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- Genre: Novel / Satire / Parable - Title: 1984 - Point of view: Third-Person Limited - Setting: London in the year 1984 - Character: Winston Smith. Description: The protagonist of the novel, a 39-year-old Outer Party functionary who privately rebels against the Party's totalitarian rule. Frail, intellectual, and fatalistic, Winston works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth rewriting news articles to conform with the Party's current version of history. Winston perceives that the Party's ultimate goal is to gain absolute mastery over the citizens of Oceania by controlling access to the past and—more diabolically—controlling the minds of its subjects. Orwell uses Winston's habit of introspection and self-analysis to explore the opposition between external and internal reality, and between individualism and collective identity. Convinced that he cannot escape punishment for his disloyalty, Winston nonetheless seeks to understand the motives behind the Party's oppressive policies, and takes considerable personal risks not only to experience forbidden feelings and relationships but to contact others who share his skepticism and desire to rebel against Ingsoc (English Socialism). - Character: Julia/The Dark-Haired Girl. Description: Winston's dark-haired, sexually rebellious 26-year-old lover, who works in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Julia is opportunistic, practical, intellectually primitive, vital, and uninterested in politics. She believes that the Party is unconquerable through organized resistance, and that secret disobedience is the only effective form of revolt. She delights in breaking the rules, and her cunning and courageousness inspires Winston to take greater and greater risks. Julia disguises her illegal activities beneath an appearance of orthodoxy. For instance, she is an active member of the Junior Anti-Sex League. - Character: O'Brien. Description: The antagonist of the novel—a corrupt bureaucrat, member of the Inner Party, and symbol of dehumanizing and dehumanized despotism. O'Brien's charismatic appearance and manners fool Winston into believing that he too is working against the Party, leading Winston to incriminate himself. Even after O'Brien reveals himself to be the Party's instrument of terror, Winston continues to admire his intelligence, and under torture comes paradoxically to worship him as his savior. - Character: Mr. Charrington. Description: The elderly owner of the junk shop where Winston buys the diary, then the paperweight, and eventually rents a private bedroom for his trysts with Julia. Charrington induces Winston to trust him with his apparent reverence for the past, discreet behavior, and mild-mannered exterior. Actually a member of the Thought Police, Charrington ensures that the lovers are arrested. - Theme: Totalitarianism and Communism. Description: Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, not as a prediction of actual future events, but to warn the world against what he feared would be the fate of humanity if totalitarian regimes were allowed to seize power as they had done recently in Germany under Hitler and in the Soviet Union under Stalin. In the aftermath of World War II, Anglo-American intellectuals were reluctant to criticize the Soviet regime, despite evidence of Stalin's despotism, because Russia had been an ally against Germany and Japan. Orwell, who witnessed firsthand the Soviet-backed Communists' brutal suppression of rival political groups during the Spanish Civil War, returned from the war an outspoken critic of Communism. For the rest of his life he worked tirelessly to expose the evils of totalitarianism and to promote what he called "democratic socialism." To reviewers who wished to see his book as a critique of Soviet Communism, Orwell maintained that he had set the book in Britain in order to show that totalitarianism could succeed anywhere if it were not fought against. In the novel, INGSOC represents the worst features of both the Nazi and Communist regimes. The Party's ultimate ambition is to control the minds as well as the bodies of its citizenry, and thus control reality itself. Totalitarianism was an outgrowth of Socialism, which arose as a response to industrialization, and sought to create more equitable societies by centralizing production and abolishing private property in favor of collective ownership. Emmanuel Goldstein's book, parts of which Winston reads in Book II, outlines the methods by which a totalitarian regime consolidates and extends its power. - Theme: The Individual vs. Collective Identity. Description: One way a totalitarian regime seeks to stay in power is by denying human beings their individuality, eradicating independent thought through the use of propaganda and terror. Throughout Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston tries to assert his individual nature against the collective identity the Party wishes him to adopt. He keeps a private diary, engages in a forbidden sexual relationship, and insists that his version of reality is the truth, as opposed to what the Party says it is. Instead of going to the Community Center or participating in social groups, he wanders the prole neighborhoods alone and seeks solitude in his apartment, engaging in behavior the Party calls ownlife and considers dangerous. After Winston is caught, the seven years of torture to which O'Brien subjects him are designed to destroy Winston's ability to think unorthodox thoughts. Before he enters Room 101, Winston is able to see that to die hating the Party is freedom, but by the end of the novel he is no longer capable of this. In order to save himself from O'Brien's rats, Winston does the one thing he can never forgive himself for—he betrays Julia and in doing so relinquishes his own morality and self-respect. - Theme: Reality Control. Description: The Party controls the citizens of Oceania through a combination of surveillance, terror, and propaganda. Although there are no laws to punish crime, the party can indiscriminately use torture, imprisonment, or vaporization on anyone whose thoughts or actions indicate that they may commit a crime in the future. The presence of telescreens in every room reminds citizens that they are constantly being observed, and all live in fear that their neighbors, coworkers, or even family members will report them to the Thought Police. Another way the Party controls the minds of the people is by destroying historical evidence that contradicts what the Party wishes the people to believe: for instance, when the Party reduces the chocolate ration, it also eliminates any information that would make it possible for anyone to verify that the chocolate ration had once been larger. Winston and his fellow employees in the Records Department are given the task of rewriting news articles and other literature in order to bring the written record into compliance with the version of history supported by the Party, a never ending job, since the Party constantly changes facts in order to support its policies. Books that describe the past in a way that does not conform with Party ideology are destroyed or translated into Newspeak, a form of English designed by the Party to lack words that are considered unnecessary or dangerous, and which thereby prevents revolutionary thoughts. - Theme: Sex, Love, and Loyalty. Description: As Julia observes, the Party polices sexual relationships because it realizes that the hysteria caused by sexual frustration can be harnessed into war fever and leader-worship. Because of this, when Winston and Julia make love they think of it as a political act, "a blow struck against the Party." The sadistic fantasies Winston has about Julia before they begin their affair indicate the strong link between sexual repression and violence. The red sash Julia wears and her voluptuous appearance arouses feelings of hatred and resentment that only dissipate when he learns that he can possess her physically.Another reason that the Party restricts sexual behavior is that sexual desire competes with loyalty to the State: after Winston makes love with Julia, he realizes that it is "the force that would tear the Party to pieces." In place of heterosexual love, the Party substitutes leader-worship and patriotic feeling: thus, when Winston betrays Julia under torture, he learns to revere O'Brien and worship Big Brother. - Theme: Class Struggle. Description: In Nineteen Eighty-Four, society is made up of three distinct social classes: the elite Inner Party, the industrious Outer Party, and vast numbers of uneducated proles. When Winston reads Goldstein's book, he learns that the history of humankind has been a cyclical struggle between competing social groups: the High, the Middle, and the Low. This theory was originated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 19th century and became known as Marxism. Marxists believe that the aim of the Middle group is to change places with the High, which they do by enlisting the support of the Low group. After the Middle group seizes power in a revolution, they become the High and thrust the Low back into servitude. Eventually a new Middle group splits off and the cycle begins again. At various points in the narrative, Winston entertains the hope that the proles will become conscious of their oppressed state and initiate a revolution. At other times, he despairs that since the proles cannot rebel until they become conscious, and cannot become conscious until only after they have rebelled, such a development is extremely unlikely. - Climax: Winston is tortured in Room 101 - Summary: In the future world of 1984, the world is divided up into three superstates—Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia—that are deadlocked in a permanent war. The superpowers are so evenly matched that a decisive victory is impossible, but the real reason for the war is to keep their economies productive without adding to the wealth of their citizens, who live (with the exception of a privileged few) in a state of fear and poverty. Oceania, made up of the English-speaking nations, is ruled by a group known simply as the Party, a despotic oligarchical collective that is ideologically very similar to the regimes in power in the other two superstates, though each claims that their system is superior to the others. The Inner Party, whose members make up 2% of the population, effectively govern, while the Outer Party, who number about 13% of the population, unquestioningly carry out their orders. The remaining 85% of the population are proles, who are largely ignored because they are judged intellectually incapable of organized revolt. In order to maintain its power, the Party keeps its citizens under constant surveillance, monitoring even their thoughts, and arresting and "vaporizing" individuals if they show signs of discontent or nonconformity. The Party's figurehead is Big Brother, whose mustachioed face is displayed on posters and coins, and toward whom every citizen is compelled to feel love and allegiance. Organized hate rallies keep patriotism at a fever pitch, and public executions of prisoners of war increase support for the regime and for the war itself.Winston Smith, a quiet, frail Outer Party member who lives alone in a one-room flat in a squalid apartment complex called Victory Mansions, is disturbed by the Party's willingness to alter history in order to present its regime as infallible and just. A gifted writer whose job at the Ministry of Truth is to rewrite news articles in order to make them comply with Party ideology, Winston begins keeping a diary, an activity which is not illegal, since there are no laws in Oceania, but which he knows is punishable by death. Since every room is outfitted with a telescreen that can both transmit and receive sounds and images, Winston must be extremely careful to disguise his subversive activities. He imagines he is writing the diary to O'Brien, a charismatic Inner Party bureaucrat whom Winston believes is a member of a fabled underground counterrevolutionary organization known as the Brotherhood. Winston is also writing in order to stay sane, because the Party controls reality to the extent of requiring its subjects to deny the evidence of their own senses, a practice known as doublethink, and Winston knows of no one else who shares his feelings of loathing and outrage.One day at work, a dark-haired girl whom Winston mistakenly suspects of being a spy for the Thought Police, an organization that hunts out and punishes unorthodox thinking (known as thoughtcrime), slips him a note that says "I love you." At first, Winston is terrified—in Oceania, individual relationships are prohibited and sexual desire forbidden even to married couples. However, he finds the courage to talk to the girl, whose name is Julia, and they begin an illicit love affair, meeting first in the countryside, then in the crowded streets, and then regularly in a room without a telescreen above the secondhand store where Winston bought his diary. The proprietor, Mr. Charrington, seems trustworthy, and Winston believes that he, too, is an ally because of his apparent respect for the past—a past that the Party has tried hard to eradicate by altering and destroying historical records in order to make sure that the people of Oceania never realize that they are actually worse off than their ancestors who lived before the Revolution.Meanwhile, the lovers are being led into a trap. O'Brien, who is actually loyal to the Party, dupes them into believing he is a counterrevolutionary and lends them a book that was supposedly written by the exiled Emmanuel Goldstein, a former Party leader who has been denounced as a traitor, and which O'Brien says will initiate them into the Brotherhood. One night, the lovers are arrested in their hiding place with the incriminating book in their possession, and they learn that Mr. Charrington has all along been a member of the Thought Police.Winston and Julia are tortured and brainwashed by O'Brien in the Ministry of Love. During the torture in the dreaded room 101, Winston and Julia betray one another, and in the process lose their self-respect, individuality and sexual desire. They are then released, separately, to live out their broken lives as loyal Party members. In the closing scene, Winston, whose experiences have turned him into an alcoholic, gazes adoringly at a portrait of Big Brother, whom he has at last learned to love.

