ESSAY CEMETERY

Style and devices ·        Ambiguous responses SEPTIMUS: Ah. Yes, I am ashamed. Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure.  Fermat's last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n  is greater than 2.        (Pause.) THOMASINA: Eurghhh! SEPTIMUS: Nevertheless, that is the theorem. ·        Paradoxical statements – he says free will but points to it being unchangeable, that is, predetermined THOMASINA: Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart. SEPTIMUS: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever.  This is known as free will or self-determination.

Act 1, Scene 1 We are in a country house, Sidley, in Derbyshire in 1809. Septimus, 22, and his student Thomasina, 13, are each studying their own thing, she math and he reading Mr/ Chater's poem. She looks up from her attempt to solve Fermat's last theorem to ask about "carnal embrace". He tells her it means to hug meat. Nokes (landscape gardener) told Mr. Chater that Mrs. Chater was engaged in a carnal embrace with someone in the gazebo Groom hears this Tells Jellaby Jellaby tells cook Thomasina overhears Thomasina tells Septimus. He tells her what the phrase really means and she is disgusted. The butler Jellaby enters with a letter for Septimus from Mr. Chater and relays the message that he will meet him after the lesson. Mr Chater, angry, enters the room and confronts Septimus about bedding his wife, and challenges him to a duel. Septimus distracts him by praising his poetry, and even turns it around by saying a poetry journal appealed to h