Girls Trafficking

Part One
Essays
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: THE FORM OF LITERATURE

a. Elements of Essays
b. The essay and other forms of literature
c. The essayist and the reader
d. Four essays and commentaries • The essay as argument: Persuasion • The essay as story: history • The essay as poem: Meditation • The essay as play: Dialogue

Total Essays 10

1. Cocksure Women and Hensure Men( Essay as persuasion): D. H. Lawrence
2. The Hurled Ashtray( Essay as Story): Nora Ephron
3. Spring [April 1941](Essay as poem): E. B. White
4. Our Graves in Gallipoli(Essay as play): E. M. Forster
5. Death of the Moth: Virginia Woolf
6. Shooting an Elephant: George Orwell
7. The Figure a Poem Makes: Robert Frost
8. Once More to the Lake: E. B. White
9. Autobiographical Notes: James Baldwin
10. Marriage a La Mode: Russell Baker
INTRODUCTION: THE FORM OF LITERATURE
Literature begins in the creative possibilities of human language and in the desire of human language and in the desire of human beings to use their language creatively.
Though its origin lies in the joy of creation, literature can be intensely serious. It can use its formal beauty as a way of enabling us to contemplate the most painful and terrible aspects of existence, or as a way of celebrating those things we value most highly in life.
Literature increases our capacities for understanding and communication. It helps us to find meaning in our world and to express it and share with others. Literature as a whole plays very significant role in our life. It demands more skill from us than ordinary reading and writing.

There are critical introductions of four forms of literature:
• Essay, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. They help us to understand and enjoy our reading. They dominate our culture for hundreds of years.

In each of these forms authors use words to convey their views of experience. In the basic sense all of the forms arise out of a common human impulse- to find meaning in experience and to share it with others. But each of the forms achieves that basic purpose in a distinctly different way.
In understanding how each of the forms uses words, we can begin by making two essential kinds of distinctions about the language of literature.
a. First, we can distinguish between the ways in which the words in literary works relate to the world of experience.
b. Second, we can distinguish between the ways in which those words are communicated to the reader
In defining how words relate to the world of experience, we can observe that;
• They are used either create imaginary people and events or,
• To give immediate expression to ideas and feelings about experience

For e.g. the opening words of ‘The Boarding House’ by James Joyce:
“Mrs. Mooney was a butcher’s daughter. She was a woman who was quite able to keep things to herself: a determined woman. She had married her father’s foreman and opened a butcher’s shop near Spring Gardens. But as soon as his father-in-law was dead Mr. Mooney began to go to the devil.”
In these sentences, Joyce first sketches the character of Mrs. Mooney and then begins to tell the events of her married life. In this way his words create an imaginary world for us- a world with specific people, places, and events.

Basic possibilities of literary expression
-Words used to create imaginary persons and events( poem, meditation)
-Words addressed directly to the reader( story, narration)
-Words over heard by the reader( play, interaction)
-Words used to express ideas and feelings(essay, persuasion)

(I.)Elements of the Essays
The essay as a form of literature
The word “essay” was used for the first time by the sixteenth century writer
Montaigne. He used it as a means of exploring himself and his idea about human experience his essays were, “in a sense” a means of thinking paper of trying things out in writing. Thereafter, in English literature, formal essays were for the first time written by Francis Bacon. Essays were writing with different intentions. Many essays are practically the pieces writing designed to report something or explain something on make case for something. The essay in its pure form uses words to establish ideas that are addressed directly by the essayist to the reader. Thus, its essential quality is persuasion. Approximately essays are in four forms. Each of the forms is capable of using the elements, techniques, or even strategies of other forms. The essay then is not confined to the form of straightforward persuasion. It may be also narrative, or dramatic, or poetic in forms.

Essays are systematically organized, factually detailed, closely reasoned, and plainly written. In essay, there is always a sense of utility of such products and these products are transformed into works of art. So, it has been common to look artistic elements in essay. Essayists sometimes can look beyond their immediate purpose, for example;

a. George Orwell wanted “to make political writing into an art,” as a whole he seeks aesthetic pleasure in the essay. He seeks to do so by using literary rather than purely utilitarian forms of composition.( Shooting an Elephant)
b. Virginia Woolf says that pleasure is probably the last thing you expect of an essay, but it was certainly the first thing on her mind. She further says, pleasure temporarily removes us from the world of everyday affairs by bringing us in the world of imagination.

‘Essais’ tentative and informal quality and derived from the French verb ‘essayer’ that means ‘to try’. The term “essay” has since come to be used as a catch-all for prose works of limited length; but that description of form turns out to be misleading.
Some essays can be fictional and non-fictional, playful Long or short, factual or fictional, practical or playful.

THE ESSAY AND OTHER FORMS OF LITERATURE

The essay in its pure form uses words to establish ideas that are addressed directly by the essayist to the reader. Thus, its essential quality is persuasion. Approximately essays are in four forms. Each of the forms is capable of using the elements, techniques, or even strategies of other forms. The essay then is not confined to the form of straightforward persuasion. It may be also narrative, or dramatic, or poetic in forms.

In its pure form the essay explicitly attempts to persuade us of something by means of anappeal and argument that the author addresses directly to us, much as any public speaker would address an audience. In a narrative essay the author becomes narrator, a storyteller, who reports directly to us. A narrative essay sees its subject in time and presents it in the form of history.

A dramatic essay takes the forms of a dialogue between two or more characters, and the author is present, if at all, only to perform the duties of a director: to set the scene and identify the characters whose words and actions are to be witnessed by the reader.

In poetic essays, author or speaker appears to be talking to him rather than to others.
A poetic essay takes the form of a meditation “overheard” by the readers.

Above definition might seem to imply that only the pure form of the essay has a persuasive purpose, but this is not the case. In one sense or another all essays have a persuasive purpose. When essayists describe something, they record what they see from their angle of vision, from their point of view in space and time, because they cannot do otherwise.

THE ESSAYIST AND THE READER

When reading an essay we often feel as though the author is speaking directly to us.
Sometimes, of course, the essayist doesn’t address us directly. Generally, in any forms of literature the writer is already dead after writing the work. The speaker is different from real life. The essayists are not exactly the same in their essays as they are in their real life.
Essays are made out of words, rather than of flesh and blood. Thus, the particular personality conveyed in an essay is always in some sense a fiction, and we call it a ‘fiction’ because we want to emphasize its imaginative nature. It is something created out of words alone.

Essayists can create any impression of themselves that they wish. They can appear stuffy
(very delicate) or relaxed, serious or flippant (disrespectful about serious subjects), confident or nervous, wise or foolish. The possibilities are limitless and they are a product not only of what essayists have to say but also of how they say it. Thus, it is important to listen carefully to the style of their prose- to hear the particular words they choose and the particular way they choose to put them together in sentences and sequences of sentence. So, the reader should look at the style, absorb the point of view and identify the particular personalities of the persona of the essayist. And a reader internalizes himself/herself with the fictional personality. FOUR ESSAYS AND COMMENTARIES

THE ESSAY AS ARGUMENT: PERSUASION

At the heart of all essays is the idea of persuasion. This persuasion is expressed in argumentative ways. Their basic form, therefore, is direct and simple: a point to be established, together with some support for the point. The point may precede (progress) the evidence, or it may be closely interwoven with supportive materials. Thus, as reader, we should isolate the point and restate it clearly as possible. This task may also involve discovering and restating separate sub-points.
Once the main points have been identified, it is necessary to examine the supporting materials. Analogy is an important form of support in a literary essay. Literary persuasion depends upon appeals to common experience in the form of analogies that relate the topic to comparable situations. Thus our second analytic task, we should analyze and identify that analogies and examine how they have been elaborated and applied to support the point of the essay. At this stage of analysis, we should think about the appropriateness of analysis and the tact (ability to say) with which they have been applied. Do they fit? Or, are they forced? These questions lead us naturally to consider the implied personality of the implied personality of the essayist and its appropriateness to the persuasive situation. Our final analytic tasks should be to examine the style, tone of voice, the role of speakers, point of view. THE ESSAY AS STORY: HISTORY

There is persuasive dimension to the narrative essay too. The basic elements of narration are a story and a storyteller. In a story, there are characters and events arranged in time so as to move towards some climax and resolution. The essayist presents this movement and tells the story by means of description, dialogue, and commentary. By observing the stages in the movement of the plot, we can begin to understand a narrative essay.

The narrative essay differs from the story itself. It is built around a specific event or situation that has existed in time and space. It is presented as a kind of record of that event or situation.
The story told in an essay may be highly personal, moving towards autobiography, or as impersonal as journalistic “story” of current events. It may focus on particular event or sequence of events. But its essence lies ultimately in its telling us the “truth” about something that is itself actual or historical. In the essay as story, the journalist’s “where” and “when” becomes the historian’s “how” and “why”. And the historian’s interpretation is the persuasive point of a narrative essay. So, in reading a narrative essay, we should make a special point of looking for the essayist’s interpretation, and you should be attentive to the essayist’s personality in the process of both telling the story and interpreting it. Nora
Ephron’s “The Hurled Ashtray” is an example of a narrative essay.

THE ESSAY AS POEM: MEDITATION

The important element of the essay as poem is meditation. When we are meditating, we are in a sense engaged in a conversation with ourselves. We are talking ourselves, seeking to discover the truth about something. The meditative writers contemplating in search of truth rather than possessing the thinking within themselves. The author is more concerned with the process of thinking about something. In a meditative essay, the author pays less attention to the reader because he is not concerned primarily to move them in a specific direction. The essayist may not be sure of exactly where his thoughts will take him. They may lead him into digressions (changing) away from the main subject. The meditative essayist often connect ideas by an associative process, with no worry about an out-line organized to lead clearly from assumptions to conclusions.

The meditative essay differs from the argumentative. In the argumentative essay the author has mastered a subject and expects to give us the benefit of that mastery. And actively seeking to move us around to his point of view. Argumentative essays use symbols to give details. In meditative essay, however, the images and details become symbols, and their meanings are primarily suggestive rather than persuasive. The meditative essayist, repeatedly observes, describes and then thinks about things.

THE ESSAY AS PLAY: DIALOGUE
The dialogue is an ancient literary form that has perennially (personally) been used as a means of presenting ideas. For example, most of Plato’s philosophy has come down to us in the form of dialogues involving Socrates and other Athenians. During 17th century, Izzac
Walton, used the form in ‘The Complete Angler’ to present ideas on the contemplative value of fishing. In this work, there are two main characters a hunter and a fisherman. Here, the fisherman teaches and convinces the hunter that fishing is far better game than of hunting.