- Genre: realism, regionalism, micro-fiction - Title: 55 Miles to the Gas Pump - Point of view: omniscient 3rd person - Setting: a ranch in rural Wyoming - Character: Rancher Croom. Description: Rancher Croom is Mrs. Croom's husband, a cattleman on a rural Wyoming farm who is described initially as a "warm-handed, quick-foot dancer" who brews his own beer. However, this pleasant, unassuming description is at odds with both his violent suicide—a leap from a nearby cliff—and the revelation that he is a serial killer of women who stores corpses in his attic and uses them sexually. He is powerful, brutal, and almost animal in certain moments—"parting the air with his last roar" when he jumps from the cliff—but, although the reader learns little about his inner life, his suicide suggests a more complex emotional experience than is apparent from Proulx's description. In Proulx's loose retelling of the "Bluebeard" folktale, he is the Bluebeard figure, killing women without reason, forbidding his wife to enter the room full of bodies, and ultimately suffering a deadly fate. - Character: Mrs. Croom. Description: Mrs. Croom is the wife of Rancher Croom. They live alone on their Wyoming farm, which is very remote, and, after her husband's death, Mrs. Croom discovers the bodies of other women he has been storing in the attic. Mrs. Croom is analogous to the heroine of "Bluebeard," a folktale in which a young wife enters a forbidden room, finds the corpses of her husband's victims, and is able to escape from and punish him when he attempts to kill her. However, in "55 Miles to the Gas Pump," Mrs. Croom is less innocent and heroic. Proulx implies that she has been aware of her husband's killings for some time (when she discovers the bodies her response is "just as she thought"), and, in not informing the police or making any effort to exact justice for his crimes, she has become complicit in them. Moreover, she seems to be fascinated by the bodies: her feelings about the corpses are described as "desire," and her description of the bodies is not condemnatory, but fascinating and even provocative. - Theme: Isolation and Rural Life. Description: The title of Annie Proulx's "55 Miles to the Gas Pump" introduces the story's primary theme: the isolation of rural life and the impact it has on people's sanity. In this three-paragraph work of microfiction, Rancher Croom kills himself by jumping from a cliff, and then his wife, Mrs. Croom, discovers the bodies of dead women—his victims and "paramours"—in their attic. By emphasizing the couple's solitude and the absence of law and society in the rural landscape, Proulx suggests that it is the Crooms' isolation that drives their immorality—and that anyone in their position would do the same. In the first of the story's three paragraphs, Proulx establishes Rancher Croom's seclusion, giving the reader a sense of how isolation affects his behavior. She describes Rancher Croom as a "walleyed cattleman" in "[a] filthy hat" and with "stray hairs," suggesting a person in a lonely, rural setting who has no need to concern himself with how other people might see him. Two key details—Croom's "handmade boots" and "bottles of his own strange beer"—tell the reader the extent of his isolation: his ranch is so far from a town or a city, and so difficult to get to, that he makes his own beer and boots rather than buying them. The fact that Proulx describes the beer as "strange" is the reader's first indication that something about this man's rural life is mysterious, uncanny, and possibly wrong. The reader then learns exactly how strange and twisted Croom's rural life is when he dies by suicide, after "galloping drunk over the dark plain," "turning off … at a canyon brink," and "[looking] down on tumbled rock" before he "steps out." His death is associated with the loneliness and danger of the rural Wyoming landscape, which he uses as a weapon against himself. Proulx's suggestion to the reader is clear: the landscape was not only the physical cause of Rancher Croom's death (landing on the rocks), but also the emotional cause of his suicidal mentality. In the second paragraph, when Mrs. Croom cuts into the attic of their farmhouse to find the corpses of women her husband has killed, Proulx demonstrates that isolation has made this couple monstrous. The impact of social and geographic isolation on Mrs. Croom is more subtle than on her husband, but it's still clear that isolation affects her. For instance, the reader learns that "she has not been [in the attic] for twelve years thanks to old Croom's padlocks and warnings"—she has obeyed her husband and accepted whatever frightening secret he is keeping, perhaps because she has nowhere to go and no one to rely on within their solitary and distant life, except him. Furthermore, when she discovers the corpses in the attic, Proulx indicates that they do not come as a shock to her—instead, they are "just as she thought." She has known or suspected that her husband has been killing women and allowed it to continue, which demonstrates the lack of morality that her distance from "civilized" people and behavior has produced. The visual details of this paragraph also emphasize the risks of rural life and the ways in which isolation enables violence and secrecy. Mrs. Croom "recognizes [the corpses] from their photographs in the paper," implying that people made an effort to search for the missing women and were unsuccessful—perhaps because the Croom ranch is so far away from civilization that there would be no one nearby to notice anything amiss. Similarly, the corpses are "desiccated as jerky" and "bright blue with … paint used on the shutters years ago," indicating to the reader that Rancher Croom has been killing for a long time without being noticed or caught. Rancher Croom and his wife strike the reader initially as outliers and outcasts, as dangerous and remote as the landscape where they live. In other words, they seem fundamentally different from the kinds of people who live and participate in urbanized society and adhere to a moral code. However, the use of "you" in the final sentence ("When you live a long way out you make your own fun") groups the reader collectively with the couple, implying that anyone who is living a long way out and isolated from society might come to "make their own fun"—or disregard the law and commit similar acts of horror. To Proulx, this couple is not unique; all of us, left wholly to ourselves, have the potential to lose our humanity. - Theme: Violence, Pleasure, and Desire. Description: Violence and destruction pervade "55 Miles to the Gas Pump," from major events (such as Rancher Croom's suicide) to atmospheric details, like the descriptions of "splintery boards." Throughout the story, however, Proulx associates violence more with pleasure than with pain or horror—her descriptions of Rancher Croom's murder victims are sensual, Rancher Croom's suicide seems almost joyful, and, of course, the story's final line suggests that violence is a kind of "fun." Proulx's evocative descriptions put readers in the position of enjoying the story's grisly acts (suicide, murder, and necrophilia), which mirrors the pleasure that the Crooms take in violence. By leading the reader to have fun with descriptions of violence, Proulx suggests that all people—not just the Crooms—have a latent capacity to take pleasure in things we find morally horrific. In the first paragraph of the story, Proulx describes Rancher Croom—a suicidal serial killer—in joyful terms. The reader is first introduced to Croom as a "warm-handed, quick-foot dancer" with "stray hairs like the curling fiddle string ends" whose homemade beer "[bursts] out in garlands of foam." This warm, pleasant language evokes an event like a party, with music, dancing, and decoration. In addition, far from expressing fear or even resignation at the prospect of suicide, Rancher Croom approaches it eagerly and forcefully, "galloping" to the canyon brink and waiting only a moment before "[stepping] out," which implies that violence and death are not only routine for him (needing no hesitation) but also perhaps enjoyable. Furthermore, after he jumps, Proulx describes him with language that evokes buoyancy and lightness ("parting the air," "surging up," and "windmill arms"). These descriptions seem at odds with the severity of the situation, evoking joy and vibrant energy instead of describing suicide as a violent death of despair. The conclusion of the paragraph—"before he hits he rises again to the top of the cliff like a cork in a bucket of milk"—underscores this odd juxtaposition between pleasure and violent death. The notion