ESSAY CEMETERY

Isaac Bashevis Singer Themes ·        Plentiful food ·        Funeral parlor like cafeteria ·        Experience doesn't change us ·        A happy holocaust survivor ·        Care with emotions ·        Loss of a sense of decency in the war ·        Loss of idealism ·        Afterlife ·        The long-lived effect of Hitler ·        The reparation policies doing more harm than good (just like The Shawl ·        The past haunts the present ·        Personal trauma leads to social trauma ·        Fame of writers ·        Loss of faith People and Places ·        Aaron ·        Poland ·        Esther ·        Esther's father ·        Toronto Response ·        A fantasy? ·        Kantian philosophy; regaining faith ·        This story is filled with philosophy ·        He seems to accept that Esther's vision and his vision are real.. that corpses

I Aaron, 60-70 year old writer and lecturer, in New York, often eats at a cafeteria where he meets people who speak Yiddish from Poland and other artist types and talks with them. He is extremely familiar with his neighborhood. He lived in Poland for 30 years and then in his neighborhood for the same amount of time. In the 1950s Esther joined the group who was a holocaust survivor. She was still happy and admired Aaron's work and this charmed him. Her father told him about life in Siberia. II Aaron had to leave for Israel and when he came back he couldn't find her. He goes to look for her in the cafeteria and find it has burned down. He can't be bothered to keep searching. Half a year later he goes to the library and finds her. She says she has been sick as has her father. She does not want an idiot husband or an uncouth husband. They discuss the afterlife; Aaron is optimistic whereas Esther is pessimistic. III The cafeterianiks came back. They keep talking

1 A man with a grouchy look sits slumped and orders griddle cakes. The waitress who takes his order and isn't very pretty tries hard to get him to smile back and finally softens him a little. He eats his griddle cakes thoughtfully and before he leaves asks the waitress without hope when she gets off work. 2 He walks in the streets around the library, meets a woman he knows and declines accompanying her because he has a meeting soon. She is erect and he hunched but slightly cheered. He walks to the Automat. The waitress is waiting, wearing clothes that do not suit her. She has a "volatile" face that often changes expression. He asks her name – Jennie – and guesses that her family hails from Spain. She answers, hurt, that she is American-born from California. Her speech is incorrect and "New Yorkish". 3 He buys her an ice cream, and suggests that Jennie is too common a name and calls her Dolores. She asks his name and he says she won't be able t

Lamed Shapiro. Image source Themes Appearance and ethnicity ·        Hypocrisy – he wants her name to be ethnic and his not. ·        Fragmentation and globalization ·        Concentrating on the outside ·        Mean and condescending ·        Epistemology and the individual ·        Insists on making her into a whore Style and devices Fragmented Frequently recurring words Movie Theater Griddle cakes Volatile Rose People and places The Automat Public library Jennie New York California Spain LUNCHROOM, POPULAR PRICES Bronx 5 th avenue 59 th street 10 th avenue

Delmore Schwartz In Dreams Begin Responsibilities Themes Movies as drug of escapism Daydreaming is hereditary in this family Struggling to piece together the movie Nature reflects emotions ·        Preoccupation with preservation of the moment, with immortalization of the moment rather than the experience; the grand scheme of things more important than the moment; a sense of doom and appreciation of the attempt to fix the sense, to fix the past ·        Anxiety of conformity which is illustrated by the structure of the dream – like a movie – feels he is watched and doesn't do things right ·        Is he anxious about not being born? Is he desperate for his parents' relationship to have worked? He sees his parents' mistakes clearly and is desperate not to repeat them, to do what's right, a "right" that is dictated by society. Style and devices First person narrator telling a story as a third person narrator

1 The narrator feels as though he is in the screening of a low quality old Biograph film. He imagines (or recalls from a story) his father walking in Brooklyn on a Sunday to meet his mother in 1909. He arrives at his mother's house while they are still eating. He is respected and liked. His mother comes downstairs. Something happens to the film and he is jarred out of the dream state and into his unhappiness but soon returns. 2 They leave the house arm in arm, his mother telling the plot of a novel she's reading and his father criticizing its characters. They take a street car to Coney Island. His father exaggerates the amount of money he makes. This is characteristic and the narrator begins to cry and is hushed by the lady sitting beside him. 3 The two are in Coney Island. They look at the beach from the boardwalk with its many bathers and at the boardwalk. They look at the waves breaking on the shore. The ocean and the sun burning overhead are intolerable and t