Plot, characters, setting, and dialogue are some of the important elements of dramatic essay.
By using such elements the author conveys his ideas. The dialogue is used primarily as a persuasive means of presenting ideas. It is one of the popular techniques to present ideas.
Most of the essays have been written in the form of dialogue. We also encounter the dialogue in published transcripts of interviews, hearings, and other oral events. In dramatic essays, one or more than one characters resemble with the essayist. In some essays the author’s view will be spoken by one character, who dominates the others in the dialogue. For e.g. In
Plato’s dialogue, Socrates is presenting his opinion. In other essays, the author’s view will be conveyed by all the characters in the dialogue. Besides dialogue, plot character and setting are also important in dramatic essay.

1.Cocksure Women and Hensure Men D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930)

In D.H Lawrence’s essay “cocksure women and hensure men,” he tells us that women should stay home and take care of the family while the husband goes out and supports the family. He noticed in his time, (1920’s), women were starting to fall out of that specific lifestyle.
Women were becoming independent, opinionated, and entering the work force. Lawrence gives us an idea of how a woman should be in his opinion when he says, “The demure maiden, the demure spouse, the demure mother-this is still the ideal.” We notice that
Lawrence still believes that women should follow that old standard of a woman, a housewife.
She should have kids, cook, clean, beautiful, and submissive.
Lawrence has two ideas of how women are: hensure or cocksure. The hensure woman is the demure housewife. She is agreeable and loving. She has children and happily raises them and that is her career. Her family is her job and her fulfillment in life. The cocksure woman doesn’t have children. Instead she has a job and an opinion. Lawrence gives us his impression of a cocksure woman when he says, “A really up-to-date woman is a cocksure woman. She doesn’t have a doubt or a qualm. She is the modern typical

2. The Hurled Ashtray Nora Ephron (1941-)

‘The Hurled Ashtray’ is a narrative essay written by Nora Ephron. The essayist tracks down and comments on the changing ideologies of female referring to some stories. Also, the reasons beyond, coldness between man-woman relationships is the essayist’s concern.
Her first story is about Gary Cooper, celebrate of her time. At a restaurant in London, when teddy boys mock at on a woman, Copper stands on his feet to make them leave the place. He seems to be a patron of the woman.
In second story, at a restaurant in London, Mrs. Korda offends Mr. Korda who has hurled an ashtray at some drunks for one of them sent a sex proposal to the Kordas’ table. Mrs. Korda feels insecurity not from the drunks but from her possessive husband.
Thirdly, the essayist mentions the diverse responses of her friends to the Kordas’ incident.
Therefore, she becomes skeptical towards marital relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Korda.
She also raises critical questions, which she supposes to be inconvenient ones to have clear- cut answers.
The essay has been focused on the incident of Kordas. Mrs. Korda does not bother about the bread-pieces thrown upon her by the drunks. Even without enquiring clearly, she shouts at her husband’s aggressive reaction. She criticizes his patronizing behavior. She loathes being his mere asset; a doll who is caressed or ignored. But, her feeling of being a subordinate member of a male chauvinistic society is not the only cause of the conflict. She agitated due to unhappy and dissatisfied marital relation with her husband.

The stories of Cooper and Korda could have been reflecting the contrasting scenarios of female status, before and after the Feministic Movement respectively. The essay’s final lines are discernible for the essayist’s preference to improvised version of patriarchy. Both, the traditional patriarchal and so-called modern feministic approaches enhance chaotic and anarchical situations. In order to maintain intimacy between man and woman, tolerance, proactive attitudes, co-operation and understanding are required.

The Dead in Gallipoli, and in Iraq

John Burke replies to the argument that "a thousand US deaths (apparently Iraqi deaths are denied meaning under any circumstances) will be meaningless unless a few thousand more are added, at which point all the deaths will have meaning restored to them" with words E.
M. Forster wrote in 1922. It's apparently public domain, so I'm going to follow John's lead and reproduce the whole thing.

4. OUR GRAVES IN GALLIPOLI E. M. Forster (1922)

Scene: the summit of Achi Baba, an exposed spot, looking out across the Dardanelles towards
Asia and the East. In a crevice between the rocks lie two graves covered by a single heap of stones. No monument marks them, for they escaped notice during the official survey, and the heap of stones has blended into the desolate and austere outline of the hill. The peninsula is turning towards the sun, and as the rays strike Achi Baba the graves begin to speak.

FIRST GRAVE: We are important again upon earth. Each morning men mention us.
SECOND GRAVE: Yes, after seven years' silence.
FIRST GRAVE: Every day some eminent public man now refers to the "sanctity of our graves in Gallipoli."
SECOND GRAVE: Why do the eminent men speak of "our" graves, as if they were themselves dead? It is we, not they, who lie on Achi Baba.
FIRST GRAVE: They say "our" out of geniality and in order to touch the great heart of our nation more quickly. Punch, the great-hearted jester, showed a picture lately in which the
Prime Minister of England, Lloyd George, fertile in counsels, is urged to go to war to protect "the sanctity of our graves in Gallipoli." The elderly artist who designed that picture is not dead and does not mean to die. He hopes to illustrate this war as he did the last, for a sufficient salary. Nevertheless he writes "our" graves, as if he was inside one, and all persons of position now say the same.
SECOND GRAVE: If they go to war, there will be more graves.
FIRST GRAVE: That is what they desire. That is what Lloyd George, prudent in counsels, and lion-hearted Churchill, intend.
SECOND GRAVE: But where will they dig them?
FIRST GRAVE: There is still room over in Chanak. Also, it is well for a nation that would be great to scatter its graves all over the world. Graves in Ireland, graves in Irak, Russia,
Persia, India, each with its inscription from the Bible or Rupert Brooke. When England thinks fit, she can launch an expedition to protect the sanctity of her graves, and can follow that by another expedition to protect the sanctity of the additional graves. That is what Lloyd
George, prudent in counsels, and lion-hearted Churchill, have planned. Churchill planned this expedition to Gallipoli, where I was killed. He planned the expedition to Antwerp, where my brother was killed. Then he said that Labour is not fit to govern. Rolling his eyes for fresh worlds, he saw Egypt, and fearing that peace might be established there, he intervened and prevented it. Whatever he undertakes is a success. He is Churchill the Fortunate, ever in office, and clouds of dead heroes attend him. Nothing for schools, nothing for houses, nothing for the life of the body, nothing for the spirit. England cannot spare a penny for anything except her heroes' graves.
SECOND GRAVE: Is she really putting herself to so much expense on our account?
FIRST GRAVE: For us, and for the Freedom of the Straits. That water flowing below us now
--- it must be thoroughly free. What freedom is, great men are uncertain, but all agree that the water must be free for all nations; if in peace, then for all nations in peace; if in war, then for all nations in war.
SECOND GRAVE: So all nations now support England.
FIRST GRAVE: It is almost inexplicable. England stands alone. Of the dozens of nations into which the globe is divided, not a single one follows her banner, and even her own colonies hang back.
SECOND GRAVE: Yes... inexplicable. Perhaps she fights for some other reason.
FIRST GRAVE: Ah, the true reason of a war is never known until all who have fought in it are dead. In a hundred years' time we shall be told. Meanwhile seek not to inquire. There are rumours that rich men desire to be richer, but we cannot know.
SECOND GRAVE: If rich men desire more riches, let them fight. It is reasonable to fight forour desires.
FIRST GRAVE: But they cannot fight. They must not fight. There are too few of them. They would be killed. If a rich man went into the interior of Asia and tried to take more gold or more oil, he might be seriously injured at once. He must persuade poor men, who are numerous, to go there for him. And perhaps this is what Lloyd George, fertile in counsels, has decreed. He has tried to enter Asia by means of the Greeks. It was the Greeks who, seven years ago, failed to join England after they had promised to do so, and our graves in Gallipoli are the result of this. But Churchill the Fortunate, ever in office, ever magnanimous, bore the
Greeks no grudge, and he and Lloyd George persuaded their young men to enter Asia. They have mostly been killed there, so English young men must be persuaded instead. A phrase must be thought of, and "the Gallipoli graves" is the handiest. The clergy must wave their
Bibles, the old men their newspapers, the old women their knitting, the unmarried girls must wave white feathers, and all must shout, "Gallipoli graves, Gallipoli graves, Gallipoli, Gally
Polly, Gally Polly," until the young men are ashamed and think, What sound can that be but my country's call? and Chanak receives them.
SECOND GRAVE: Chanak is to sanctify Gallipoli.
FIRST GRAVE: It will make our heap of stones for ever England, apparently.
SECOND GRAVE: It can scarcely do that to my portion of it. I was a Turk.
FIRST GRAVE: What! A Turk! You a Turk? And I have lain beside you for seven years and never known!
SECOND GRAVE: How should you have known? What is there to know except that I am your brother?
FIRST GRAVE: I am yours...
SECOND GRAVE: All is dead except that . All graves are one. It is their unity that sanctifies them, and some day even the living will learn this.
FIRST GRAVE: Ah, but why can they not learn it while they are still alive?

His comrade cannot answer this question. Achi Baba passes beneath the sun, and so long as there is light warlike preparations can be seen on the opposite coast. Presently all objects enter into their own shadows, and through the general veil thus formed the stars become apparent. Comment: A quote from a short story called "Our Grave in Gallipoli" by E.M. Forster (1922) about two dead soldiers talking to each other. One is a Turk - the other English: "All is dead except that. All graves are one. It is their unity that sanctifies them, and some day even the living will learn this."
"Ah, but why can they not learn it while they are still alive?"

6. The Death of the Moth Virginia Woolf [1882-1941]

Woolf writes about a moth flying about a window pane, its world constrained by the boundaries of the woodholding the glass. The moth flew, first from one side, to the other, and then back as the rest of life continuedignorant of its movements. At first indifferent, Woolf was eventually moved to pity of the moth:
The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only amoth's part in life, and a day moth's at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meageropportunities to the full, pathetic.
Eventually the moth settles on the window sill and Woolf forgets it until she notices it trying to move again,but this time its movements are slow and awkward. It attempts to fly but fails, and falls back down to thesill, landing on its back, tiny feet clawing at the air as it tries to right itself. The author reaches out to helpwhen she realizes that it is dying and draws back, reluctant to interfere with this natural process. Somehowin the brightness of the day, the power of death was seeking this month, and there was nothing anyone coulddo to stop it.
Still she watched the moth as it fought against the inevitable:
One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doomwhich could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of humanbeings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legsfluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself.
One's sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life.
However, after the moth had righted itself, death descended and it stopped moving in the instant of itsvictory:
The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.
In Woolf's essay, the battle between life and death is somehow seen as both pathetic and noble. Pathetic because death will always win regardless the desire for life; but noble in how one faces death — on our back, defeated, or on our feet, and in dignity.
Woolf's moth leads one to accept death, to embrace the nobility of death. She explains the brief life ofa moth corresponding with the true nature of life and death. In this essay, Woolf puts the moth in a rolethat represents life. Woolf makes comparisons of the life outside to the life of the moth. The theme is themystery of death and the correspondence of the life of the moth with the true nature of life.

Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” is a piece that is effective in conveying her ideas through theuse of language. Woolf’s narration resembles a conversational speech. By using the moth as a metaphor forhumans, she shows that the way the moth lives its life is a model for human life. Her overall use of brevity,both in her language and the physical structure of the essay, serves to both convey her ideas and to provide her with powerful images. Woolf’s essay, although describing the short life of a day moth, is also usedas a commentary on human life. Through her language, she effectively implies how the life of the moth isa model for humans to live their lives. The imagery shows the moth to be a “thread of vital light.” Even though this moth may seem insignificant, it is exerting all of its energy into its life. He flutters around the window, not only with energy, but with “zest,” something Woolf implies that humans should be doing.
Humans all need that energy that possesses the moth; one needs to be consumed with vitality in order tomake the most of our “meager” (poor) lives. Although human life is certainly longer than of the moth’s, it isbrief on the face of eternity.
She compacts the entire life span of a moth into two short pages. One clarification that must be made is inregard to the term "death," in reference to humans. In the essay, Woolf is showing that this tiny ball, once itbegins to lose its energy, continues to fade until it eventually dies. Besides the physical death of the moth,Woolf also implies a spiritual death. Her point is that life is short, so we have to live to our full potential(use of all of our energy) because we will not be around forever. This idea of brevity coincides with herpreviously addressed idea that one needs to live their life with full energy and vitality. If a person's lifeis not conducted with energy and enthusiasm, then one may share the same fate as the moth. Woolf's use of language is very efficient; she has the great ability to pack a mindful of images into a relatively small amount of words. The moth took his energy for granted, and when he stopped living to his potential, he began to die.
Style and technique
Woolf employs several stylistic devices that make the essay more interesting to the reader:
1. Use of vivid descriptions: The images created by Woolf are presented that appeal to the eye. Forinstance, the moth’s body during the death is appealing to the eye. The image makes the reader more interested. The essence of true life is energy. As Woolf describes, “I could fancy that a thread of vital lightbecame visible. He was little or nothing but life”. The thread of vital light represents the energy.

2. The change in tone: sometimes she is sympathetic to the moth, sometimes she says she tried to forget itand busy herself in her studies, similarly, she is drawn by the life outside her room, yet she remains insideher room, meaning she prefers the solitude and inactivity and privacy of her study to the hullabaloo in world outside. The lengthier sentences bring out the change of tone as well as Woolfs' sympathy toward the moth. Life is full of freedom or nature, and humans forget what life is all about. When the moth starts to go through death the tone changes dramatically and Woolf is in a state of wonder and awe for the moth.
Woolf applies this device to the moth by giving the moth gender pronouns like he, him, and his. As Woolf asserts, "One could not help watching him”. At first her focus is not totally on the moth and she is not exactly impressed with the moth as well.
3. Lengthy sentence structure: to give the impression that she is dealing with something serious. Indeed, it is serious: life’s struggle against death. And that is sufficient enough to command anybody’s attention.
When the moth is dying Woolf uses lengthier sentences to bring out the importance of the situation: “One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death”. The human qualities expressed by the author betterexplain the life and death of the moth.
4. Figures of speech: Woolf uses some figures of speech, which enhance the literal and metaphorical quality of the essay:
-simile: Rooks are compared to a net with many black knots. For example: “...until it looked as if a vast net with thousands of black knots in it had been cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until ever twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it,” is a simile Woolf uses to describe a gathering of rooks in the trees outside her window. Also: “It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig- zagging to show us the true nature of life,” is a simile used to illustrate the moth and the immense amount ofenergy it has.
-Metonymy: “The plough was scoring the field” .Literally, a plough, by itself, cannot score the field; aperson should operate it.
-Personification: Woolf treats the moth, a mere insect as if it were a human person by giving it the pronoun “he”. That is personification, treating nonhuman things, being sand abstract ideas as a human person. Themoth is given attributes of human beings:
The moth is “in difficulties,” “cries a last protest,” “having righted himself,” and is made to speak the finalsentence in the essay: “Death is stronger than I am.”

Themes; Battle between life and death, life is short, so we have to live to our full potential. Fragility and impermanence of life: life is short, and weak. Mystery of death, mystery of life. She seems to tell that the moth has the fervent desire to live, only to meet the ultimatum of death. All the struggles of life are futile and void. Death is inescapable/inevitable/unavoidable. So, live life with energy, and when death approaches, face death with calm dignity. Art is long, life is short: the easy has immortalized the tiny little insect by turning its death process in an object of art.

Once More to the Lake E. B. White[1899-1985]

E. B. White (1899 - 1985) began his career as a professional writer with the newly founded New Yorker magazine in the 1920s. Over the years he
Produced nineteen books, including collect ions of essays, the famous
Children’s books Stuart Li tootle and Charlotte tee’s Web, and the long popular
Writing textbook The Elements of Style.
One summer, along about 1904, my father rented a camp on a lake in Maine and took us all there for the month of August. We all got ringworm from some kittens and had to rub Pond's
Extract on our arms and legs night and morning, and my father rolled over in a canoe with all his clothes on; but outside of that the vacation was a success and from then on none of us ever thought there was any place in the world like that lake in Maine. We returned summer after summer--always on August 1st for one month. I have since become a salt-water man, but sometimes in summer there are days when the restlessness of the tides and the fearful cold of the sea water and the incessant wind which blows across the afternoon and into the evening make me wish for the placidity of a lake in the woods. A few weeks ago this feeling got so strong I bought myself a couple of bass hooks and a spinner and returned to the lake where we used to go, for a week's fishing and to revisit old haunts. I took along my son, who had never had any fresh water up his nose and who had seen lily pads only from train windows. On the journey over to the lake I began to wonder what it would be like. I wondered how time would have marred this unique, this holy spot--the coves and streams, the hills that the sun set behind, the camps and the paths behind the camps. I was sure that the tarred road would have found it out and I wondered in what other ways it would be desolated.
It is strange how much you can remember about places like that once you allow your mind to return into the grooves which lead back. You remember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of another thing. I guess I remembered clearest of all the early mornings, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen. The partitions in the camp were thin and did not extend clear to the top of the rooms, and as I was always the first up I would dress softly so as not to wake the others, and sneak out into the sweet outdoors and start out in the canoe, keeping close along the shore in the long shadows of the pines. I remembered being very careful never to rub my paddle against the gunwale for fear of disturbing the stillness of the cathedral.