of him rising again after jumping to his death is reminiscent of a carnival ride, where he might simply be able to jump and rise again and again without consequence. The story's second paragraph blends pleasure and violence even more explicitly, both through the revelation of Rancher Croom's necrophilia and through the sexualized language surrounding Mrs. Croom's discovery of the bodies. This combination of violence and desire is most literal when Rancher Croom's necrophilia is spelled out: the bodies of the women he has murdered and hidden in the attic are "used hard, covered with tarry handprints, the marks of boot heels." It is clear that Croom has been abusing these corpses for years, which the reader will presumably find disturbing. Mrs. Croom, however, does not seem particularly disturbed by it—in fact, her experience of discovering the corpses seems to be one of pleasure more than of fear or revulsion. Proulx describes Mr. Croom's "padlocks and warnings," which have kept Mrs. Croom out of the attic until now, as "whets to her desire." The most straightforward reading of this phrasing suggests that her husband's secrecy only makes her more eager to know what's in the attic, but given the context of Rancher Croom's own necrophilia and the implication that Mrs. Croom already knew what was going on, Proulx implies that Mrs. Croom might also get a sexual thrill from the corpses. This interpretation gains traction later in the paragraph with the sexualized language that describes a corpse as wrapped in newspaper from "nipple to knee," a deliberately provocative choice (as opposed to a more neutral word like "chest"). Furthermore, the fact that Mrs. Croom "recognizes the corpses from their photographs in the paper" might also be suggestive—how long would she have needed to look at those photographs to recognize the women, particularly as decomposed as they are? The final sentence of the story—"When you live a long way out you make your own fun"—efficiently sums up what Proulx has suggested throughout the previous two paragraphs: that Mr. and Mrs. Croom seek out and revel in violence, cruelty, and destruction, finding pleasure in it that is both emotional and sexual. While the reader is likely disturbed by the final sentence, Proulx's sensuous depiction of violence throughout the story makes familiar the notion that violence is fun—after all, she has encouraged readers to appreciate her depictions of Rancher Croom rising "like a cork in a bucket of milk" after he jumps to his death, or in the "bright blue" paint covering some of the corpses. To read the final line after having taken some pleasure in the story's grisly descriptions undermines the reader's ability to judge the Crooms. While one might not want to take pleasure in violence, the story demonstrates that it's uncomfortably easy to do so. - Theme: Good, Evil, and Morality. Description: "55 Miles to the Gas Pump" is a loose retelling of the folktale "Bluebeard," which begins when the heroine's new husband forbids her to enter a certain room in his house. While he's away, she enters the forbidden room and discovers the mutilated corpses of his previous six wives, after which she or one of her relatives (depending on the tale) usually kills him. Though "55 Miles to the Gas Pump" preserves the format of a folktale (brief, action-focused, ending with a pithy "moral"), it deliberately subverts the black-and-white morality that readers expect from folktales. Instead of judging and punishing the murderous, necrophiliac, and suicidal Crooms (and thereby upholding conventional morality), Proulx suggests that good and evil are inextricable, and that the simplistic morality of folktales is a lie. By conventional moral standards, Rancher Croom is the story's villain; after all, he is the analogue to Bluebeard. However, Proulx defies the folktale convention that Croom's death will be a punishment for his sins. First of all, his suicide occurs at the beginning of the story, before the "big reveal" of the corpses in the attic. Since readers haven't yet learned about the corpses, they will initially interpret his death as irrational and inexplicable, rather than a product of remorse for his behavior or some kind of karmic punishment. Because he is already dead once the reader discovers his crimes, his death cannot follow the discovery in order to neatly conclude the story by demonstrating that villains always get their just desserts. Indeed, rather than Rancher Croom meeting the gory, violent fate of many folktale villains, his suicide ends with him "[rising] again like a cork in a bucket of milk." This comic, oddly triumphant description means that his death, far from being a punishment for his behavior, strikes the reader as more similar to a resurrection—a Christlike fate associated with heroes, not villains. Combining this with the fact that the violence and brutality of Croom's death is deliberately downplayed (the details are cartoonish: "windmill arms, jeans riding over boot tops"), the reader feels that Rancher Croom's death is unserious and triumphant, rather than tragic or deserved. In this context, it's difficult for the reader to derive any moral significance from the suicide at all. Just as Proulx doesn't depict Rancher Croom as a classic folktale villain, she refuses to make Mrs. Croom the heroine. In traditional renderings of "Bluebeard," the wife is kind, heroic, and eventually rewarded for her virtue, but Mrs. Croom is not morally pure and does not earn a reward. The most obvious instance of her immorality is the implication that she has been aware all along that her husband is a serial killer. When she finds the corpses in the attic, she is neither shocked nor frightened; the situation is, rather, "just as she thought." By allowing her husband to kill women without interfering, she has become his accomplice. As opposed to the innocent young wife of Bluebeard, Mrs. Croom is a woman driven to look inside the forbidden room less by idle curiosity than by what she already suspects—and perhaps what she actively wants to see. In addition to rejecting conventional heroines and villains, Proulx subverts the moralism of folktales through her language. One way in which she does this is by lingering within evocative, sensuous descriptions of horrific acts without passing judgment. For example, this is her description of the bodies in the attic: "some desiccated as jerky, some moldy … covered with tarry handprints, the marks of boot heels … some bright blue with remnants of paint … one wrapped in newspaper nipple to knee." Neither Mrs. Croom nor the narrator of the story expresses any repulsion or moral objection; instead, they seem to take a creative, almost indulgent pleasure in observing carefully, which is apparent in the use of language that invokes all five senses and imagery that is surprising and even delightful (such as the "bright blue" paint). This enjoyment of the gruesome contrasts with the stringently moral world of the traditional folktale, in which description is often meant to reinforce moral codes (good people are beautiful and bad people are ugly, for instance). Furthermore, Proulx subverts the language of folktales by ending with a sentence that summarizes the story's "moral"—but which is an explicit rejection of the traditional logic of good and evil. The story's message, as summed up in the final line, is not that readers should be virtuous or that evil should be punished; it's that you "make your own fun" (or begin to find pleasure in violence) when you live in isolation. In other words, the "moral" of this story suggests that morality doesn't exist at all. - Climax: Mrs. Croom's discovery of the bodies of women her husband has killed - Summary: Rancher Croom is a cattleman in an area so rural that he brews his own beer and makes his own boots. His story begins mid-action as he rides across the Wyoming plains, where he stops at the edge of a canyon, dismounts his horse, and then—after a pause, with a ferocious cry—leaps from the cliff. Meanwhile, his wife, Mrs. Croom, is on the roof of their farmhouse, sawing her way into the attic, which she has been forbidden to enter for twelve years. With the saw and a hammer and chisel, she is able to cut a hole in the roof and look inside, where she discovers the corpses of women Rancher Croom has abducted and killed. Some of the bodies date to "years ago" and are aged and decayed, suggesting that Rancher Croom has been killing women for a long time, and it is also strongly implied that he has been using the corpses sexually. Proulx ends the story with a standalone sentence: "When you live a long way out you make your own fun."

