TyroCity: Major English XII 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.

Chapter 7: The Great Gatsby

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

Summary

Preoccupied by his love for Daisy, Gatsby calls off his parties, which were primarily a means to lure Daisy. He also fires his servants to prevent gossip and replaces them with shady individuals connected to Meyer Wolfshiem.

On the hottest day of the summer, Nick takes the train to East Egg for lunch at the house of Tom and Daisy. He finds Gatsby and Jordan Baker there as well. When the nurse brings in Daisy’s baby girl, Gatsby is stunned and can hardly believe that the child is real. For her part, Daisy seems almost uninterested in her child. During the awkward afternoon, Gatsby and Daisy cannot hide their love for one another. Complaining of her boredom, Daisy asks Gatsby if he wants to go into the city. Gatsby stares at her passionately, and Tom becomes certain of their feelings for each other.

Itching for a confrontation, Tom seizes upon Daisy’s suggestion that they should all go to New York together. Nick rides with Jordan and Tom in Gatsby’s car, and Gatsby and Daisy ride together in Tom’s car. Stopping for gas at Wilson’s garage, Nick, Tom, and Jordan learn that Wilson has discovered his wife’s infidelity—though not the identity of her lover—and plans to move her to the West. Under the brooding eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, Nick perceives that Tom and Wilson are in the same position.

In the oppressive New York City heat, the group decides to take a suite at the Plaza Hotel. Tom initiates his planned confrontation with Gatsby by mocking his habit of calling people “old sport.” He accuses Gatsby of lying about having attended Oxford. Gatsby responds that he did attend Oxford—for five months, in an army program following the war. Tom asks Gatsby about his intentions for Daisy, and Gatsby replies that Daisy loves him, not Tom. Tom claims that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could not possibly understand. He then accuses Gatsby of running a bootlegging operation. Daisy, in love with Gatsby earlier in the afternoon, feels herself moving closer and closer to Tom as she observes the quarrel. Realizing he has bested Gatsby, Tom sends Daisy back to Long Island with Gatsby to prove Gatsby’s inability to hurt him. As the row quiets down, Nick realizes that it is his thirtieth birthday.

Driving back to Long Island, Nick, Tom, and Jordan discover a frightening scene on the border of the valley of ashes. Someone has been fatally hit by an automobile. Michaelis, a Greek man who runs the restaurant next to Wilson’s garage, tells them that Myrtle was the victim—a car coming from New York City struck her, paused, then sped away. Nick realizes that Myrtle must have been hit by Gatsby and Daisy, driving back from the city in Gatsby’s big yellow automobile. Tom thinks that Wilson will remember the yellow car from that afternoon. He also assumes that Gatsby was the driver.

Back at Tom’s house, Nick waits outside and finds Gatsby hiding in the bushes. Gatsby says that he has been waiting there in order to make sure that Tom did not hurt Daisy. He tells Nick that Daisy was driving when the car struck Myrtle, but that he himself will take the blame. Still worried about Daisy, Gatsby sends Nick to check on her. Nick finds Tom and Daisy eating cold fried chicken and talking. They have reconciled their differences, and Nick leaves Gatsby standing alone in the moonlight.

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."

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

Dover Beach

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

by Matthew Arnold

Summary & Analysis

This is a poem about a sea and a beach that is truly beautiful, but holds much deeper meaning than what meets the eye. The poem is written in free verse with no particular meter or rhyme scheme, although some of the words do rhyme. Arnold is the speaker speaking to someone he loves. As the poem progress, the reader sees why Arnold poses the question stated above, and why life seems to be the way it is. During the first part of the poem Arnold states, “The Sea is calm tonight” and in line 7, “Only, from the long line of spray”. In this way, Arnold is setting the mood or scene so the reader can understand the point he is trying to portray. In lines 1-6 he is talking about a very peaceful night on the ever so calm sea, with the moonlight shining so intensely on the land. Then he states how the moonlight “gleams and is gone” because the “cliffs of England” are standing at their highest peaks, which are blocking the light of the moon. Next, the waves come roaring into the picture, as they “draw back and fling the pebbles” onto the shore and back out to sea again. Arnold also mentions that the shore brings “the eternal note of sadness in”, maybe representing the cycles of life and repetition. Arnold then starts describing the history of Sophocle’s idea of the “Aegean’s turbid ebb and flow”.

The sea is starting to become rougher and all agitated. Also the mention of “human misery” implies that life begins and ends, but it can still be full of happiness, and unfortunately, at the same time, sadness. “The Sea of Faith was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore.” The key word in that stanza is once, because it implies that he (Arnold) used to look at the sea in a different way than he does now. Throughout the whole poem, Arnold uses a metaphor to describe his views and opinions. Now he only hears its “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.” It seems as though Arnold is questioning his own faith. The whole poem is based on a metaphor – Sea to Faith. When the sea retreats, so does faith, and leaves us with nothing. In the last nine lines, Arnold wants his love and himself to be true to one another. The land, which he thought was so beautiful and new, is actually nothing – “neither joy, nor love, nor light”. In reality, Arnold is expressing that nothing is certain, because where there is light there is dark and where there is happiness there is sadness. “We are here though as on a darling plain, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash at night”. Arnold uses much alliteration in the poem. For example, in line 31, “To lie before us like a land of dreams”, repeating the letter L at the beginning of three words. Also, in line 4, “Gleams and is gone…”, repeating the letter G. The usage of assonance and consonance is not widespread in “Dover Beach”. In line 3 – “…on the French coast the light” – the repetition of the letter T is shown, as an example of consonance. Other literary techniques, such as onomatopoeia and hyperbole, are not used in the poem, besides the metaphor for “Faith” being the Sea.