The lake had never been what you would call a wild lake. There were cottages sprinkled around the shores, and it was in farming although the shores of the lake were quite heavily wooded. Some of the cottages were owned by nearby farmers, and you would live at the shore and eat your meals at the farmhouse. That's what our family did. But although it wasn't wild, it was a fairly large and undisturbed lake and there were places in it which, to a child at least, seemed infinitely remote and primeval.
I was right about the tar: it led to within half a mile of the shore But when I got back there, with my boy, and we settled into a camp near a farmhouse and into the kind of summertime I had known, I could tell that it was going to be pretty much the same as it had been before--I knew it, lying in bed the first morning, smelling the bedroom, and hearing the boy sneak quietly out and go off along the shore in a boat. I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father. This sensation persisted, kept cropping up all the time we were there. It was not an entirely new feeling, but in this setting it grew much stronger. I seemed to be living a dual existence. I would be in the middle of some simple act, I would be picking up a bait box or laying down a table fork, or I would be saying something, and suddenly it would be not I but my father who was saying the words or making the gesture. It gave me a creepy sensation.
We went fishing the first morning. I felt the same damp moss covering the worms in the bait can, and saw the dragonfly alight on the tip of my rod as it hovered a few inches from the surface of the water. It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been, that the years were a mirage and there had been no years. The small waves were the same, chucking the rowboat under the chin as we fished at anchor, and the boat was the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in the same places, and under the floor-boards the same freshwater leavings and debris--the dead helgramite, the wisps of moss, the rusty discarded fishhook, the dried blood from yesterday's catch. We stared silently at the tips of our rods, at the dragonflies that came and wells. I lowered the tip of mine into the water, tentatively, pensively dislodging the fly, which darted two feet away, poised, darted two feet back, and came to rest again a little farther up the rod. There had been no years between the ducking of this dragonfly and the other one--the one that was part of memory. I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. I felt dizzy and didn't know whichrod I was at the end of.
We caught two bass, hauling them in briskly as though they were mackerel, pulling them over the side of the boat in a businesslike manner without any landing net, and stunning them with a blow on the back of the head. When we got back for a swim before lunch, the lake was exactly where we had left it, the same number of inches from the dock, and there was only the merest suggestion of a breeze. This seemed an utterly enchanted sea, this lake you could leave to its own devices for a few hours and come back to, and find that it had not stirred, this constant and trustworthy body of water. In the shallows, the dark, water-soaked sticks and twigs, smooth and old, were undulating in clusters on the bottom against the clean ribbed sand, and the track of the mussel was plain. A school of minnows swam by, each minnow with its small, individual shadow, doubling the attendance, so clear and sharp in the sunlight. Some of the other campers were in swimming, along the shore, one of them with a cake of soap, and the water felt thin and clear and insubstantial. Over the years there had been this person with the cake of soap, this cultist, and here he was. There had been no years.
Up to the farmhouse to dinner through the teeming, dusty field, the road under our sneakers was only a two-track road. The middle track was missing, the one with the marks of the hooves and the splotches of dried, flaky manure. There had always been three tracks to choose from in choosing which track to walk in; now the choice was narrowed down to two. For a moment I missed terribly the middle alternative. But the way led past the tennis court, and something about the way it lay there in the sun reassured me; the tape had loosened along the backline, the alleys were green with plantains and other weeds, and the net (installed in June and removed in September) sagged in the dry noon, and the whole place steamed with midday heat and hunger and emptiness. There was a choice of pie for dessert, and one was blueberry and one was apple, and the waitresses were the same country girls, there having been no passage of time, only the illusion of it as in a dropped curtain--the waitresses were still fifteen; their hair had been washed, that was the only difference--they had been to the movies and seen the pretty girls with the clean hair.
Summertime, oh summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade proof lake, the woods
Unshatterable, the pasture with the sweet fern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end; this was the background, and the life along the shore was the design, the cottages with their innocent and tranquil design, their tiny docks with the flagpole and the American flag floating against the white clouds in the blue sky, the little paths over the roots of the trees leading from camp to camp and the paths leading back to the outhouses and the can of lime for sprinkling, and at the souvenir counters at the store the miniature birch-bark canoes and the post cards that showed things looking a little better than they looked. This was the American family at play, escaping the city heat, wondering whether the newcomers at the camp at the head of the cove were "common" or "nice," wondering whether it was true that the people who drove up for Sunday dinner at the farmhouse were turned away because there wasn't enough chicken.
It seemed to me, as I kept remembering all this, that those times and those summers had been infinitely precious and worth saving. There had been jollity and peace and goodness. The arriving (at the beginning of August) had been so big a business in itself, at the railway station the farm wagon drawn up, the first smell of the pine-laden air, the first glimpse of the smiling farmer, and the great importance of the trunks and your father's enormous authority in such matters, and the feel of the wagon under you for the long ten-mile haul, and at the top of the last long hill catching the first view of the lake after eleven months of not seeing this cherished body of water. The shouts and cries of the other campers when they saw you, and the trunks to be unpacked, to give up their rich burden. (Arriving was less exciting nowadays, when you sneaked up in your car and parked it under a tree near the camp and took out the bags and in five minutes it was all over, no fuss, no loud wonderful fuss about trunks.)
Peace and goodness and jollity. The only thing that was wrong now, really, was the sound of the place, an unfamiliar nervous sound of the outboard motors. This was the note that jarred, the one thing that would sometimes break the illusion and set the years moving. In those other summertimes, all motors were inboard; and when they were at a little distance, the noise they made was a sedative, an ingredient of summer sleep. They were one-cylinder and two-cylinder engines, and some were make-and-break and some were jump-spark, but they all made a sleepy sound across the lake. The one-lungers throbbed and fluttered, and the twin-cylinder ones purred and purred, and that was a quiet sound too. But now the campers all had outboards. In the daytime, in the hot mornings, these motors made a petulant, irritable sound; at night, in the still evening when the afterglow lit the water, they whined about one's ears like mosquitoes. My boy loved our rented outboard, and his great desire was to achieve single-handed mastery over it, and authority, and he soon learned the trick of choking it a little (but not too much), and the adjustment of the needle valve.
Watching him I would remember the things you could do with the old one-cylinder engine with the heavy flywheel, how you could have it eating out of your hand if you got really close to it spiritually. Motor boats in those days didn't have clutches, and you would make a landing by shutting off the motor at the proper time and coasting in with a dead rudder. But there was a way of reversing them, if you learned the trick, by cutting the switch and putting it on again exactly on the final dying revolution of the flywheel, so that it would kick back against compression and begin reversing.
Approaching a dock in a strong following breeze, it was difficult to slow up sufficiently by the ordinary coasting method, and if a boy felt he had complete mastery over his motor, he was tempted to keep it running beyond its time and then reverse it a few feet from the dock. It took a cool nerve, because if you threw the switch a twentieth of a second too soon you would catch the flywheel when it still had speed enough to go up past center, and the boat would leap ahead, charging bull-fashion at the dock.
We had a good week at the camp. The bass were biting well and the sun shone endlessly, day after day. We would be tired at night and lie down in the accumulated heat of the little bedrooms after the long hot day and the breeze would stir almost imperceptibly outside and the smell of the swamp drift in through the rusty screens.
Sleep would come easily and in the morning the red squirrel would be on the roof, tapping out his gay routine. I kept remembering everything, lying in bed in the mornings--the small steamboat that had a long rounded stern like the lip of a Ubangi, and how quietly she ran on the moonlight sails, when the older boys played their mandolins and the girls sang and we ate doughnuts dipped in sugar, and how sweet the music was on the water in the shining night, and what it had felt like to think about girls then. After breakfast we would go up to the store and the things were in the same place--the minnows in a bottle, the plugs and spinners disarranged and pawed over by the youngsters from the boys' camp, the fig newtons and the Beeman's gum. Outside, the road was tarred and cars stood in front of the store. Inside, all was just as it had always been, except there was more Coca Cola and not so much Moxie and root beer and birch beer and sarsaparilla. We would walk out with a bottle of pop apiece and sometimes the pop would backfire up our noses and hurt. We explored the streams, quietly, where the turtles slid off the sunny logs and dug their way into the soft bottom; and we lay on the town wharf and fed worms to the tame bass.
Everywhere we went I had trouble making out which was I, the one walking at my side, the one walking in my pants.
One afternoon while we were there at that lake a thunderstorm came up. It was like the revival of an old melodrama that I had seen long ago with childish awe. The second-act climax of the drama of the electrical disturbance over a lake in America had not changed in any important respect. This was the big scene, still the big scene.
The whole thing was so familiar, the first feeling of oppression and heat and a general air around camp of not wanting to go very far away. In mid-afternoon (it was all the same) a curious darkening of the sky, and a lull in everything that had made life tick; and then the way the boats suddenly swung the other way at their moorings with the coming of a breeze out of the new quarter, and the premonitory rumble. Then the kettle drum, then the snare, then the bass drum and cymbals, then crackling light against the dark, and the gods grinning and licking their chops in the hills. Afterward the calm, the rain steadily rustling in the calm lake, the return of light and hope and spirits, and the campers running out in joy and relief to go swimming in the rain, their bright cries perpetuating the deathless joke about how they were getting simply drenched, and the children screaming with delight at the new sensation of bathing in the rain, and the joke about getting drenched linking the generations in a strong indestructible chain. And the comedian who waded in carrying an umbrella.
When the others went swimming my son said he was going in too. He pulled his dripping trunks from the line where they had hung all through the shower, and wrung them out. Languidly, and with no thought of going in, I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment. As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill (fear) of death.

Part II
SHORT STORIES (FICTION)
CONTENTS
1. The elements of fiction
a) Fiction, Fact and Truth
b) Fiction: Experience and Analysis
c) The Spectrum of Fiction
d) Fictional Modes and Patterns
e) Plot
f) Character
g) Meaning
h) Point of view: Perspective and Language
i) Design: Juxtaposition and Repetition in the Structure of Fiction
j) Early Forms of Fiction
Total short Stories [12]
1. Moonlight [Guy De Maupassant]
2. Clay[ James Jyoce]
3. Theme of the Traitor and the Hero[Jorge Luis Borges] 4 The Purloined Letter[Edgar Allan Poe]
5 The Magic Barrel[Bernard Malamud] 6 The Swimmer[ John Cheever] 7 Counterparts[ James Jyoce] 8 I Stand Here Ironing[Tillie Olsen] 9 Battle Royal[ Ralph Ellison] 10 . Sonny’s Blues[ James Baldwin] 11 . Snares[ Louise Edrich] 12 . Simulacra[Julio Cortazar]

The Element of Fiction

a) Fiction, Fact and Truth

Term ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ are old acquaintance. They are both derivatives of Latin words. Fact comes from a Latin word Facere means to make or do. Fiction comes from a Latin word fingere means to make or shape. Fiction is made up of story. It is invented instead of being an account story created by imagination. The characteristics of fiction are ‘unreality’ and ‘falsehood’.
Fact is known as reality and truth. In our ordinary conversation, fact is associated with those pillars of verbal society, “Reality” and “Truth”. They are opposite to each other. Still, if we look into the matter, we can see that the relation of fact and fiction with “the real” and “the true” is not exactly what appears on the surface. Fact still means for us quite literally “a thing done”. And fiction has never lost its meaning of “a thing made”.
A thing done has no real existence once it has been done. It may have consequences, and there may be many records that point to its former existence (think of the civil war, for e.g.); but once it is done its existence is finished.
A thing made, on the other hand, exists until it decays or destroyed. Once it is finished, its existence begins (think of a civil war story like Stephen Crance’s Red Badge of Courage, for
e.g.). Fact, finally, has no real existence, while fiction may last for centuries.
We can see this rather strange relation between fact and fiction more clearly if we consider one place where two come together:

-History,Fact,Fiction

The word “history” itself hides a double meaning. It comes from a Greek word that originally meant Inquiry or investigation. History can mean both the events of past and the story of these events fact or fiction. The very word “story” lurks (hides) in the word ‘history’ and is derived from it. What begins as investigation must end as story. Fact in order to survive must become fiction.

b) Fiction: Experience and Analysis

Fiction has a real existence as it has a book weight and occupies space. Our experience of fiction is unreal. Our experience of fiction more like dreaming than like our normal waking activity. It makes us physically inert yet exercises our imagination. In terms of our performing any action in it, this special world is absolutely unreal whether we are reading a history book or a science fiction story. Fictions contain characters, events, dialogue, feelings, emotions and all those things that a human being has in life. We participate with sympathy and empathy. The emotion connects us with the unreal world of fiction. There is also the same condition in the case of history. Emotion prepares us to take part in the literary experience and ability and it trains us for making analysis of the fictional world. Our experience and imagination are means of making critical analysis of the fiction and context.
In fact, we are indirectly participated in the events of fiction which helps us toward and enriched experience of fiction. We learn terminology in order to analyze more accurately. We learn the process of analysis in order to read better.

C) The Spectrum of Fiction

The fictional spectrum can be used while analyzing the fiction. It is a metaphor, a handy linguistic tool for understanding and making analysis of fiction. In terms of this metaphor, you will remember it was possible to think of fiction as resembling the spectrum of color to be found in ordinary light but in the fictional spectrum the ends were not infra-red and ultra- violet but history and fantasy.

Ordinary Spectrum,Fictional Spectrum,Infra-red

Pure historian: A person who takes notes of all the deeds of a man without destroying and or omitting anything could be called a “Pure” historian.

-ultra-violet,history,fantasy

Pure fantasist: A person who creates a world out of his own imagination is a “pure
“fantasist.

Note: Both ends of spectrum are invisible to moral eyes.

History and fantasy are two extreme ends of a line which make vast difference. Realism is very close to history where as romance is close to fantasy.