- Genre: Short story/Coming of Age - Title: A&P - Point of view: First-person narrator (Sammy) - Setting: An A&P grocery store in a town somewhere north of Boston - Character: Sammy. Description: Sammy, the narrator of the story, sarcastically observes the customers of A&P from his standpoint behind the cash registers. He's technically an adult at 19 years of age, but he still relates to the teenage girls who walk into the store, and he reacts to Lengel's authority with youthful rebellion. However, as a blue-collar worker, he has to face more uncertainties and fears about the future than the girls do, and he finds himself dreading the adult consequences of his actions at the end of the story. - Character: Queenie. Description: Queenie is the leader of the group of three girls who walk into the store in their bathing suits. Unlike the others, Queenie is unabashed and self-assured, walking deliberately through the store in a suit with her straps down. Sammy, our narrator, describes the sight of her as "more than pretty." When Lengel reprimands her for wearing just a bathing suit into the store, however, her self-confidence wavers slightly, and her response—that she's getting herring snacks for her mother—reveals her youth. It's also clear to Sammy that Queenie belongs to a higher socioeconomic class than he does, as he imagines the type of gathering her parents might have put together and contrasts it with the sorts of get-togethers his own parents have. - Character: Lengel. Description: Lengel is the A&P's manager. Also a Sunday school teacher, he runs the A&P with a watchful eye, and Sammy describes him as "dreary." Lengel acts as a kind of force for conformity, and reprimands the girls for wearing their bathing suits into the store, embarrassing Queenie and, ultimately, causing Sammy to quit. - Theme: Growing Up. Description: The narrator, Sammy, is 19 years old and inhabits an in-between space between adulthood and adolescence, a standpoint from which he can both relate to the girls when they face authority and also observe and act as their unlikely defender, since he's a few years older. He also has to answer to his parents still—Lengel mentions them in an attempt to get Sammy to reconsider his decision to quit—but he's technically (legally) an adult, too. For comparison, Sammy's coworker Stokesie is only three years older and is already married with two kids. As Sammy approaches adulthood, he also has to face the consequences of his actions more directly. Just a few years older than the three girls who walk into A&P in their bathing suits, Sammy relates to the girls because of their youth. However, unlike the girls, Sammy can't just invoke his parents or use them to excuse his behavior as the girls do when Lengel reprimands them. Sammy, instead, will have to answer to his parents' disappointment and find other means of supporting himself when he quits, and the dejected sense of foreboding he has at the end of the story carries the weight of the consequences he'll have to face for his actions. Sammy's rash act of quitting is a youthful act, inspired by his connection with the girls, but as he faces the consequences of his actions, he realizes that he's no longer a youth as the girls are and will have to answer to the consequences as an adult. - Theme: Sex, Gender, Power. Description: The three girls walk into the store, and it seems that their sexuality asserts power in the way that they turn heads and capture the attention of the store-goers and employees. The girls are aware that others are watching them, but they act oblivious, and this dynamic seems to lend the girls a kind of unspoken power. However, this power proves to be something of an illusion, since the girls can't really harness it—as Sammy says, "Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn't help it"—and they can't adequately come to their own defense when Lengel asserts his own personal power within the store and shames them. He accuses the girls of being indecent, and in doing so asserts that the girls' attire goes against social norms, that the girls' sexuality is itself inherently indecent, and blames the girls for the men's sexual desire for them.Sammy's response to defend the girls and sacrifice himself arises because he's both attracted to them and wants to be their defender. As he attempts to protect the girls from Lengel's power, however, Sammy actually objectifies them further in some sense—he renders them more helpless, as passive objects of desire who require his defense and can't act for themselves. - Theme: Appearances and Inner Lives. Description: Sammy, as a store employee, judges everyone who walks through the store based on their appearances, what they buy, and how they act. He imagines what their inner lives might be like (the fifty-year-old woman, for example, who's been watching cash registers for the past forty years, looking for a mistake) and he analyzes the girls as they walk into the store, identifying their leader and envisioning their social backgrounds. The girls are dressed only in their bathing suits, and Sammy spends the entire first half of the story describing what they look like. Other customers and store employees react to their appearance too, which doesn't conform to the social norm of what one should wear into the town's grocery store. The conflict of the story arrives when the store's manager confronts the girls about their appearance, asking them to dress decently when they come in to shop—which embarrasses the girls and leads to the climax of the story when Sammy quits.At the end of the story, Sammy, who has believed himself able to understand the inner lives of all the customers based on their actions and appearances, is suddenly faced with the realization that he doesn't quite understand why he just quit— in other words, his own inner self is something of a mystery to him. And part of his realization of the difficulty of the world may rest on his sudden understanding that his blithe, arrogant, and youthful way of looking at the world was wrong. - Theme: Individualism and Ethics. Description: When Sammy quits, he asserts his individualism. The other characters in the story all follow someone or some code of conduct. Lengel enforces the polices of the store and general social norms without being able to explain why they exist, only responding, "This isn't the beach." Stokesie follows the normal path of ambition to become the next store manager. The customers, who Sammy refers to as "sheep," avoid confrontation and choose not to disturb their usual routines. As Sammy says, "I bet you could set off dynamite in an A&P and the people would by and large keep reaching and checking oatmeal off their lists and muttering 'Let me see, there was a third thing, began with A, asparagus, no, ah, yes, applesauce!' or whatever it is they do mutter." Sammy, in contrast, confronts the authority figure, Lengel—the store manager and a Sunday school teacher who represents all the conservative moral and social codes of conduct of the town—and presents him with his own ethical code, saying that Lengel shouldn't have embarrassed the girls. The girls in their bathing suits, and Queenie in particular, represent the sort of willingness to break social norms that Sammy admires ("Policy is what the kingpins want. What the others want is juvenile delinquency"), even if the girls' breaking of those norms is more in line with a prank or game than a real rebellion. When Lengel disagrees, Sammy does something completely unexpected and quits, as the customers nervously back away, uncertain how to proceed in this unforeseen turn of events. Yet the end of the story provides a further comment on individualism, as Sammy realizes how hard the world will be on him, how hard the world is on anyone who resists its rules and norms. - Theme: Class. Description: The girls in their bathing suits flaunt their wealth, as they've obviously been lounging by the pool or beach while the people in the store have been working. As Queenie speaks, Sammy envisions the type of background she might come from, coming into A&P to buy fancy herring snacks for her parents. Sammy's defense of the girls also involves a hope of impressing them, but they shuffle out of the store without taking any notice of his sacrifice on their behalf. He is from a lower class and is beneath them, which adds another element to the foreboding feeling he has about his future. Looking back at Lengel's weariness, he realizes that he, like Lengel, is stuck in the working class. While the girls' class protects them from the consequences of their actions—Queenie draws from a reserve of superiority when she remembers her place in the confrontation with Lengel—Sammy has to face the consequences of his actions without any protection of wealth or class. - Climax: Sammy quits - Summary: Three girls walk into the A&P in their bathing suits, as Sammy rings up the groceries for a woman in her fifties. Distracted by the sight of the first girl who catches his eye—a "chunky" girl in a green plaid bathing suit, with a nice tan—Sammy accidentally rings up a package of crackers twice, causing the woman to complain. Sammy fixes the mistake for her and sends her on her way. By this time, the girls are in the bread aisle, and Sammy observes them, describing each of their appearances. There's the girl in the green plaid bathing suit he saw first, and then another tall girl, who Sammy describes as the type of girl who other girls find "striking" though they know she'll never make it—and then there's the leader, Queenie. The leader walks deliberately in a pink bathing suit with her straps down, and Sammy admires the smooth plane of her chest and the rim of pale skin that her bathing suit exposes when she wears the straps looped loosely around her arms. Sammy believes that Queenie can sense that people are watching her, but she pretends not to notice, turning slowly to confer with the other girls as they walk down the aisle toward the meat counter. The sight of the girls surprises the other shoppers at A&P, but they return their gazes quickly to their own shopping baskets. Sammy comments that someone could set off dynamite in the A&P, and the "sheep" would continue unfazed, looking at their grocery lists. However, a few "house-slaves in pin curlers" do turn to give the girls a second disapproving look. Stokesie, another clerk, also ogles the girls and jokes with Sammy about them. At twenty-two, Stokesie is just a few years older than Sammy, but he already has a wife and two kids. He aspires to become the manager of the A&P one day. The girls reach the meat counter and ask McMahon something, and he points them on their way. As they walk off, McMahon sizes them up, and Sammy begins to feel sorry for the girls. "Poor kids," he comments, "…they couldn't help it." Since it's a quiet Thursday at the store, Sammy doesn't have much to do except wait for the girls to reappear between the aisles. When they emerge again, Queenie is still leading the way, heading for the cash registers with a jar in her hand. She considers Stokesie and Sammy, but an elderly person reaches Stokesie first, so Queenie heads for Sammy's register. She hands him a jar of Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream and pulls a folded dollar bill out of her cleavage, a gesture Sammy finds "so cute." Then, the store's manager, Lengel, walks through the door and notices the girls. He reprimands them, saying that A&P "isn't the beach." Queenie blushes loses some of her composure and replies that her mother told her to buy herring snacks, causing Sammy to imagine the type of high-class gathering her parents might be holding, with cocktails and herring snacks, and contrasting it with the mental image of his own parents' parties, at which guests drink lemonade and beer. Lengel tells the girls that they should dress decently when they enter the store, and Queenie regains her self-possession, announcing with some defiance that they are decent. Lengel responds that he doesn't want to argue and advises them to cover up their shoulders next time, as it's the store policy. Sammy absentmindedly rings up Queenie's jar of herring snacks, and as the girls hurry out of the store, he quickly announces, "I quit," in time for them to hear. However, the girls continue on their way, paying no attention. Sammy takes off his bowtie and apron, laying them on the counter, as Lengel reminds him that he doesn't want to do this to his parents and will feel the repercussions of his actions for the rest of his life. Although Sammy feels that there's truth in Lengel's words, he continues outside, where he looks for the girls. The girls are gone, however, and as Sammy looks back into the storefront, he sees Lengel in his spot at the cash register. Observing Lengel's gray face and stiff back, Sammy's stomach drops as he realizes how hard the world will be to him in the future.

