virgin Mary—a huge, garish, wooden statue of whom is on the stage—but to no avail. In the last act, when Giovanni has become insufferably arrogant, Di Grasso suddenly soars across the stage, plunges downward onto Giovanni, bites through his throat, and sucks out the gushing blood—as the curtain falls.

Recognizing a hit when he sees one, Schwarz rushes to the box office, where he will wait all night, first in line to buy at dawn as many tickets as he can afford, for resale. The narrator shortly remarks that everyone in Theater Lane has been made happy by the new hit—except himself.

Now an entirely new story line develops. It seems that the lad has taken his father’s watch without permission and pawned it to Schwarz—who eventually grows very fond of the big gold turnip. Even after the boy pays off the pledge, Schwarz refuses to give back the watch. The boy is in continual despair, imagining his father’s wrath. He suggests that Schwarz and his father have the same character.

Then one night Schwarz and his wife, along with the boy, attend the final performance of the Italian troupe, with Di Grasso playing the shepherd “who is swung aloft by an incomprehensible power.” Schwarz’s wife, a fat and sentimental woman with “fish-like eyes,” is overwhelmed by Di Grasso’s great leap of love. She laments her own loveless life and berates her husband as they walk home from the theater with the boy trailing behind. The boy sobs openly, thinking of his father and the watch. Madam Schwarz hears the sobs and angrily forces her husband to return the watch, which he does, but not without giving the lad a vicious pinch.

The Schwarzes walk on, reach the corner, and disappear. The boy is left alone to experience ultimate happiness; he sees the world at night “frozen in silence and ineffably beautiful.”

Themes and Meanings

At an elementary level of meaning, this story reveals the hidden relationships that may exist between apparently unconnected things and events. The Italian play, with its fantastic Sicilian actor, acts powerfully on the unloved wife of the swindler Nick Schwarz—and the boy and his watch are saved.

The story becomes more interesting when the reader sees that it is precisely the power of art that is significant, rather than merely “a play.” Finally, it is not art in general that is at issue but art of great passion. Here, bad art is “transformed” by a passionate actor. Commenting on Di Grasso’s acting, the narrator insists that the Sicilian, “with every word and gesture,” confirms that there is “more justice in outbursts of noble passion than in all the joyless rules that run the world.”

Such an explicit statement, not all that common in Babel, must be taken seriously. One wonders if “joyless rules” might refer to the Soviet Union of the bleak 1930’s, and if Nick Schwarz, with his handlebar mustaches, is not intended to be seen as a pitiless Stalin figure. In any case, however, such political overtones are not the central focus of the work.

Passion in life, as in art, is a recurring motif in Babel’s writings. Often it is accompanied by violence, as in the present work—which depicts not only the murderous leap of Di Grasso but also the descent of the curtain “full of menace” and the “vicious pinch” exacted by Schwarz. If life is lived fully and passionately, some violence is inevitable.

As art influences or works itself into life (here moving Schwarz’s wife to take pity on the boy), so may life be transformed into art. Thus the boy, dizzy with happiness, sees the ordinary world of the city transformed into ineffable beauty. Here reality, art, and transcendent beauty merge in a remarkable vision. The boy’s epiphany has the character of a future writer’s first glimpse of the world beyond everyday reality (or of the way reality really is if one looks at it right).