Fictional Spectrum

History
History is recorded version of things. It records all the events or deeds of we human beings without making any self-analysis. Realism is a matter of perception. The realist presents his impressions of the world of the experience. It has experience sharing with Psychological and social ideas. Romance is the matter of vision. The romancer presents not so much his impressions of world as his ideas about it. It is close to fantasy. Fantasy is purely imagination, unreal and philosophical. It is like a dream.
History and realism deal with “what is” where as romance and fantasy deal with “what ought to be” or, “what might be”. Though all these four forms of fiction are different, they share some qualities. There is a blend of elements of each other. So, it is said that the greatest works are those that successfully combine the realist’s perception and the romancer’s vision.
Realism itself is more romantic than history and romantic is more realistic than fantasy.

a) Fictional modes and Patterns

The usefulness of the concept of a fictional spectrum will depend upon our ability to adapt it to various works of fiction. The spectrum assumed (supposed) that romance diverges from realism in one way only, along that line which ideas from history to fantasy. The important element of romance is philosophical ideas and the realism is perception, psychological treatment. After the observation of the divergence, we can see two different modes of romance. Reality can be distorted by fiction that it can be made to appear better or worse than we actually believe it to be. They can present a “true” picture of either the heroic or the debased side of human existence. A fictional work that presents better than real world is in the mode of romance. The world of romance emphasizes beauty an order. A work that presents a fictional world worse than the real world is in the mode of anti- romance, or satire. The world of satire emphasizes ugliness and disorder.
The relations between individual characters and these distorted worlds constitute a crucial element of fiction for these relations determine certain patterns or master plots that affect the shaping of the particular plot of every story. One of these master patterns deals with the

Realism

Romance Fantasy

kind of character who begins out of harmony with his world and is gradually educated or in initiated into a harmonious situation on in it. This pattern may operate in either the ordered world of romance or the chaotic world of satire. But the same pattern will have a quite different effect on us when we observe it working out in such different situations.
Another master pattern reveals this process of accommodation and presents us with change of another sort: the character who begins in harmony with his world but is finally rejected or destroyed by it.

In the romantic world the adventures of the hero will take the form of a voyage that ends with his triumphant return or his marriage to the heroine. This pattern moves us to admiration of the wonderful, offering us more of an escape from the actual than a criticism of it.
In the satire world the adventures of a born anti-hero or rogue will parody the quest pattern, often reflecting the chaos of the debased world by becoming endless themselves. Stories of this kind are likely to end when the rogue heads for new territory or another tour of the familiar chaos. This picaresque pattern moves us to recognition and acceptance of the chaotic. Thus, we have distinguished three pairs of fictional patterns or six kinds in all:
a) The comic and the satiric rise
b) The tragic and pathetic fall
c) The heroic (romantic) and the anti- heroic (picaresque) quest.
Note: Realism developed later than romance, and satire

Traditional Element

a) Plot
b)Character
c)Meaning
d)Point of view: Perspective and language
e)Design: Juxtaposition and Repetition in the structure of fiction

Early forms

1. Clay James Joyce [1882-1941]
[Prepd. by: BA; Lincoln Notes Series 312] July 25th 2010

Summary:
Maria works at the Dublin by Lamplight laundry, a charitable institution run by Protestants.
The laundry is for fallen women and alcoholics, and busies them with useful work; Maria is not one among such common women, but is a regular worker who helps keep things together.
She is known as a peacemaker and a thoroughly competent woman. She boards there, and she enjoys her work; she has even come to like the Protestants who work there. She got the work through the help of her brothers, Joe and Alphy whom she raised as a mother.
Tonight is All Shallow’s Eve, or Halloween. She is going over to Joe's to enjoy an evening of fun and singing with Joe and his family. When work is finished, she's happy to go and get ready for the celebration. In her little bedroom, she gets dressed. She also remembers that tomorrow is a holy day of obligation, so she sets her alarm for six instead of seven. She notes to herself that her body is still trim and in shape despite her age, and sets off.
She looks forward to the evening, and reflects on the simple joy of her independence. She also reflects sadly on Joe and Alphy: though they are brothers and were once the best of friends, they are no longer speaking to each other. For the children, she buys some penny cakes at Downe's. Then she goes to a shop in Henry Street, where she fusses over getting a perfect slice of plum cake as a special treat. It costs two shillings and four pence, a princely sum for Maria. On the tram, the young men simply ignore her but an older gentleman lets her have his seat. They chat about Hallow Eve and the treats, and the rain.
At Joe's house she is greeted warmly, and she gives the children their cakes. But in a panic she realizes she cannot find the plum cake. She asks the children if they have taken it and eaten it by mistake, and the children resentfully reply that they haven't. Finally, she accepts that she must have left it on the tram. When she thinks of the expense and the surprise she wanted to give them, she nearly cries.
Joe and Maria sit by the fire. He is exceedingly nice to her, playing host and presses her to drink. She tries to bring up the matter of Alphy, but Joe becomes very angry. Mrs. Donnelly also tries to put in a word in favor of reconciliation, but this nearly starts a fight until Joe calms himself and insists on dropping the subject.
They start to play the traditional Irish divination (forecasting) games of Halloween, where one is led blindfolded to a table and made to pick out an object. The girls from next-door put out the objects. The chosen object predicts the future. When Maria takes her turn, she feels something soft and wet. She hears some muffled words, and Mrs. Donnelly says crossly that the object is not appropriate. She insists that it be thrown out. Maria chooses again, and gets a prayer book.
After that, the children move on to another game. Joe presses Maria to drink, and Mrs.
Donnelly says lightly that Maria will enter a convent because she chose the prayer book.
Soon, Joe and Mrs. Donnelly pressure Maria to sing. Maria shyly sings “I Dreamt that I
Dwelt”. She sings the first verse twice, but no one corrects her. The song moves Joe to tears.

Analysis:
Joyce's portrait of Maria is one of his most skilful accomplishments in the collection.
Certainly, she is one of the book's most appealing characters.
She is a hard-working, good-hearted woman, past her prime, a spinster indeed. She is tolerant, not unwilling to work among Protestants or social outcasts. She works hard at the laundry named Dublin by Lamplight, helping fallen women to begin a new life. She sets the alarm for six in the morning, so that she can attend church before work the next day.
Poverty is a theme. Maria's loss of the cake is especially painful because it was costly for her modest earning. Here we see a character trying to treat her loved ones despite her limited funds. Her loss of the cake is especially sad in this light. Subtle hints about previously higher socio-economic status are dropped. The two brothers she nursed seem well-off enough, though not wealthy. And the song that she sings, repeating the first verse twice, comes from a work about a woman who moves from riches to rags. In the second stanza, the song tells the woman was sought in marriage by many knights. Maria, whom no man probably liked, feels embarrassed by the topic of marriage, so she chooses to displace it with the first one. When
Joe cries, he may be weeping because Maria's own situation is mirrored by the song.
The tone of much of the story is poignant, pathetic and sad at once. Joe may be weeping because his beloved Maria is not long for this world. She is an aged woman, whose life has not been easy. Although the second time she chose a prayer book, she originally chose clay: traditionally, this object was the omen of approaching death. Of clay are we all created, clay we will turn into; no doubt about that, and not a very serious matter. But the game’s forecasting, if one is to take it seriously and believe it, is to be fulfilled within a year. Had she chosen the ring, it would mean she would get married that year. But she chose a soft wet substance, which must be, which is clay. It means, Maria will become clay, meaning, she will die that year. So, the story becomes pathetic.
All Hollows Day or, All Saints Day [Nov 1), Halloween Eve [October 31]
The word "Halloween," actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints
Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. One story says that, on that day, the spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living. That night, to ward off the spirits, the Celts used to put on awful clothes, and made sounds, drank, and played games like the fortunetelling game in “Clay” to stay awake till late night.
Maria as the Virgin Mary, Mother Mary vs. the Witch archetype:
As Virgin Mary:
Several of Maria's characteristics connect her to the Virgin Mary. First, Maria's name is an alternate form of Mary. Maria's unmarried and assumedly virgin status connects her to Mary.
Maria has had little experience with men. In fact, when the elderly gentleman on the tram is kind to her, she becomes so flustered that she forgets the cake she bought to take with her for Joe and his wife as she visits them on Hallow Eve. She is ashamed when she realizes her mistake: "Maria, remembering how confused the gentleman with the grayish moustache had made her, colored with shame and vexation and disappointment".
As Mother Mary Similarly, her status as a virginal mother to Joe illustrates her connection to the Mary. Joe says, "Mamma is mamma but Maria is my proper mother".
Maria acts as a peace mediator among the women she serves: "She was always sent for when the women quarreled over their tubs and always succeeded in making peace". Maria's talent as a peacekeeper connects her to Mary and Catholicism. In Catholicism, Mary is seen as an intermediary between humankind and God. Catholics pray to Mary to intercede to God on their behalf because of her importance as the mother of Christ.
As A Witch Although Maria is connected to Mary and Catholicism, she has contradictory characteristics that connect her to the witch archetype. For example, Maria's physical characteristics are witch-like. As Joyce's narrator says, "Maria was a very, very small person indeed but she had a very long nose and a very long chin". Her smallness of stature and exaggerated features connect her clearly to the witch archetype. In addition, her full-bodied laughter brings to mind the cackling of a stereotypical Halloween witch: "And Maria laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin and till her minute body nearly shook itself asunder". The strange imagery associated with her physical features and laughter reveals her relation to the witch archetype.
Furthermore, Maria is associated with witchcraft through her hobby, growing plants. Maria grows plants and gives them to her visitors: "She had lovely ferns and wax-plants and, whenever anyone came to visit her, she always gave the visitor one or two slips from her conservatory". Plants and herbs are important substances used in spells and potions; thus, her conservatory connects her to pagan herbalists or witches.
In direct contrast to her Catholicism and mass attendance, Maria shows her worldly nature when she admires her body sensually. She drinks, although at Joe’s insistence. She is given to outrageous (extreme, disgusting) laughter, unsuitable for a religious, spiritual woman. These all point to the witchy dimension of her personality.
Symbolism: Clay, which stands for death, human frailty, worthlessness, changeability; blondfold, which stands for human ignorance, no-knowledge of what is going to happen next
Themes: earth: - Humanity is destined to return to dust, to earth, to clay, out of which it was created. Maria, in choosing clay for the first time, has only reminded the other participants there and the reader too, that we are destined to die. The pathetic thing is that, we may die sooner than we have thought, unknowingly to us, as in the case of Maria who does not know her original choice was clay.
Change: - The title of the story, "clay," reinforces Maria's connection to change. Like Maria and religious celebration, clay is changeable and moldable. For example, one may sculpt and mold a piece of clay into a particular shape or size. Maria changes her opinion about
Protestants, whom she originally thought were not good people.
Happiness at human relationship, small things:- Maria, lonely figure, enjoys her life at the laundry. She loves to mend relationship between people when they quarrel. She also loves to visit her son-like brothers, and hopes to surprise them with the plum-cakes. She admires her diminutive (little) body, feels nice when treated so nicely by the elderly gentleman. She drinks, sings, plays the game. These all constitute a normal make up human experience, and she derives joy from them.
Life is full of contradictions, sorrows, unknown fate awaiting us: Maria exhibits both spiritual, ideal trait as well as carnal, witchy ones. She comprises (consists of) contradictions.
Plus, she says she does not want any ring, or man either; but she admires her little body, and she is disappointed when the women tease her saying she is sure to get a ring that eve.
She actually likes to get married, so she is overjoyed with the good treatment of the elderly gentleman. She happens to choose clay but does not know what it was; she was blindfolded.