The diction Arnold uses creates a sense of peacefulness and calmness. It is fairly easily understood vocabulary, with the exception of a few words, such as cadence and darkling. From reading Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”, one realizes that there is no certainty in life. When everything is going perfectly, something unfortunate may happen at any given time, with no forewarning.

Riders To The Sea

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

by John Millington Synge

Plot synopsis

Maurya has lost her husband, father-in-law, and five sons to the sea. As the play begins Nora and Cathleen receive word that a body that may be their brother Michael has washed up on shore in Donegal, far to the north. Bartley is planning to sail to Connemara to sell a horse, and ignores Maurya’s pleas to stay. As he leaves, he leaves gracefully. Maurya predicts that by nightfall she will have no living sons, and her daughters chide her for sending Bartley off with an ill word. Maurya goes after Bartley to bless his voyage, and Nora and Cathleen receive clothing from the drowned corpse that confirms it as their brother. Maurya returns home claiming to have seen the ghost of Michael riding behind Bartley and begins lamenting the loss of the men in her family to the sea, after which some villagers bring in the corpse of Bartley, who has fallen off his horse into the sea and drowned.
Maurya’s speech in the final scene is famous in Irish drama:

(raising her head and speaking as if she did not see the people around her) They’re all gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me…. I’ll have no call now to be up crying and praying when the wind breaks from the south, and you can hear the surf is in the east, and the surf is in the west, making a great stir with the two noises, and they hitting one on the other. I’ll have no call now to be going down and getting Holy Water in the dark nights after Samhain, and I won’t care what way the sea is when the other women will be keening. ‘(To Nora)’ Give me the Holy Water, Nora; there’s a small sup still on the dresser.

General understanding

The play begins with Maurya, who has fallen into a fitful sleep. She is certain that her son, Michael, has drowned, even though she has no proof, and has been constantly grieving for nine days. Cathleen, her daughter, is doing household chores when Nora, another daughter arrives. She quietly slips into the kitchen with a bundle that had been given to her by a young priest. In the bundle are clothes taken from the body of a man who drowned in the far north. They were sent to Maurya’s home, hoping that she would be able to identify the body.

Maurya begins to look as if she is going to wake up soon, so the daughters hide the bundle until a time when they are alone. Maurya awakes, and her fear for losing her only remaining son Bartley intensifies her grieving for Michael. Keep in mind, she has already lost five sons and a husband to the sea. The priest claims that that “insatiable tyrant” will not take her sixth. However, Bartley proclaims that he is going to venture over to the mainland that same day, in order to sell a horse at the fair, despite knowing of the high winds and seas.

Maurya begs Bartley not to go, yet he insists despite her pleas. In a flustered state of irritation, Maurya bids him gone without her blessing. Upon seeing these events unfold, the sisters tell Maurya, that she should go out and search for Bartley in order to give him the lunch that they he had forgotten to bring, and while at it, give him her blessing.

Maurya agrees to go, and once she is gone, the girls open the bundle. They find that they were indeed Michael’s clothes, but at least they have the comfort of knowing he got a respectable Christian burial where he washed up in the north. At this point, Maurya returns even more flustered and terrified before. She has seen a vision of Michael riding on the lead horse behind Bartley. Because of this, she is sure Bartley is doomed to die at sea. The girls then show her Michael’s clothes, and she exclaims that the nice white boards she had bought for Michael’s coffin may now be used for Bartley’s instead.

As she says this, the neighbors (women) enter, their voices raised in what the play calls a “keen”, or wailing lament for the dead. Men follow the women, who bring in the body of Bartley, who, sure enough, is dead. He has been knocked off a cliff into the surf below by the horse he was leading. The play ends with Maurya’s fatal submission as she says, “They’re all gone now and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me.”

This play resulted in the public having an interesting outlook to the sea. Whereas beforehand the sea was always mysterious and adventurous, it now became melodramatic and depressing. This had a somewhat similar effect to “Jaws” in the mid 70s, changing peoples’ views of water and the ocean, but on a lesser scale.

