ESSAY CEMETERY

In her 1923 essay “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”, Virginia Woolf places characterization at the center of the novelist’s concerns. For Woolf, the novelist is defined primarily by his or her obsession with capturing character, a task she deems nearly impossible. “Few catch the phantom [of character]; most have to be content with a scrap of her dress or a wisp of her hair” (21). Despite this ostensible focus on characterization, Woolf has been criticized for creating shallow, incomplete characters in her works. Indeed, in her novel, Jacob’s Room, published in 1922, remarkably little attention is given to the title character. Only a vague outline is provided of the progression of Jacob Flanders from early childhood to his death, and key transitional moments in Jacob’s life are elided from the narrative. Whereas the title character is often absent from the action and narration of Jacob’s Room, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children protagonist Saleem Sinai is omnipresent throughout that narrat...

Themes Descriptions of sensations Memories Disaster feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling ... one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. City life In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. Being in the moment Mixed, nonlinear temporality For it was the middle of June. The War was over, except for some one like Mrs. Foxcroft at the Embassy last night ...

Soldiers often boasted of torturing prisoners. The narrator recounts two such instances of which he heard first hand, of a Canadian and an Australian who captured German prisoners but then killed them with Mills bombs instead of bothering with them. He recounts other instances. The Allies had on their side Turcos, North African native infantry. A Turco soldier used to ask a British cook for a jam every day. When the cook tired of this, he told him to bring him a beheaded German and he'd get his jam – and the Turco soldier did. A captain of a battalion of a Surrey regiment shares how his troops are so bad that during the last two battles he had to shoot one of his own men to get the rest out of the trench. They discuss how arm drills are good for morale, and that divisions that do well at drills and have guts perform best in battle, even if drills aren't directly related to actual fighting. When men are able to continue the drill well despite confused or impossible orders from t...

Written in 1909 in Italian. Marinetti and his friends are having a fruitful discussion, writing, and feeling proud of being unique in their endeavors. They are distracted by the noises of vehicles going through the street. They rejoice in technology. They are filled with a sense of power and recklessness. They go in the car and shout stuff, and two cyclists disapprove. This prompts the writer to throw the car into a ditch. As fishermen and naturalists fish the car out of the muck, they "dictate our first will and testament to all the living men on earth". Their manifesto promotes: taking risks and being rash rebellion glorifying technology meshing nature with technology technology that brings speed as the end of all things- the future is here war and violence anti-feminism, moralism, museums, and libraries (?) They want to reform Italy so that nothing remains of the past: professors, archeologists, museums, and libraries will be gone. They want daily visits to museums done aw...

Rosa lives in Miami, Florida in a decrepit hotel for which Stella pays rent. She is retired after having axed her own junk shop vusiness. She writes letters to Stella to remain on good terms with her, and to Magda. She imagines Magda is alive. She writes her in Polish which she considers far superior to either English or Yiddish. She finally leaves her room to do some laundry at a Laundromat, where she meets Simon Persky, a Jew who left Poland before the War. She feels she is superior to him because he speaks Polish and English. He insists on courting her even though she behaves nastily towards him. She gets a package that she assumes is Magda's shawl, sent her by the reluctant Stella who has been taking psychology classes and regards Rosa's attachment to the shawl as unhealthy. Instead, it is a book sent her by Dr. Tree, a psychologist doing research on Holocaust survivors. Rosa resents being treated as a clinical subject rather than a human being. Rosa thinks Persky has taken...

Summary Renata/Rindy DeMarco is in her apartment thinking of Vic who does drugs and cooks. She is an aspiring jewelry designer but works in sales. Her father comes from Verona to drop off a turkey for thanksgiving. Her apartment is small. They are Italians. Her dad was a minor league catcher. Her father's father is a second-generation immigrant which makes her dad third and her fourth. Vic is self-involved. Renata and Carla, her younger sister, changed their names to Rindy and Cindi in junior high. Vic is Italian. Dad's recently retired and Mother's concerned about him. Dad feels lost because he never felt right about his profession working in an office. Vic stole the deck chairs from a restaurant or store. For much of her life, Rindy's mother stayed at home because it was a nice change from mountain village life. She now is starting to find herself and takes classes. Her dad wants to talk about this. Her mother was always earthy and open but not vulgar. Cindi got marri...

Summary Mr. Bhowmick wakes up early for work and his wife with him to make him breakfast. His agnostic wife works for an insurance company. His daughter, 26, is an electrical engineer. He is sorry he can't afford a whole room like his mother had in Indian for worship but he took woodworking classes and built a shrine for the family goddess Kali-Mata (and the goddess herself I think). His wife complains that he prays so much that he doesn't have time for all the Indian activities they do, and that he prays to shut her out. She reads psychology magazines and feels he doesn't share enough. She and his daughter were more American somehow. They were right, he didn't want to talk about the sickness he felt that was not of physical origins. He felt that there was something in the dark that could make things happen which his wife would dismiss as paranoia. He thinks the statue of Kali changes on its own. Husband, wife and daughter nag each other over breakfast and discuss techn...

Reflection on life She was an old woman now, and her life had become memories. Attention to the elements (of nature) Thinking of the past and future Weaving Denial/ misunderstanding/spirituality? It wasn't like Jimmie died. He just never came back [...] White people distinguished as "the white man" Nature is relaxing The sun warmth relaxed her and took the fear and anger away. She lay back on the rock and watched the sky. It seemed to her that she could walk into the sky, stepping through clouds endlessly. Danny played with little pebbles and stones, pretending they were birds’ eggs and then little rabbits. Ella sat at her feet and dropped fistfuls of dirt into the breeze, watching the dust and particles of sand intently. Ayah watched a hawk soar high above them, dark wings gliding; hunting or only watching, she did not know. The hawk was patient and he circled all afternoon before he disappeared around the high volcanic peak the Mexicans called Guadalupe. Emotions associ...