2. Counterparts James Joyce (Irish writer) [1882-1941]

Summary

Farrington, a scrivener in a legal office, is called to see his tyrannical boss, Mr. Alleyne. After a few solid minutes of abuse, he is allowed to return to work with a strict deadline for copying a contract. Farrington returns to work, but as soon as he sits down the tedium of his job gets to him. He goes out for a drink. He goes down the street into dark, comfy O'Neill's shop. He takes a glass of plain porter. The respite is short, however, because Farrington has to return to work. On his way in he notices the smell of the perfume of one of the clients, Miss Delacour.
The chief clerk tells him sharply that Mr. Alleyne has been looking for him. The copy of the correspondence for the Delacour case is needed. Farrington gets the correspondence, hoping that
Mr. Alleyne won't notice that the last two letters are missing. Miss Delacour is a wealthy middle- aged woman, and Mr. Alleyne is said to be sweet "on her or her money."

Farrington drops off the correspondence and returns to work. Glumly, he realizes that he will not be able to meet his deadline for the contract he's currently copying. He begins to think longingly of a night of drink. His pleasant dreams are interrupted by a furious Mr. Alleyne. With Miss Delacour standing by, Mr. Alleyne abuses Farrington about the missing letters. Farrington plays dumb. Mr.
Alleyne asks rhetorically, "Do you think me an utter fool?” to which Farrington replies, “I don't think, sir . . . that that's a fair question to put to me”. Miss Delacour smiles. Mr. Alleyne goes bezerk, demanding an apology.

Later, Farrington waits around a corner hoping to get the cashier alone, so that he can ask to borrow some money. But when the cashier exits the office, he's with the chief clerk. Now, there's no hope in getting a bit of cash. The situation is grim: he had to apologize abjectly in private to Mr. Alleyne, and now the office will be a treacherous place for him.
It dawns on Farrington that he can pawn his watch. He gets six shillings and goes out drinking with his friends. He tells them the story of his triumph over Mr. Allyene, leaving out his abject apology. He repeats the story to various friends as they come in. First Nosey Flynn, sitting in his usual corner of Davy Byrne's, and then O' Halloran and Paddy Leonard come in. The men are buying each other drink after drink. Higgins, one of Farrington's colleagues at work, comes in, and does his own rendition of the tale, making Farrington's feat seem even greater. The men leave the bar to go to another establishment called the Scotch House. Leonard introduces them to a young fellow named
Weathers, who's an acrobat and an artiste. More drinks are shared. When the Scotch House closes, they go to Mulligan's. One of the women catches Farrington's eye, but when she leaves she does not look back. He curses his poverty and all the drinks he's bought. He particularly thinks that Weathers has been drinking more than he's been buying.
The men are talking about strength; Weathers is showing off his biceps. Farrington shows off his, and then the two men arm wrestle. Weathers beat Farrington. Farrington is angry, and accuses
Weathers of having put the weight of his body behind it. They decide to go two out of three, and Weathers, after a struggle of respectable duration, beats him again. The curate, who was watching, expresses his admiration and Farrington snaps out of him. O'Halloran notices the anger in
Farrington's face and wisely intercedes. He changes the subject and calls for another drink.
Waiting for his tram home, Farrington is full of fury. He's not even drunk, and he's spent almost all of the money from his pawned watch. He's lost his reputation as a strong man, having been beaten in arm wrestling by young Weathers. As he goes home, his anger mounts.
He comes home to find the kitchen empty with the fire nearly out. His small son Tom, one of five children, comes to greet him. His wife is out at church. Farrington orders the boy around, telling him to cook up the dinner his wife left for him. The boy obediently gets to work. Then Farrington sees that the fire has gone out. He chases the boy with a walking stick and begins to beat him brutally, despite the child's pleas for mercy.
Themes
The themes of imprisonment, powerlessness, and resentment are all weaved together in this well- wrought story. Poverty, weak finance, lack of opportunity in life, and a failed marriage make a beast of a man/husband/ father. Farrington must be a loving husband and father, for he loves to enjoy, to talk, to have fun. But his hopeless situation drives him to alcoholism, it seems.

Alcoholism: poor Irishmen turn to drinking to avoid the reality of their failed marriage, and finance. : Farrington spends a good part of the tale simply trying to scrape together enough money for a night of drink. It becomes clear rather quickly that he is an alcoholic and that each day must be spent seeking out a way to get drunk.
His powerlessness comes through in his great confrontation with Mr. Alleyne. Farrington is allowed his moment of triumph, but it is followed by a forced abject apology. He endures humiliation in the end, with the assurance that if life at work was already hell, it is bound to become even worse.
Despair, anger at a defeated life: Farrington is not allowed to triumph anywhere. At work, his boss forces him into submission. At the bar, the woman who catches his eye ignores him.
He is bested by the young Weathers in a contest of strength. Emasculated at work, he is further emasculated by the woman and among his friends. He excels in no arena of masculinity.
He does not even succeed in his original aim, which was to get drunk. After the considerable quantity of alcohol he has consumed, we can only see his increased tolerance as another sign of his alcoholism. He refers to his desire for alcohol as "thirst" throughout the whole story.

Grown-ups make mistakes, Innocents suffer: Farrington takes out his anger on the nearest helpless target: his son. The beating scene is awful, especially as the boy has been touchingly attentive to his father's needs. We are left with the impression that this day is unfortunately typical in
Farrington's life.

3. Moonlight Guy De Maupassant [1850-1893]

Summary
The story mainly took place in a garden near the monastery between 10 to 11 in the evening.
The story began with an introduction about a priest who despised the existence of women.
His name is Abbe Marignan. In spite of having a niece, he hated women and the way they exist as temptation to men (as what he considered them so). He referred them as traps that
God had made to tempt and test men. For him, to handle these “pieces of God’s work”, one must be very cautious. But despite his hatred to these beings, he exempts the nuns, who, for him, were made different due to their “religious ecstasy”. But he still hated the way women act, the way they yearn for love, their gentleness and fragility. The story came with a conflict when the sacristan’s wife, Melanie, confided to him that his niece had a lover and that the couple meets between ten and twelve at night when her mother and the Abbe are already fast asleep. He was bothered by the confession and could not believe what he just heard. The Abbe thought of his niece’s act as a betrayal. He felt paternal impulses running on his head as if he was a father betrayed with his niece not telling him anything about the said act. The night, still bothered by the fact that his niece will be out there in the garden soon, he stayed late and waited for the right time to come to finally catch his niece. When the time stroke 10, he opened the door and was suddenly greeted by the beauty of the moonlight. He gazed at his surrounding and saw a magnificent beauty more charming than the day. He started to ask God why He blessed such dark yet wonderful time during the night when the people are already supposed to be asleep. As he continued to walk around still amazed by the sight and still has the question in his mind, he suddenly saw two figures under the vault of the trees. One shadow was taller than the other. He recognized the shorter one as to that of his niece. The taller one kissed the forehead of his niece and by that, he received an answer to his previous question. God made the night more enchanting than the day because such beauty was made for the lovers, for loving. God allowed this to happen to nurture such love, such passion, such intimacy. Now, he learned more than what he believed before and felt ashamed of the injustice that ran in his mind before he saw the moonlight.
Symbolism: The symbolism in the story includes the moonlight which signifies love. Such beauty is hidden in the dark. It’s like no one will ever see love when we won’t look deeper in the heart. Next symbolism is the kiss on the forehead. A kiss in the forehead signifies gentleness. The story was all about love being a commandment that even God allowed this to happen, that he made a plan to give time and beauty to nurture it, that God made a way to cradle love even if most of the society had upheld rules that could be contradicting to its very nature. The oaken cudgel symbolic of the strict, puritanical laws that the Abbe thinks please
God. But the cudgel turns useless when confronted by love, and lovers. This signifies the victory of love over laws, and harshness; love conquers all!
Theme: Love is all; love conquers all. When one goes against love, one goes against what
God wanted to prevail in men. Love will always be appreciated by God, because God is love.
Every human heart longs for love, family, children, as does the Abbe Marignan.Designs of God are unknowable. Nature may have no intention at all. Sometimes, something or some incidents unexpectedly illuminate one’s understanding. The epiphany [enlightenment, revelation] in the life of the Abbe occurred at the night time

Moonlight By Guy de Maupassant

Theme

the theme of the short story moonlight according to me is divinity, search for human identity, humans basic desiers and the last thing that is lust. all these themes are avident in the story.
1. divinity in such a way that the priest is in search of divinity he is in favour of logic he thinks that all the things created by god are in accordance to demend and need situation of human beings.
2. Search for human identiy in such a way that the priest wants to find out the truth about god and his relation with Him. he is curious about the beauty of life he is curios that why the god has created night if its not a thing of lust.
3. Humans basic desiers in such a way that the priest hates women he says that these are the creatures with which god is not happy too
4.lust in such a way that the priest is attracted towards woman but being on a hiher strata then the ordinary people he is not allowed to get married that is the basic reason that frustrates him
Comment
Abbe Marignan's martial name suited him well. He was a tall, thin priest, fanatic, excitable, yet upright. All his beliefs were fixed, never varying. He believed sincerely that he knew his God, understood His plans, desires and intentions.
When he walked with long strides along the garden walk of his little country parsonage, he would sometimes ask himself the question: "Why has God done this?"
And he would dwell on this continually, putting himself in the place of God, and he almost invariably found an answer. He would never have cried out in an outburst of pious humility: "Thy ways, O Lord, are past finding out."
He said to himself: "I am the servant of God; it is right for me to know the reason of
His deeds, or to guess it if I do not know it."
Everything in nature seemed to him to have been created in accordance with an admirable and absolute logic. The "whys" and "becauses" always balanced. Dawn was given to make our awakening pleasant, the days to ripen the harvest, the rains to moisten it, the evenings for preparation for slumber, and the dark nights for sleep.
The four seasons corresponded perfectly to the needs of agriculture, and no suspicion had ever come to the priest of the fact that nature has no intentions; that, on the contrary, everything which exists must conform to the hard demands of seasons, climates and matter.
But he hated woman--hated her unconsciously, and despised her by instinct. He often repeated the words of Christ: "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" and he would add: "It seems as though God, Himself, were dissatisfied with this work of His." She was the tempter who led the first man astray, and who since then had ever been busy with her work of damnation, the feeble creature, dangerous and mysteriously affecting one. And even more than their sinful bodies, he hated their loving hearts.
He had often felt their tenderness directed toward himself, and though he knew that he was invulnerable, he grew angry at this need of love that is always vibrating in them.
According to his belief, God had created woman for the sole purpose of tempting and testing man. One must not approach her without defensive precautions and fear of possible snares. She was, indeed, just like a snare, with her lips open and her arms stretched out to man.
He had no indulgence except for nuns, whom their vows had rendered inoffensive; but he was stern with them, nevertheless, because he felt that at the bottom of their fettered and humble hearts the everlasting tenderness was burning brightly--that tenderness which was shown even to him, a priest.
He felt this cursed tenderness, even in their docility, in the low tones of their voices when speaking to him, in their lowered eyes, and in their resigned tears when he reproved them roughly. And he would shake his cassock on leaving the convent doors, and walk off, lengthening his stride as though flying from danger.
He had a niece who lived with her mother in a little house near him. He was bent upon making a sister of charity of her.
She was a pretty, brainless madcap. When the abbe preached she laughed, and when he was angry with her she would give him a hug, drawing him to her heart, while he sought unconsciously to release himself from this embrace which nevertheless filled him with a sweet pleasure, awakening in his depths the sensation of paternity which slumbers in every man.
Often, when walking by her side, along the country road, he would speak to her of God, of his God. She never listened to him, but looked about her at the sky, the grass and flowers, and one could see the joy of life sparkling in her eyes. Sometimes she would dart forward to catch some flying creature, crying out as she brought it back: "Look, uncle, how pretty it is! I want to hug it!" And this desire to "hug" flies or lilac blossoms disquieted, angered, and roused the priest, who saw, even in this, the ineradicable tenderness that is always budding in women's hearts.