The Little Girl Saw Her First Troop Parade

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

by Carl Sandburg

Summary and Critical Analysis

When the little girl saw the troop marching, she asked the speaker what they were. H e replied that they were soldiers. Then she asked what soldiers are for. He replied that they are for war and that they fight and try to kill as many of the other side as they can. Then the girl remained silent and thought seriously. After a while she said that she knew something. She thought that one day when the soldiers fought nobody would come back. ‘The Little Girl Saw Her First Troop Parade’ is a short prose poem shows the bitter reality of war through the innocent perspective of a young girl.
A little girl sees a group of soldiers in a parade, for the first time in her life. She asks the speaker who they are. She gets the reply that they are soldiers. Her next question is who soldiers are. The speaker again replies that the soldiers are meant for war. They fight and try to kill as many soldiers as possible of the other side. When the little girl gets this reply she is silent and thinks for a while. Then she says that she has come to know something.When she is asked what it is, then she replies that “Sometime they will give a war and nobody will come.”

The history of the world is full of war in which millions of people have lost their lives. War is always evil and destructive. It affects not only those who are fighting but also numerous innocent people who have nothing to gain from the war. In spite of all these bitter realities, people are still fighting and killing each other. The present poem begins as a casual conversation between a little girl and a grown up man, but in the last line the girl presents such an insight (wisdom) that even the grownups rarely thinks about. The little girl says that there will (might) be a day when people will give a war but no one will come to fight. This line may be signaling towards that terrible war which will lead to the ultimate annihilation of the human race form the earth. Therefore, when there will be a war nobody will comes because those who have gone to war will never return, and there will be no one left anymore.

The poem may be taken as a bitter satire for the nations that are competing to accumulate (collect) as many nuclear weapons as possible. This context in the preparation of war, when a large mass of people are living in hunger seems to be futile even for an innocent girl but this is something that the so called intellectual and leaders have failed to understand. When Sandburg presents this insight (wisdom) for the perspective of a little the message becomes even more poignant.

‘The Little Girl Saw Her First Troop Parade’ is a prose poem which unfolds (open) dramatically in the form of a dialogue. But there are certain special characteristics that distinguish it from ordinary poem. The poetic elements like alliteration and assonance can be found in abundance and each line of the poem has a rhythmic quality. The success of the poem also lies in its capacity of giving each a starting (shocking) message with the use of very few words in the form of a causal talk. Like William Wordsworth Sandburg in this poem has used the language of everyday speech.

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.

Chapter 3: The Great Gatsby

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

Summary

One of the reasons that Gatsby has become so famous around New York is that he throws elaborate parties every weekend at his mansion, lavish spectacles to which people long to be invited. One day, Gatsby’s chauffeur brings Nick an invitation to one of these parties. At the appointed time, Nick makes the short walk to Gatsby’s house and joins the festivities, feeling somewhat out of place amid the throng of jubilant strangers. Guests mill around exchanging rumors about their host—no one seems to know the truth about Gatsby’s wealth or personal history. Nick runs into Jordan Baker, whose friend, Lucille, speculates that Gatsby was a German spy during the war. Nick also hears that Gatsby is a graduate of Oxford and that he once killed a man in cold blood.

Gatsby’s party is almost unbelievably luxurious: guests marvel over his Rolls-Royce, his swimming pool, his beach, crates of fresh oranges and lemons, buffet tents in the gardens overflowing with a feast, and a live orchestra playing under the stars. Liquor flows freely, and the crowd grows rowdier and louder as more and more guests get drunk. In this atmosphere of opulence and revelry, Nick and Jordan, curious about their host, set out to find Gatsby. Instead, they run into a middle-aged man with huge, owl-eyed spectacles (whom Nick dubs Owl Eyes) who sits poring over the unread books in Gatsby’s library.

At midnight, Nick and Jordan go outside to watch the entertainment. They sit at a table with a handsome young man who says that Nick looks familiar to him; they realize that they served in the same division during the war. The man introduces himself as none other than Jay Gatsby. Gatsby’s speech is elaborate and formal, and he has a habit of calling everyone “old sport.” As the party progresses, Nick becomes increasingly fascinated with Gatsby. He notices that Gatsby does not drink and that he keeps himself separate from the party, standing alone on the marble steps, watching his guests in silence.

At two o’clock in the morning, as husbands and wives argue over whether to leave, a butler tells Jordan that Gatsby would like to see her. Jordan emerges from her meeting with Gatsby saying that she has just heard something extraordinary. Nick says goodbye to Gatsby, who goes inside to take a phone call from Philadelphia. Nick starts to walk home. On his way, he sees Owl Eyes struggling to get his car out of a ditch. Owl Eyes and another man climb out of the wrecked automobile, and Owl Eyes drunkenly declares that he washes his hands of the whole business.

Nick then proceeds to describe his everyday life, to prove that he does more with his time than simply attend parties. He works in New York City, through which he also takes long walks, and he meets women. After a brief relationship with a girl from Jersey City, Nick follows the advice of Daisy and Tom and begins seeing Jordan Baker. Nick says that Jordan is fundamentally a dishonest person; he even knows that she cheated in her first golf tournament. Nick feels attracted to her despite her dishonesty, even though he himself claims to be one of the few honest people he has ever known.

He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.

Major Characters of The Great Gatsby

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

Jay Gatsby

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

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

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

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

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

Nick Carraway

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

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

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

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

Daisy Buchanan

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

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

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