- Genre: Social Commentary, Ghost Story - Title: A Christmas Carol - Point of view: A third-person, omniscient narrator - Setting: London - Character: Ebenezer Scrooge. Description: The quintessential miser, he is cruel-hearted, underpays his clerk Bob Cratchit, and says "Humbug!" to the Christmas festivities that bring joy to everyone around him. But when he is visited by the ghost of his old partner Jacob Marley, he begins to see the error of his ways. Scrooge is shown his own past, and the sight of his neglected childhood Christmasses begins to explain why he began his downward spiral into misery. Scrooge is scared and regretful when he sees the vivid images of the Christmas Yet to Come, which predictably leaves him dying alone. His reversal, from the anti-Christmas figure to the spirit of Christmas shows clearly the message of hope and forgiveness Dickens intended for his readers. - Character: The Ghost of Christmas Past. Description: A strange combination of young and old, he has the innocence of an infant, but is seen as if through a veil of time, as if he is very elderly. He wears white robes and glows bright like a candle. At the end of his tour with Scrooge, this light is extinguished with a cap, making it clear that he is "reborn" and dies again every Christmas. He shows Scrooge the scenes of Christmas past. - Character: The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Description: The most ominous of all the spirits, he is a robed, silent figure and Scrooge fears his message most of all. The spirit points his bony hand towards the visions he has in store, and eventually leads Scrooge to his own lonely grave stone, a prediction of his fate if his lifestyle remains the same. This spirit seals the moral lesson of the story. - Character: Bob Cratchit. Description: Scrooge's loyal clerk, he is very poorly treated by his boss and his large family live in cold and poverty. The eldest children work hard and Bob is always looking to find them better situations. His youngest son, Tiny Tim, is the light of Bob's life but is very ill and needs medical attention that Bob can't afford. Bob is a prime example of the virtues of Christmas and provides the antidote to Scrooge. He is also a symbol of forgiveness – he toasts to Scrooge, despite his horrible work conditions, and in the face of Scrooge's eventual remorse, is open and accepting rather than bitter. - Character: Tiny Tim. Description: The crippled son of Bob Cratchit, he can be seen sitting on his father's shoulder or struggling along with his crutch. But far from being a symbol of suffering, Tim is the merriest, bravest character of all, always reminding others of the spirit of Christmas. The thought of Tiny Tim's death, and its confirmation in the vision of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, fills Scrooge with regret. - Character: Jacob Marley. Description: Scrooge's former business partner. Despite not being particularly missed by Scrooge, he was nevertheless the miser's only friend, and is the figure that haunts and protects him by appearing in place of Scrooge's door knocker and introducing the three Christmas ghosts. He makes manifest the horror of regret with his burdensome chain and describes how he is doomed to wander the earth for eternity, a fate that Scrooge too will face unless he changes his ways. - Character: Fan. Description: Scrooge's sister and Fred's mother. She is deceased at the time of the story, but in the vision of the Ghost of Christmas Past she comes to visit Scrooge in the deserted schoolroom when he is a boy and brings him the happy news that she is taking him home. She is a symbol of the loving kindness of Christmas time and her relationship to Scrooge hasn't always been a miser. - Theme: Past, Present and Future – The Threat of Time. Description: Three ghosts appear to Scrooge to show him how he is living sinfully and what the consequences will be if he doesn't choose to live a better life. The three-part ghost story shows the reader a clear path – sins in Scrooge's past leading to his present misery and the continuation of that sin leading in the future to death, symbolized by the hooded figure. Each ghost shows Scrooge a vision of life gone wrong, set in a chronological path to destruction. At the same time, the ghosts' appearance threaten ultimately the absence of time, what will happen after Scrooge's death if he continues down this path: the purgatory of endlessly wandering the earth that Marley's ghost warned him was his fate. Time in the story is distinguished by several motifs. First, bells tolling and chiming fit into the story's song-like structure and also recur at key moments, reminding Scrooge of the time and of time passing. Second the chains that Marley shakes at Scrooge to scare him are a visual reminder of the endless prison sentence of purgatory awaiting Scrooge in the afterlife. Time in the story is also threatening because of the changes its passing will enact in traditional society. Tradition is important for all of these characters – be it Scrooge with his obsessive money counting and nightly rituals or Cratchit with his love of Christmas – and the changing of the city during these industrial times threatens to break down all of these traditions through its transformation of economic conditions and the grinding poverty it inflicts. - Theme: Family. Description: The entrance of Scrooge's nephew Fred at the beginning of the story introduces another side to the miser. Scrooge is not unfortunate in the way of relatives – he has a family awaiting his presence, asking him to dinner, wanting to celebrate the season with him, yet he refuses. This is one of the important moral moments in the story that helps predict Scrooge's coming downfall. It shows how Scrooge makes choices to prolong his own misery. He chooses to live alone and in darkness while even poor Cratchit is rich in family. Scrooge's distaste for Fred's happiness is not just annoyance at the sight of merriness and excess, it is also motivated by bitterness towards marriage based on Scrooge's own lost love Belle, who left him long ago. In the story, cold and loneliness are set up in opposition to the warmth of family. Symbols of coldness such as Scrooge's empty hearth, refusal to provide heat for Cratchit, and keeping his own house dark to save money show Scrooge's cruelty and lack of connection. But family provides the antidote to this coldness. When Fred enters, the counting house suddenly warms up. Further, Cratchit's warmth, despite his lack of coal, and the togetherness and energy of his large family, show him to be one of the most fortunate men in the story. Scrooge does have a kind of family in his partner Marley, who is described at the beginning of the novella as fulfilling many roles for Scrooge before his death. The inseparability of their names above the firm's entrance shows how close they are—at least in business terms—and though they are bachelors they share their lives, and the suite of rooms is passed down like a family legacy from Marley to Scrooge. Ultimately, from Marley's warning and the visions provided by the ghosts, Scrooge does learn to appreciate and connect with Fred and the rest of his family, and to even extend that family to include the Cratchits. - Theme: Greed, Generosity and Forgiveness. Description: Scrooge is a caricature of a miser, greedy and mean in every way. He spends all day in his counting house looking after his money but is so cheap that he keeps his house in darkness, his fire small and allows no extravagance even on Christmas day. But we soon learn that he is the most impoverished character – he is lacking love, warmth and the spirit of Christmas, all of which make lives like Bob Cratchit's so worth living despite their hardships. The story's structure and Scrooge's character development are engineered so that as Scrooge becomes aware of his own poverty and learns to forgive and listen to his buried conscience, he is able to see virtue and goodness in the other characters and rediscovers his own generosity – he even becomes a symbol of Christmas in the final stave. Scrooge is remedied in the novella by the Christmas-conscious characters that surround him, including his own nephew and Bob Cratchit and his family, who show Scrooge in the Ghost of Christmas Present's tour the true meaning of goodness. All of the generous characters in the story are financially downtrodden but succeed in being good and happy despite their lot, whereas Scrooge needs to go through a traumatic awakening in order to find happiness. But the virtue that really ensures Scrooge's transformation is forgiveness – it is this key of Christian morality that saves him when the characters that he has always put down—Fred, Bob Cratchit—welcome him into their homes when he undergoes his transformation, giving Dickens' tale the shape of a true religious redemption. - Theme: Christmas and Tradition. Description: A Christmas Carol was published as a Christmas story, and takes the form of a Christian morality tale containing a moral lesson that the highly religious and traditional English population of Dickens' time would enjoy. Its structure, with five "staves" instead of chapters, is a metaphor for a simple song, with a beginning, middle and end. Dickens uses the idea of singing to connect the story to the joyful Christian traditions of the season, such as caroling, while at the same filling it with more serious, politically-minded themes. This theme has two aspects: Firstly, the festive, jolly Christmas atmosphere flourishes in the streets surrounding Scrooge's company office, and the ethos of the nativity story is embodied in characters like Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, and Scrooge's nephew – these characters are examples of goodness and charity, and show Scrooge the way to kindness. The love and strength of the Cratchit family despite their poverty shows the reader that the spirit of Christmas can defeat Scrooge's spirit of misery. At the same time, Dickens uses the seasonal period around Christmas to highlight the sort of unfair and crushing poverty that the Cratchit's face. The cold, bleak winter weather exacerbates the terrible privations poor families of the era had to face, and in presenting the poor in such extremes A Christmas Carol profoundly criticizes the laws, policies, and economic system that promote such poverty. In this way, by allowing Dickens to use the harshness of winter to portray the terrible difficulty of the life of the poor, Christmas served Dickens as a vehicle not just for showing Scrooge's transformation but to appeal to readers' Christianity as well in an effort to change a society that was organized in some ways that Dickens saw as being profoundly un-Christian. - Theme: Social Dissatisfaction and the Poor Laws. Description: A Christmas Carol has attracted generations of readers with its clear parable-like structure and compelling ghost story. It's a moral tale that has proven timeless, but Dickens also wrote the story with a very present problem in mind, and his structure was designed to make the real issues of Victorian London stand out and provide greater awareness in the reading masses. For instance, the two gentlemen that ask for Scrooge's charity are kindly but unable to inspire Scrooge's sympathies. In Scrooge's easy assurance that the poor not only belong in but actually deserve to live in the poor house, the story conveys a message about the visibility and effectiveness of charity being swamped by common misconceptions that the poor house is a functional institution keeping poor people usefully employed. In fact, the poor house was an institution that did nothing to help the poor. Rather, it was a terrible place that served primarily to keep the poor out of view of those who were better off. Scrooge's repetition of his dismissive phrase "Humbug!" is a symbol of the insensitivity and ignorance of the middle class looking down on and dismissing the poor. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows us not only Scrooge's miserable future but also the future of his contemporaries, the traders and bankers that are discussing his funeral lunch and not caring at all that he has died. Dickens shows us that meanness is often connected to the pursuit of wealth. Further, he shows how such meanness is a cycle, almost catching. Scrooge, then, transforms a larger fate than his own when he discovers charity.In fact, A Christmas Carol has had a tangible effect on poverty, at least on a small, individual scale – stories abound of factory owners and merchants being so affected by readings of A Christmas Carol that they sent their workers gifts and changed harsh conditions. - Climax: Scrooge realizes that he will die alone and unloved if he carries on treating people the way he does. The sight of Christmas Yet to Come awakens his sense of remorse and he is desperate to change his fate. - Summary: It is Christmas Eve, seven years since the death of Jacob Marley, the business partner and only friend of Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge is in his counting house, keeping a cruel monopoly on the coal supply and keeping his clerk Bob Cratchit in the cold. Scrooge's nephew, Fred, makes a visit, but his incessant seasonal merriness aggravates Scrooge, and he says "Humbug!" to Fred's idea that he spend Christmas dinner at Fred's house. The next visit is from two gentlemen collecting for the poor, but Scrooge believes in keeping the poor in the workhouses and sends them away. When Scrooge arrives home, he is greeted by a series of spooky apparitions. First, his door knocker turns into Jacob Marley's face. Scrooge refuses to believe his senses and hurries upstairs. But he is visited again, this time by the full-length spirit of Marley, bound in a huge, clanking chain. Marley's ghost tells Scrooge that he has been wandering the earth trying to undo the wrongs that he neglected in his lifetime. He warns that Scrooge is headed for the same fate, an even worse one considering his horrible spirit. Marley tells Scrooge that he will be visited by three spirits on the next three nights. Marley then disappears, and Scrooge falls into a deep sleep. When Scrooge wakes up, it is still dark, as if no time has passed. He is greeted by the first spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Past, a candle-like apparition that is brightly glowing and reminds Scrooge of youth and age at the same time. He flies Scrooge through the window and they pass over the scenes of Scrooge's youth, firstly witnessing his lonely days in the schoolroom until his sister Fan comes to bring him home. Then, they see Scrooge as an apprentice with the Fezziwigs – it is a joyous time of parties and music. Then, Scrooge sees the moment that his fiancée Belle broke off their engagement because of Scrooge's single-minded focus on making money. Scrooge is upset by this vision. The spirit is extinguished and Scrooge falls asleep. The next time Scrooge wakes, there is a warm light coming into the room and he finds the Ghost of Christmas Present, a gentle giant in a fur robe, sitting atop a feast of Christmas food. This spirit takes Scrooge through the town, invisibly visiting the merry townspeople and sprinkling the spirit's magic incense on their dinners to make them filled with joy. They visit Bob Cratchit's house, where Bob's large, hard-working family are happily preparing for Christmas. Bob brings his crippled son Tiny Tim home and tells his wife that the poor lad is doing better. Tim's bravery touches Scrooge, but the spirit cannot promise Scrooge that Tim will be alive much longer. Then, they go to Scrooge's nephew's house and watch the party sing and play games, often making fun of Uncle Scrooge. Scrooge starts having fun invisibly playing along with the games but the spirit's time is running out. He reveals two impoverished children sheltering under his robe, called Ignorance and Want and tells Scrooge to beware of Ignorance most of all. The next night, the third and final spirit comes towards Scrooge, enrobed in a black cloak, so that all Scrooge can see is his eerily pointing bony hand. Scrooge is terrified but eager to learn the lessons of this ghost. He is led to the trading district, where businessmen are casually discussing the death of a miserly man. Then they witness a group of scavengers, trading in the dead man's possessions for money. Scrooge is transported to a dark room, where he sees the corpse itself, covered with a cloth. He begs to see some tender emotions or tears shed for this man's death, but all the ghost can show him is a family who are relieved at his death because it lifts their debt, and the house of Bob Cratchit, which is overcome with grief at the loss of poor Tiny Tim. Lastly, the spirit points Scrooge to a grave in a churchyard—the grave of the mysterious dead man—and Scrooge sees his own name engraved. He is beside himself with fear and sadness, and desperately promises the spirit that he will keep Christmas in his heart from now on. But the spirit vanishes, leaving Scrooge in tears. Scrooge wakes up and is overjoyed that he has the chance to change the future. He laughs and shakes uncontrollably, and, upon discovering that it is Christmas morning, he joyfully sends a prize turkey to Bob Cratchit's house. He says Merry Christmas to everyone he meets on the street, and goes to his nephew's to celebrate and play games. The next day he gives Cratchit a raise, and over the ensuing years helps ensure that Tiny Tim not only survives but thrives and becomes known for his Christmas spirit.

- Genre: Short story, modernism - Title: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place - Point of view: Third person - Setting: A clean, well-lighted café - Character: Old Waiter. Description: The old waiter, the story's protagonist, is the older of two waiters at a clean, well-lighted café. Hemingway depicts the old waiter as kind, dignified, and wise in his belief that, since life is meaningless, one must prioritize being comfortable and dignified above all else. Because the old waiter understands the importance of small pleasures, he is sympathetic toward an old drunk who likes to stay up late drinking at his café. While the younger waiter hurries to get home, the older waiter is unrushed; he doesn't want to be anywhere else because he recognizes that lingering at the café is a pleasure. The old waiter is shown to be empathetic, since he carefully considers what led the old drunk to attempt suicide the week before, imagining what it must be like to be 80 and without a wife. He decides that "nothing" was the cause for the attempted suicide—life's meaninglessness, in other words. He then recites a version of the Lord's Prayer that replaces many words with "nada," suggesting that he, too, thinks there is no reason for anything. The old waiter's own actions mirror the old man's; when he goes for a drink at the nearby bar after his shift, for example, he quickly leaves because its shabbiness fails to provide him with the atmosphere necessary to feel comfortable and dignified, which are his priorities in life. - Character: Young Waiter. Description: The young waiter, the antagonist of the story, is a server in the café with the old waiter. He is brash and callous toward the old drunk (a patron at the café) because he wants to get home to his family instead of staying at work. He even tells the old drunk (who is deaf) that the man should have killed himself the week before. During conversations with the old waiter about the old drunk, the young waiter betrays his naive attitudes about growing old, saying that an "old man is a nasty thing" and suggesting that the old waiter is simply talking nonsense by trying to empathize with the old drunk's suicide attempt. The young waiter thinks that his time is more valuable than the two older characters' time because he spends it on things that he thinks matter. Thus, after refusing the old drunk another drink and reducing the old waiter's conversation points to "nonsense," the young waiter exits the café and goes home. - Character: Old Drunk. Description: The old drunk is a dignified, elderly deaf man who spends his late nights in the quiet, pleasant café at which the two waiters work. He likes to sit underneath the shadow of the tree in the electric light because the atmosphere is pleasant for drinking and relaxing. The week prior, the old drunk attempted suicide because, as the older waiter notes, he is in despair about life's meaninglessness. When the old drunk speaks, it is only to ask for more brandy from the young waiter. Otherwise, he drinks with the purpose of getting drunk. More importantly, as the old waiter also notes, the old man chooses not to get drunk in a wild or undignified manner. In fact, though he gets drunk enough to walk "unsteadily," he never loses his composure, which reflects that—in spite of his despair over the meaninglessness of life—he is committed to an existence of pleasure and dignity. - Theme: Meaning and Meaninglessness. Description: "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" depicts three men—a young waiter, an older waiter, and an old, deaf drunk—trying to determine how to spend their night. Each character reveals their posture toward the meaning of their existence through their attitude towards spending time in the café in which the story is set. The young waiter is eager to go home to his wife, which reflects his feeling that meaning comes from keeping busy and maintaining the socially-expected balance between work and family. The older waiter and the old drunk, however, both want to remain at the café late into the night, which shows that they've accepted that they can't give their lives larger meaning, so their time is best spent making themselves as comfortable as possible. Ultimately, Hemingway favors the view of the older men—that, in the face of meaninglessness, people should spend their time feeling comfortable and dignified, as the two older men feel in the clean, well-lighted café. The young waiter, who thinks that there is no reason to stay at the café, draws purpose and meaning from clearly-defined obligations. He wants his job and his family to be in balance, so he rushes the old drunk out of the café so that he doesn't have to stay at work too late. By portraying the young man as brash and impatient, however, Hemingway discourages readers from adopting his perspective. During the waiters' conversation about the old, deaf drunk man's suicide attempt, the young man comes off as callous and even cruel. He says directly to the old drunk that he "should have killed [himself] last week," a feeling that the young waiter seems to express purely because he is impatient to get home to his wife and get some rest. Even though the old drunk can't hear him, the young waiter's spiteful attitude shocks the reader into disliking him. Furthermore, Hemingway