Then there came a day when the sexton's wife, who kept house for Abbe Marignan, told him, with caution, that his niece had a lover.
Almost suffocated by the fearful emotion this news roused in him, he stood there, his face covered with soap, for he was in the act of shaving.
When he had sufficiently recovered to think and speak he cried: "It is not true; you lie,
Melanie!"
But the peasant woman put her hand on her heart, saying: "May our Lord judge me if I lie, Monsieur le Cure! I tell you, she goes there every night when your sister has gone to bed. They meet by the river side; you have only to go there and see, between ten o'clock and midnight."
He ceased scraping his chin, and began to walk up and down impetuously, as he always did when he was in deep thought. When he began shaving again he cut himself three times from his nose to his ear.
All day long he was silent, full of anger and indignation. To his priestly hatred of this invincible love was added the exasperation of her spiritual father, of her guardian and pastor, deceived and tricked by a child, and the selfish emotion shown by parents when their daughter announces that she has chosen a husband without them, and in spite of them.
After dinner he tried to read a little, but could not, growing more and, more angry.
When ten o'clock struck he seized his cane, a formidable oak stick, which he was accustomed to carry in his nocturnal walks when visiting the sick. And he smiled at the enormous club which he twirled in a threatening manner in his strong, country fist. Then he raised it suddenly and, gritting his teeth, brought it down on a chair, the broken back of which fell over on the floor.
He opened the door to go out, but stopped on the sill, surprised by the splendid moonlight, of such brilliance as is seldom seen.
And, as he was gifted with an emotional nature, one such as had all those poetic dreamers, the Fathers of the Church, he felt suddenly distracted and moved by all the grand and serene beauty of this pale night.
In his little garden, all bathed in soft light, his fruit trees in a row cast on the ground the shadow of their slender branches, scarcely in full leaf, while the giant honeysuckle, clinging to the wall of his house, exhaled a delicious sweetness, filling the warm moonlit atmosphere with a kind of perfumed soul.

He began to take long breaths, drinking in the air as drunkards drink wine, and he walked along slowly, delighted, marveling, almost forgetting his niece.
As soon as he was outside of the garden, he stopped to gaze upon the plain all flooded with the caressing light, bathed in that tender, languishing charm of serene nights. At each moment was heard the short, metallic note of the cricket, and distant nightingales shook out their scattered notes--their light, vibrant music that sets one dreaming, without thinking, a music made for kisses, for the seduction of moonlight.
The abbe walked on again, his heart failing, though he knew not why. He seemed weakened, suddenly exhausted; he wanted to sit down, to rest there, to think, to admire God in His works.
Down yonder, following the undulations of the little river, a great line of poplars wound in and out. A fine mist, a white haze through which the moonbeams passed, silvering it and making it gleam, hung around and above the mountains, covering all the tortuous course of the water with a kind of light and transparent cotton.

The priest stopped once again, his soul filled with a growing and irresistible tenderness. And a doubt, a vague feeling of disquiet came over him; he was asking one of those questions that he sometimes put to himself.
"Why did God make this? Since the night is destined for sleep, unconsciousness, repose, forgetfulness of everything, why make it more charming than day, softer than dawn or evening? And does why this seductive planet, more poetic than the sun, that seems destined, so discreet is it, to illuminate things too delicate and mysterious for the light of day, make the darkness so transparent?
"Why does not the greatest of feathered songsters sleep like the others? Why does it pour forth its voice in the mysterious night?
"Why this half-veil cast over the world? Why these tremblings of the heart, this emotion of the spirit, this enervation of the body? Why this display of enchantments that human beings do not see, since they are lying in their beds? For whom is destined this sublime spectacle, this abundance of poetry cast from heaven to earth?"
And the abbe could not understand.

But see, out there, on the edge of the meadow, under the arch of trees bathed in a shining mist, two figures are walking side by side.
The man was the taller, and held his arm about his sweetheart's neck and kissed her brow every little while. They imparted life, all at once, to the placid landscape in which they were framed as by a heavenly hand. The two seemed but a single being, the being for whom was destined this calm and silent night, and they came toward the priest as a living answer, the response his Master sent to his questionings.

He stood still, his heart beating, all upset; and it seemed to him that he saw before him some biblical scene, like the loves of Ruth and Boaz, the accomplishment of the will of the Lord, in some of those glorious stories of which the sacred books tell. The verses of the Song of Songs began to ring in his ears, the appeal of passion, all the poetry of this poem replete with tenderness.
And he said unto himself: "Perhaps God has made such nights as these to idealize the love of men."
He shrank back from this couple that still advanced with arms intertwined. Yet it was his niece. But he asked himself now if he would not be disobeying God. And does not
God permit love, since He surrounds it with such visible splendor?
And he went back musing, almost ashamed, as if he had intruded into a temple where he had, no right to enter.
“Moonlight” by Guy de Maupassant
"One of the stories that I love to read is the Moonlight by Guy de Maupassant"discuss
One of the stories that I love to read is the “Moonlight” by Guy de Maupassant. The story mainly took place in a garden near the monastery between 10 to 11 in the evening. The story began with an introduction about a priest who despised the existence of women. His name is Abbe Marignan.
In spite of having a niece, he hated women and the way they exist as temptation to men (as what he considered them so). He referred them as traps that God had made to tempt and test men. For him, to handle these “pieces of God’s work”, one must be very cautious. But despite his hatred to these beings, he exempts the nuns, who, for him, were made different due to their “religious ecstasy”. But he still hated the way women act, the way they yearn for love, their gentleness and fragility. The story came with a conflict when the sacristan’s wife, Melanie, confided to him that his niece had a lover and that the couple meets by 10 in the evening when her mother and the Abbe are already fast asleep.

He was bothered by the confession and could not believe what he just heard. The Abbe thought of his niece’s act as a betrayal. He felt paternal impulses running on his head as if he was a father betrayed with his niece not telling him anything about the said act. One night, still bothered by the fact that his niece will be out there in the garden soon, he stayed late and waited for the right time to come to finally catch his niece. When the time stroke 10, he opened the door and suddenly greeted by the beauty of the moonlight. He gazed at his surrounding and saw a magnificent beauty more charming than the day. He started to ask
God why He blessed such dark yet wonderful day during the night when the people are already supposed to be asleep. As he continued to walk around still amazed by the sight and still has the question in his mind, he suddenly saw two figures under the vault of the trees.
One shadow was taller than the other. He recognized the shorter one as to that of his niece.
The taller one kissed the forehead of his niece and by that, he received an answer to his previous question. God made the night more enchanting than the day because such beauty was made to cradle the lovers. God allowed this to happen to nurture such love, such passion, such intimacy. Now, he learned more than what he believed before and felt ashamed of the injustice that run in his mind before he saw the moonlight. The symbolism in the story includes the moonlight which signifies love. Such beauty is hidden in the dark. It’s like no one will ever see love when we won’t look deeper in the heart. Next symbolism is the kiss on the forehead. A kiss in the forehead signifies gentleness. The story was all about love being a commandment that even God allowed this to happen, that he made a plan to give time and beauty to nurture it, that God made a way to cradle love even if most of the society had upheld rules that could be contradicting to its very nature.

Guy de Maupassant’s work is much more than a masterpiece but a message of love. If society will impose rules for us to follow, never break ‘em for some reasons unless that reason is of high value, of splendid magnificence, unless that reason is LOVE. For that case, when you go against love, you are going against what God wanted to prevail in men. Love will always be the commandment.