Very strong language When I start to hurt and then my stomach start moving and then that little baby come out my pussy chewing on it fist you could have knock me over with a feather. Education is important He got only three children though. He seen Nettie in church and now every Sunday evening here come Mr.___.I tell Nettie to keep at her books. Dreaming of a different life Shug Avery was a woman. The most beautiful woman I ever saw. She more pretty then my mama. She bout ten thousand times more prettier then me. I see her there in furs. Her face rouge. Her hair like somethin tail. She grinning with her foot up on somebody motocar. Her eyes serious tho. Sad some. I ast her to give me the picture. An all night long I stare at it. An now when I dream, I dream of Shug Avery. She be dress to kill, whirling and laughing. Protective of Netti I ast him to take me instead of Nettie while our new mammy sick. But he just ast me what I'm talking bout. I tell him I can fix myself up for him. I...

Celie, fourteen years old, is raped by her mother's boyfriend (her father?) and has his baby. She lies to her mother and says she doesn't know the father. The father kidnaps and kills the baby in her sleep. Her mother dies. She has another baby and thinks this time he has sold it. He marries a girl her age, "the new mammy", and brings her home and takes her frequently. Celie loves school but the first time she became pregnant Pa took her out, saying she was too dumb.  Her little sister Nettie has a suitor, Mr. _____, but He won't let her marry him because Nettie is too young. He says he will let him have Celie instead. Finally, he decides to marry Celie, after the woman who took care of his kids left and on the condition that the cow they have comes too. He has three children. Celie finds comfort in a picture of Shug Avery, Mr. ____'s sweetheart. She is black, beautiful, sophisticated and well dressed. She gets married. The oldest boy, twelve years old, is opp...

Lots of scripture and historical, particularly American, precedents to back up his rhetoric and arguments Addressed to whites - "you" refers to heads of white churches or the white moderate Echoes A Model of Christian Charity by John Winthrop “Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ.” Calling on American discourse. Interestingly, he does so on the past and not the future "We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America's destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bo...

  ·         Oedipal complex ·         Sexuality ·         Quilts - family tradition and history ·         Picture of Jesus in their house - Christianity has left its mark on the Natives ·         Butterfly of memory and of belt seem to merge ·         Beautiful knowledge of another person, fatal and final, though enemies ·         Vicki sweats a lot - signifies what she's doing is wrong?

 * Note: I am not sure where the excerpt is from. Women must write about themselves. Detachment from the past is necessary and women must look toward the future. The past must be destroyed and a new future projected.  Women struggle against men. Women have been oppressed for ages.  There is no one type of woman. They are individuals with diverse traits.  Cixous spoke with a woman who revealed to her a rich inner life of sexual and personal exploration. Such experiences are beautiful. Cixous wished that women would write of this so other women would be exposed to this. She herself didn't share her experiences, urges, and emotions because she was ashamed. Due to societal "phallocentrism", she felt ashamed of her own self-expressive urges.  She encourages women to write and to overcome feelings of embarrassment about attempting to participate in a male-dominated profession. There is the same embarrassment as masturbation. Writing and masturbation should be in the o...

The protagonist's mother speaks Chinese-influenced English. Now she appreciates that this language molded her perception of language and the world, but when she was young she was ashamed of her mother's "broken English" (now she deems the term unfit). Her mother's English did have some downsides. She was treated poorly because of the way she spoke and Amy would have to pretend to be her to command respect and get things done.  She didn't score high on English aptitude tests because her command of English was influenced by Chinese which made her approach to words different than the approach the tests demanded. Her teachers tried to steer her into maths where she did score better but she was stubborn and turned to English. She was criticized for bad writing but persisted, and even took to using fancy words to prove her worth. But then she decided to imagine she was writing for her mother and she tried to capture the essence of her simple English and her mother...

Mukherjee calls America a myth. Mukherjee is a naturalized citizen and had to prove her worth to become one. She was born in Calcutta, India and never expected to naturalize, but to return home to marry the man her father picked for her. When she first arrived in Iowa for two years to study it was very homogeneous but now, 35 years later, it is so diverse that there's a cultural   or identity crisis regarding foreigners. In India this was unheard of, because classification matters above all and decrees precisely who each person is. Mukherjee herself was defined by her ancestry, caste and homeland. One day she spontaneously married her Canadian husband. For ten years she felt like an expatriate, and wrote a book that was an expression of this. After 14 years in Canada she decided to become an immigrant instead of an expatriate and moved to America with her family. Canada was hard because it was very racially exclusivist. America on the other hand held the appeal of its egalitari...

This short story is summarized in bullet points for no good reason. Events ·        It's a hot dry summer. Tony's friend Leon comes back from the army. He is drinking. ·        A state cop punches Leon in the face ·        Leon is admitted to the hospital with broken teeth and get stitches ·        Tony dreams about the cop who has white round eyes on a ceremonial black mask instead of a face ·        Leon gets better but wants revenge and Tony tries to dissuade him ·        Tony sees the cop in a gas station store and Leon says he is just as good as the cop ·        The cop follows them and they pull over. He makes them get out of the car. ·        Tony knows he can't look at the cop's eyes. He tries not to but then looks at ...