depicts the young waiter as petty in his belief that the old drunk has "no regard for those who must work." While it's true that it's much past midnight and the old drunk man is the only café patron left (and therefore the only reason that the waiters must stay at work), the usual hour at which the café closes has not yet arrived, so the old man's behavior is not explicitly disrespectful of the waiters' time. Beyond that, the young waiter—whom Hemingway describes as "the waiter who was in a hurry"—seems indifferent to the man's despair, caring only for his own desire to go home early. In general, the young waiter comes off as being preoccupied and petty, unable to empathize with the old man or slow down and enjoy his own night. The older waiter and the old drunk, however, are unhurried and seem to take pleasure in the simple things: both men prefer "a clean, well-lighted place" to enjoy instead of going home to be alone at night. Hemingway encourages readers to take the views of the older men seriously, since their life experience gives them insight into the fact that one should prioritize comfort and dignity in the face of life's meaninglessness. Hemingway makes clear that both older men find life meaningless through the drunk man's suicide attempt and the older waiter's response to it. After the young waiter leaves, the old waiter asks himself what it was about the old drunk's suicide attempt that makes him afraid. "It was not fear or dread," he says, "It was a nothing he knew all too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too." This suggests that the older waiter finds the idea of death familiar—the nothing of death is essentially the same as the nothing of life, suggesting a uniform meaninglessness. In this way, the old drunk and the older waiter share an attitude about meaning, which is why the older waiter can empathize with the old drunk (as he clearly does when he tells the younger waiter that he doesn't like to close the "pleasant café" for people who like to stay out late). Furthermore, the old drunk and the older waiter seem to grapple with their understanding of meaninglessness in similar ways. While the old drunk is clearly more perturbed (as he's abusing alcohol and attempting suicide), both men are conspicuously unhurried to do anything else in their lives, and both men enjoy the small pleasures and comforts of the moment. The old drunk, for example, enjoys sitting "in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light," which the older waiter completely understands. When the young waiter suggests that the old drunk could go to a bodega, which is open all night long, the old waiter says that the young waiter does not understand the value of enjoying one's time in a quiet, clean, well-lit place like the café. This suggests that the older waiter, like the old drunk, finds it important to make sure that every moment in life is comfortable and pleasant, while the younger waiter is more goal-oriented, as he believes that, since the old drunk would be able to drink at either a bodega and a café, the experience would be interchangeable. Hemingway suggests that the older men treat life's meaninglessness in the right way. They're not focused on goals, or grudges, or keeping busy; instead, both older men enjoy the moment they're experiencing and seek out the small pleasures that make them feel content in the face of nothingness. - Theme: Youth and Age. Description: The older waiter and the old drunk man share the perspective that, since life is meaningless, people should seek comfort, dignity, and enjoyment. The younger waiter, by contrast, is always too hurried to enjoy the present moment—he seems to think that he can impose meaning on his life through work or family. Hemingway depicts this difference in perspective not as an innate feature of their personalities or values, but rather as a difference based on their ages. The young waiter is naïve—he doesn't have enough life experience to give up on finding meaning and focus on finding comfort instead—while the older men have learned over time that the best way to live is to prioritize comfort and dignity. This suggests that wisdom comes inevitably with age, and that the worldview of the old should be taken seriously by virtue of their experience. The old waiter and the young waiter's perspectives on the old drunk reveal their attitudes towards aging. The young waiter says of the old drunk, "I wouldn't want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing." To this, the older waiter replies, "Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him." A little later Hemingway completes the thought. "The [old] waiter watched him go down the street, a very old man walking unsteadily but with dignity." While both the young and old waiters agree that growing old can be lonely and difficult, the older waiter recognizes the value of dignified living and he respects the way that the old drunk has aged, since it shows his wisdom and dignity. In contrast, the young waiter cannot see the old drunk for who he is at all. He senses that the old drunk's loneliness contributed to his suicide attempt, but his empathy stops there. "He's lonely," the young waiter says. "I'm not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me." Therefore, the young waiter fails to empathize with the drunk man because he himself has never experienced what that man has gone through, demonstrating a weakness of youth. Hemingway then compares the values of youth with the values of age. After the old waiter makes a joke about the young man's certainty that his wife is, in fact, waiting for him in bed, the young waiter replies that he is confident that she is. "You have youth, confidence, and a job," answers the old waiter, "You have everything." But by virtue of having "everything," the story suggests the young waiter fails to understand the nothingness that is at the core of life. That having "everything" prevents the waiter from understanding life is clear from his inability to understand the old drunk's suicide attempt and the old waiter's beliefs about the virtues of living with dignity. The young waiter believes that the old waiter is talking "nonsense," since he doesn't understand how dignity could coexist with everything being lost. For the young waiter, dignity is found in doing things of consequence, which accounts for his constant hurry. However, through the wisdom and simple enjoyment that the old men exude, Hemingway suggests that it's only once everything is inevitably lost through time and aging that people become wise and knowledgeable enough to grapple with how they should spend their days. - Theme: Despair. Description: Hemingway thinks that he has an answer, or at least a partial answer, to despair. The older characters in the story neither ignore their lives' meaninglessness nor succumb to pure indifference. Instead, they come to terms with the fact of despair by deliberately countering its effects—namely, by finding comfortable places in which they can enjoy themselves and by prioritizing finding dignity. While this offers none of the comforting measures of, say, the Catholic faith of the person who confidently recites the Lord's prayer, it serves a similar function: providing a means of living with purpose and peace. By highlighting the old men's approaches to life in the midst of meaninglessness, Hemingway gives a roadmap for how to assuage despair. It's important to note that Hemingway does not connect the cause of despair with loneliness or poverty. The old drunk is neither entirely alone, because he lives with his niece, nor is he destitute, as the old waiter clarifies. Instead, the old drunk's suicide attempt and the old waiter's fear stem from their mutual recognition that life is without meaning. Both require a drink to "swallow" this truth, of course, but they likewise confront that reality by acting in a dignified manner. In other words, the old men practice the very habits Hemingway offers as a counterweight to despair. Both the old drunk and the old waiter seek out a quiet place over a loud place, a clean place over a dirty place, and a well-lighted place over a dark place. This provides the ambiance needed not only to enjoy one's time, but also to function in a dignified manner. While despair might lead some to abandon any concern for how they appear while drunk in public, Hemingway shows the reader an old drunk who is dignified even after a long night of drinking, and even in the face of meaninglessness. This dignity is, in a way, an act of defiance against his despair. - Climax: The older waiter recites his take on the Lord's prayer - Summary: In a quiet café, an old deaf man decides to stay late into the night to get drunk. The young waiter serving him is frustrated that he'll be stuck at the café serving the old drunk instead of at home in bed with his wife, a grievance he airs to the older waiter working with him. The older waiter, however, sympathizes with the old drunk, highlighting the fact that the man tried to commit suicide the week before. He imagines that it must be nice for the old drunk to stay up late in a quiet, clean, well-lighted place. Eventually, the old drunk waves the young waiter over to ask for more brandy, which irritates the young waiter even more. When he arrives to take the order, the young waiter warns the old man that he will get drunk. The old man, however, does not reply, and the young waiter reluctantly returns to get a saucer and some brandy. While pouring the brandy, he tells the old waiter that he wishes the old drunk would have killed himself—then he repeats this sentiment to the old drunk himself, who cannot hear the young waiter since he is deaf. The young waiter and the old waiter discuss why the old man tried to kill himself. While the younger waiter argues that he's "lonely" or that old people have nothing to live for, the old waiter speculates that the suicide attempt was not from loneliness or destitution, but rather out of despair about the meaninglessness of life. Moreover, the old waiter finds the old drunk to be admirable in his manner: he is dignified in the face of meaninglessness and despair, as he doesn't get drunk in an unseemly way. To this, the young waiter replies that the old waiter is "talking nonsense." After requiring the old drunk to leave the café, the young waiter finishes his conversation with the old waiter and leaves as quickly as possible. The old waiter, however, continues the conversation with himself, trying to locate the reason for both his empathy for and his fear of the old drunk. He decides that both his empathy and fear spring from his knowledge that "it was all a nothing and man was a nothing too." In other words, he decides that what's bothering him is how the old man's behavior reminds him of the meaninglessness of life. Upon this realization, he recites the Lord's Prayer, swapping out many of the words with "nada." He also recites the Hail Mary, swapping out words for nothing: "Hail Mary, full of nothing. Nothing is with thee." After finishing his soliloquy, the old waiter decides to go to a bar to get a drink. After telling the barman he would like "nada" to drink (and getting called a crazy person), he decides that, like the old drunk, he does not want to get drunk in a dirty place. In order to face meaninglessness with dignity, he needs a quiet, clean, well-lighted place. He then goes home and waits until the morning to fall asleep.