4. Sonny’s Blues James Baldwin (Afro-American writer) [1924-1987]

Summary + Themes

"Sonny's Blues" opens as the narrator learns from a newspaper that his younger brother,
Sonny, has been arrested for dealing heroin. The narrator is taking the subway to his high-school teaching job. Leaving the school, the narrator comes across an old friend of Sonny's in the school yard.
While Sonny's friend and the narrator talk about Sonny's arrest, they tell each other some of their fears. In front of a bar that blasts "black and bouncy'' music, the friend, who is not given a name, says that he "can't much help old Sonny no more.'' This angers the narrator because it reminds him that he himself had given up trying to help his brother because he had not known how; indeed, he had not even seen Sonny in a year. In anger, the narrator criticizes the friend, sarcastically implying that the friend must have been smarter since he had not been arrested himself. The friend pauses and replies that he would have killed himself a long time ago if he were really smart, implying that he believes death is better than addiction. He then begins to explain to the older brother how he feels responsible for turning Sonny onto drugs, but the narrator breaks in and asks what will happen to Sonny next. The friend says that Sonny will be sent to a place where they will try and cure him and then he will be let loose to start his habit again. Originally, the narrator doesn’t write to Sonny. After his daughter Gracie died of polio, he decided to write Sonny a letter. Then Sonny wrote back, so they got in contact again. At this point, we learn how Sonny is related to the narrator—they are brothers. They keep in contact, and after Sonny gets out of jail, he goes to live with the narrator and his family. They eat a family dinner, which then turns into a flashback about their parents. The narrator describes his father, a drunken man, who died when Sonny was fifteen. Sonny and his father had the same privacy; however they did not get along. Sonny was withdrawn and quiet; while their father pretended to be big, tough, and loud-talking. The narrator then thinks back to the last time he saw his mother alive, just before he went off to war (most likely fought in World War II). She told him the story of how his uncle died (was run over by some drunken white kids), how his father was never the same, and that the narrator has to watch over Sonny. The narrator was married to Isabel two days after this talk, and then he went off to war. The next time he came back to the states was for his mother’s funeral.
When he was back for the funeral, he had a talk with Sonny, trying to figure out who he is, because they are so distant from one another. He asks Sonny what he wants to do, and
Sonny replies that he wants to be a jazz musician and play the piano. The narrator does not understand this dream and doesn’t think it is good enough for Sonny. They also try to figure out his living arrangement for the remainder of his high school career. Both of these subjects lead to an argument. Sonny calls his brother ignorant for not knowing who Charlie Parker is, and argues that he does not want to finish high school or live at Isabel’s parent’s house. Eventually, however, they find a compromise; Isabel’s parents have a piano, which Sonny can play whenever he wants, provided he goes to school. Sonny, unwillingly agrees, because he can play the piano.
Sonny stays at Isabel’s and supposedly is going to school. When he gets home, he constantly plays the piano. Sonny, however, is more like a ghost; he shows no emotion and doesn’t talk to anyone. It is soon found out that Sonny is not going to school. Instead, he is going over to
Greenwich Village, and hanging with his jazz friends (and most likely doing drugs). Once
Isabel’s parents find this out, Sonny leaves their house, drops out of school, and joins the navy.
They both got back from the war and lived in New York for a while. They would see each other intermittently, and whenever they would they would fight. Because of these fights, they did not talk to each other for a very long time.
It then flashes forward, and he talks about Gracie and her polio affliction. It was then that the narrator decided to write to Sonny. It seems that the narrator could better understand his brother now. (“My trouble made his real.”) It then flashes forward to the present. It’s a Sunday and Isabel is gone with the children to visit their grandparents. The narrator is contemplating searching Sonny’s room and begins to describe a revival meeting that both he and Sonny are watching. There is a woman singing, which seems to hypnotize them both.
Sonny comes into the house, and asks the narrator if he wants to come and watch him play in
Greenwich Village, and the narrator, unsurely and somewhat begrudgingly, agrees to go.
Sonny then begins to talk about his heroin addiction; he says that when the lady was singing at the revival meeting, it reminded him what it feels like when heroin is coursing through your veins. Sonny says it makes you feel in control, and sometimes you just have to feel that way. The narrator asks if he has to feel like that to play. He answers that some people do. They talk about suffering. And the narrator asks Sonny if it’s worth killing yourself, just trying to escape suffering. Sonny says he is not going to die trying not to suffer faster than anyone else. Sonny divulges that the reason he wanted to leave Harlem was to escape the drugs.
They go to the jazz club in Greenwich Village. He hears Sonny play. In the beginning, he falters, as he hasn’t played for seven months, but after a while, it becomes completely magical and enchants the narrator and everyone in the club. The narrator sends a cup of scotch and milk up to the piano for Sonny and the two share a brief connecting moment. His brother finally understands that it is through music that Sonny is able to turn his suffering into something worthwhile.

Major Themes
Family Crisis, separation and reunion: “Sonny's Blues" tells the story of two brothers who come to understand each other. More specifically, it highlights, through its two main characters, the two sides of the African-American experience. The narrator has assimilated into white society as much as possible but still feels the pain of institutional racism and the limits placed upon his opportunity. Conversely, Sonny has never tried to assimilate and must find an outlet for the deep pain and suffering that his status as permanent outsider confers upon him. Sonny channels his suffering into music, especially bebop jazz and the blues, forms developed by African-American musicians.
The story also has biblical implications: Human beings, after the original sin committed by Adam and Eve, are born to suffer: the world they inhabit is an unfriendly world, as is the America of Sonny for the blacks: Baldwin became a street preacher early in his life, and religious themes appear throughout his writings. In "Sonny's Blues," Baldwin uses the image from the book of Isaiah (51:17) of the "cup of trembling" to symbolize the suffering and trouble that Sonny has experienced in his life. At the end of the story, while Sonny is playing the piano, Sonny's brother watches a barmaid bring a glass of Scotch and milk to the piano, which "glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling." As Sonny plays, the cup reminds his brother of all of the suffering that both he and Sonny have endured.
His brother finally understands that it is through music that Sonny is able to turn his suffering into something worthwhile.
One has to develop own way for coping with suffering - One of the most important aspects of the short story is how Sonny and his brother endure suffering. This reveals how different they are and the reason why Sonny’s brother cannot understand him. While Sonny feels more intensely all the hardships in his life, his brother keeps his feelings locked in. Most importantly, the short story focuses on the sufferings of black people in America.

Artistic Expression - Baldwin believed in art as a powerful mean to ease or relieve one’s suffering. It is only through music, by playing jazz, that Sonny is able to externalize his pain and also help his brother to face his own issues.

Racism and Segregation - Racism is a recurrent theme in Baldwin’s work. In the sort story, much of Sonny’s blues result from the condition African Americans live in. Although
Baldwin only presents one clear example of racism, the entire story reveals a separation made by society between blacks and whites. In spite of being an algebra teacher, Sonny’s brother has to continue living in Harlem and cope with the poverty and violence existent in the neighborhood. In this manner we can see that his efforts to have better lifestyle were not successful. 5. The Magic Barrel Bernard Malamud [1914-1986]

Plot and Characters
"The Magic Barrel" focuses on the interaction of two main characters: a young, unmarried rabbinical student named Leo Finkle and Pinye Salzman, a vulgar, yet colorful, marriage broker who smells distinctly of fish. At the story's outset, an acquaintance advises
Finkle that it will be much easier for him to find a congregation after graduation if he is married. Having spent his life studying, Finkle has little experience in the area of romance and reluctantly decides to engage the services of Salzman. The marriage broker shows
Finkle numerous pictures of potential brides from his "magic barrel" and comments on their qualities, particularly their ages, educational backgrounds, family connections, and the size of their dowries. Finkle, however, seems uninterested in Salzman's usual selling points and constructs unreal excuses for rejecting many of the candidates.
Salzman eventually convinces Finkle to meet a woman named Lily Hirschorn. During his traumatic encounter with Hirschorn, Finkle recognizes that his life has been emotionally empty and that he has lacked the passion to love either God or other humans. Their evening together is unfortuntely, a disaster. Not only is Lily at least 35 years old, but also she seems to have an idea that Finkle is some sort of eminently holy man who can see into the mind of
God. Though Finkle is comfortable with her at first, Lily turns the conversation to Finkle's studies with a clear expectation that he will help her see into his understanding of divine truths. Obviously, Salzman built up Finkle as some sort of mystic or prophet, and Finkle cannot provide her with any of the answers that she is looking for. In fact, when Lily asks
Finkle why he learned to love God, Finkle hears himself say, "I came to God not because I loved Him, but because I did not." This is not the answer Lily is looking for and the evening ends in disappointment for both of them.
Finkle's discovery of a picture of Salzman's daughter, Stella, prompts him to act on his new self-knowledge. Distinctive from the women in the previous photographs, Stella appears to be someone who has lived and suffered deeply. Salzman refers to her as a fallen woman, stating that "she should burn in hell," and argues that the presence of her picture among the others was a mistake and that she is not the woman for Finkle. Finkle, however, remains strongly attracted to Stella and envisions an opportunity to "convert her to goodness, himself to God." The story's concluding tableau is highly ambiguous. It depicts Finkle running toward Stella, who is standing under a lamppost dressed in a white dress and red shoes, while Salzman stands next to a wall around the corner, chanting the kaddish, a prayer for the dead.

Major Themes
Like many of Malamud's short stories, "The Magic Barrel" is essentially a love story that incorporates themes of suffering and self-discovery. Finkle's search for a wife leads to his realization of his essentially dispassionate nature, and his love for Stella stems in part from his recognition of her suffering as a mark of having truly lived. The story also suggests the presence of the miraculous in everyday life. In the final tableau, for instance, violins and candles are said to be floating in the sky, and events in the story often suggest that Salzman possesses supernatural abilities. Such images and suggestions contrast with the story's surface of realistic detail and also further the theme of the rational versus the irrational. Finkle, for example, begins the story as a representative of reason but eventually falls in love with and seeks out Stella despite Salzman's logical arguments against such a match.
Other events in the story focus on the theme of Jewish identity. Some critics argue that Finkle's relationship to Salzman strengthens his connections to the Jewish community, while others posit that his attraction to Stella signifies a break with Jewish values. The Jews believed that a rabbi must not marry a morally loose, uncultured girl or woman; Leo marries one, therefore he has broken away from the Jewish tradition. Or conversely, Leo has dared to save the ruined girl by marrying her, and rescuing one from damnation is a praiseworthy job.
Another theme of the story is that loneliness is painful, and that there is a need of human contact and love in life. Leo felt remaining lonely was an unsavory, torturous condition, so he wanted to get married. Loneliness is not especially welcome plight, the story tells, as Leo Finkle also felt. Marriage offers redemption both for Leo and Stella: he gets companion; she gets salvation (possibly, from immoral, illegal sexual ventures: her father has already condemned her as hell-bound).
A love story with a surprising outcome, ‘‘The Magic Barrel’’ traces a young man’s struggle to come to terms with his identity and poses the religious question of how people—
Jews and others— may come to love God. Is human love, the story asks, a necessary first step to loving God? The story seem to tell, if one cannot first love oneself, and fellow human beings like one, one cannot love God. Because God is love, and to be able to serve Him, to love Him, one should have some knowledge of how it feels like loving one’s kind.
Yet another theme of the story is that we consciously seek for something but cannot find it; but we find what we unconsciously desire for. Leo needed a humble, loving wife, who would not henpeck him, manipulate him. He is from a poor family. But the women
Salzmann showed him were all from a higher family status than Leo, and many o them were senior to him in age too. Leo would not feel comfortable with such women. Therefore when he saw the modest, innocent looking girl’s photograph, he instantly recognized she was the person he was looking for. Thus sometimes we get our “most desired for” friends or spouse, unexpectedly. Salzmann says he did not intend to keep her picture in the barrel; it was by mistake that her photo was kept there. But that proved truly magical: it produced the much needed and sought after candidate for the aspiring rabbi. Thus chance or coincidence plays a great role in getting a wife for Leo. Many of our life’s important decisions, and/or course of actions are sometimes determined accidentally.
Ambiguity in the story
Noting the story's ambiguity, critics argue that Salzman's prayers either signify
Finkle's abandonment of the Jewish faith or celebrate the death of his old self and the beginning of his new life—one which will be enriched by the lessons that he has learned from
Salzman. Or, that, Salzman, really believed his daughter was dead; morally she was unfit for a would-be rabbi. So he might have been mourning at the mismatch.

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