- Genre: Science-fiction - Title: A Clockwork Orange - Point of view: First person narrator (Alex) - Setting: Dystopian England in the not-so-distant future - Character: Alex. Description: The narrator and protagonist of A Clockwork Orange. Alex is a smart "nadsat" [teen] boy with a penchant for what he calls "ultra-violence," as well as a deep love for classical music. He is a manipulative sociopath, and he rarely feels remorse for his reprehensible actions. After being sent to prison when he is caught after committing heinous acts such as rape and murder, Alex elects to undergo Reclamation Therapy in order to be released from prison. This therapy makes him unable to even think about violence without experiencing pain, and also keeps him from enjoying music—but it does not seem to actually teach him about right and wrong. Post-therapy, he is so anguished by the sound of music that he attempts suicide, and survives only after receiving a blood transplant, which also reverses the Reclamation Therapy. Years after splitting from his first gang of "droogs," Alex finds a newly-married Pete in a coffeehouse, and seems stirred to settle into a more moral life. - Character: F. Alexander. Description: A writer who lives in the cottage called HOME that Alex and his droogs break into, proceeding then to rape and murder his wife. Later, F. Alexander unknowingly takes Alex in after Alex coincidentally returns to his home to seek help. F. Alexander is writing a book called A Clockwork Orange, which is an activist polemic against Reclamation Therapy. When he discovers that Alex was responsible for the rape and murder of his wife, he is determined to harm Alex and ends up imprisoned himself. - Theme: Language. Description: A Clockwork Orange's ingenious use of language is one of the book's defining characteristics. Beginning with the novel's arresting opening, readers are inundated with "nadsat" slang, the part-Cockney, part-Russian patois Alex uses to narrate the story. Alex's language, like the novel as a whole, is a chaotic amalgam of high and low. Just as the plot juxtaposes grotesque violence with poignant art, Alex melds disparate linguistic influences in his narration: nadsat jargon mingles with archaic formalities into a self-conscious collage. In this way, the book's specific language is a constitutive part of its overall message—it would not be the same work of art if paraphrased in different words.The book's jarring contrasts in speech styles also illustrate how socially marginal the "nadsats" and their niche lexicon are. Characters' linguistic differences articulate their social differences, and this allows Alex to shrewdly shift between registers of speech to suit his needs. To deceive adults into letting down their guard, Alex affects a "gentleman's goloss [voice]," an almost laughably courteous mannerism punctuated by "pardons," "sirs," and "madams." Throughout the book, Alex performs an assortment of these golosses, from "shocked" to "preaching." His judgments about others derive largely from their manner of speaking, as well. This hyper-sensitivity to speech registers allows Alex to mask his insensitivity to other social cues. Much of the time, he relies on his affect to replace genuine emotion. However, although Alex's linguistic manipulations make him seem cold-hearted and unemotional, Burgess's clever use of language throughout the novel validates his protagonist's views: language really is the means by which we understand the world. As the novel itself illustrates, the very words in which something is told are inextricable from its meaning, and this gives us insight into human beings and literature alike. - Theme: Sadism and Society. Description: Another of the work's stylistic trademarks is its frequent and graphic depiction of violence. In the first chapters of the book, Alex savagely beats a doddering scholar, rapes women and girls, and murders an elderly shut-in. But although Alex stands out as a merciless sadist in the earlier part of the work, later events reveal that other members of his society are also capable of similar behavior. The doctors who administer gruesome films to Alex seem thrilled by the violence. When the old scholar from the beginning of the book reencounters Alex, he and his cohort give the now defenseless youngster a vicious beating. When Alex implores the police to rescue him from his assailants, the "millicents" instead beat him and rape him with impunity. Even F. Alexander, the principled crusader for criminal rights, is overcome with bloodlust when he discovers that Alex was responsible for the fatal rape of his wife.This societal susceptibility to sadism demonstrates a cynical view: that individuals are predisposed towards barbarism. Moreover, society seems somewhat arbitrarily to punish these impulses in some people, while allowing others to manifest such tendencies with impunity, and to withhold for itself the right to exert violence whenever it wishes. Important, too, is that the act of reading and enjoying A Clockwork Orange itself represents a relishing of violence. By producing such a grisly work, Burgess forces self-aware readers to assess their own barbaric tendencies and come to terms with the way in which society does and does not sanction these impulses. - Theme: Free Will vs. the "Clockwork Orange". Description: The title of the novel is an allusion to its central ethical dilemma. The phrase "A Clockwork Orange" appears within the book as the name of F. Alexander's polemic against Reclamation Treatment, the state-sponsored aversion therapy that Alex undergoes. Reclamation Treatment renders criminals unable to think about violence without experiencing extreme pain themselves, thus removing a significant amount of their free will. In this way, the treatment turns individuals into "clockwork oranges"—nadsat speak for "clockwork men." The prison chaplain is particularly attuned to the moral quandary inherent in this treatment: "What does God want?" he muses, worried of the consequences of Alex's therapy. "Does God want woodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?"The complexity of this problem is best illustrated by the predicament of the activist F. Alexander, who attempts to use Alex as the poster child of his campaign against Reclamation Therapy. On one hand, F. Alexander is morally opposed to stripping criminals of free will. However, the activist later recognizes Alex as the perpetrator of the brutal, lethal rape of his wife—a devastating tragedy that he feels the overwhelming need to avenge. For F. Alexander to maintain his ethical stance, he would need to advocate for restoring Alex's ability to commit further, equally heinous crimes. This position is, unsurprisingly, impossible for the activist to support, and he is locked away after making threats on Alex's life. Readers are left to resolve the question on their own: is it just to reintroduce a criminal to society by removing the free will that impelled him to act abhorrently? Or is it more moral to lock him in prison, while he remains unrepentantly and ineradicably sadistic—but mentally unfettered? - Theme: Art and Humanity. Description: Burgess's malevolent protagonist is humanized, somewhat, by his reverent appreciation for the fine arts. Even though Alex is a bloodthirsty sociopath and a public menace, he is not utterly nihilistic. The sound of his favorite classical music seems to induce a more humane, respectful temperament in him. For example, when Dim behaves boorishly in a diner while a girl sings nearby, Alex punches him and reprimands him harshly. This altercation precipitates the droogs' betrayal of Alex. In this way, Alex's reverence for music ends up distancing him from his inhumane lifestyle as well as his inhumane tendencies.Accordingly, when the Reclamation Treatment deprives Alex of the fundamental human characteristic of free will, he is also robbed of his fundamental human ability to treasure music. When Alex hears music after being administered the treatment, it causes him so much anguish that he attempts suicide. "I slooshied [listened] for two seconds in like interest and joy, but then it all came over me, the start of the pain and the sickness, and I began to groan deep down in my keeshkas [guts]," he narrates. This scene demonstrates that art taps into the same fundamental aspect of the human psyche as the violence Alex was conditioned to abhor. Humanity is a complicated concept in Burgess's novel: it is simultaneously the best and the worst in Alex. The free will that compels him to murder and rape is also what fosters his earnest, edifying esteem for masterful art. Without this free will, Alex is a clockwork man—which, it seems, is hardly a man at all. - Theme: Conformism. Description: In any society, individuals forfeit some of their autonomy in exchange for protection against a world that is too dangerous to navigate alone. The universe of A Clockwork Orange is no exception. Throughout the book, Alex is forced to reconcile his arrogant individualism with his inability to live completely self-sufficiently. Droogs band together to protect themselves from other gangs, and Alex's selfish individualism alienates his own droogs to catastrophic results. Prisoners band together to protect themselves, and when Alex is singled out from his cellmates he is forced to undergo Reclamation Treatment. Society as a whole forces its members to balance moral considerations with their own self-interest—the prison chaplain, for example, initially does not speak out against Reclamation Treatment because he worries about his career. And, of course, the tension between absolute self-assertion and socialized life is at the center of Alex's maturation as a human being. Some characters, like Dim and Billyboy or Dr. Brodsky, find ways to bend rules and manifest their inappropriate impulses while still remaining within the realm of the socially acceptable. For Alex, this tension is finally resolved at the end of the book, when, as a somewhat older person, he concludes that the benefits of socialized life are in fact worth the constraints it imposes on individual autonomy. He understands that to live peacefully and settle down with a family he must in turn subscribe to some aspects of socialized life that he might previously have considered oppressive. Now that he has matured, however, Alex recognizes that the benefits of social assimilation far outweigh the costs. - Climax: Alex's suicide attempt - Summary: In a strange slang dialect that mixes non-English words and elevated diction, Alex recounts hanging out with his three "droogs," Dim, Pete, and Georgie. The group decides to rove the streets, and they beat and rob an elderly scholar. Later, the droogs come across a rival gang-leader named Billyboy. After a gang fight, the droogs break into a young couple's country cottage. They rape the wife in front of the husband and destroy the husband's manuscript for a book called A Clockwork Orange. Later that night, Alex's domineering behavior offends his droogs after the droogs don't act respectfully as some music is being performed. They part ways antagonistically. The next day, Alex skips school. His Post-Corrective Adviser, P.R. Deltoid, visits his house to caution him against misbehaving, but Alex ignores him. That evening, Georgie and Dim inform Alex that they will no longer tolerate his abusive leadership. Alex fights them, prevails, and resumes his role as leader. The boys then decide to rob an elderly woman's house. Alex breaks into the house. The woman and her cats attack him, and he retaliates brutally. He hears sirens and attempts to escape, but Dim strikes him in the eyes and the rest of the droogs abandon him to be captured. The next day, in police custody, Alex learns that his attack on the old woman has killed her. Part Two begins two years after Part One. Alex is serving a fourteen-year sentence in the State Jail ("Staja"). In prison, Alex works for the prison chaplain. The chaplain mentions a procedure, which deprives criminals of their ability to choose to misbehave. Later that day, a new prisoner is introduced to Alex's cell. He tries to molest Alex, and Alex and his cellmates take turns beating him in retaliation. This beating proves fatal, and the other cellmates blame Alex. The Minister of the Interior decides Alex will receive the experimental treatment—Reclamation Treatment—that the chaplain alluded to earlier. Under the supervision of Dr. Brodsky and Dr. Branom, Alex is given injections and forced to sit through hours of violent films. He is restrained in a chair that makes it impossible for him to close his eyes or turn away from these films, and even though the violence begins to viscerally sicken him, the doctors simply subject Alex to film after film. One film, which plays Beethoven's Fifth Symphony over footage of Nazi war crimes, makes Alex especially furious, because it causes him to associate his favorite music with visceral sickness. Finally, Alex is ready for release. He is brought in front of an audience and assaulted, but his aversion to violence makes him unable to fight back. In Part Three, Alex returns to his home and finds that his parents have replaced him with a lodger named Joe. Homeless, Alex resolves to kill himself. By chance, he is spotted by the scholar he assaulted years earlier. The old man and his friends beat Alex until police arrive to break up the fight. Dim and Billyboy are among the responding policemen, and they take Alex to the countryside, rape him, and abandon him. Alex unknowingly returns to the same cottage he ransacked with his droogs, and the male homeowner—not recognizing Alex—takes him in and nurses him back to health. The homeowner is named F. Alexander, and his book A Clockwork Orange is a polemic against Reclamation Treatment. He hopes to use Alex as a political device to further this agenda. Some of his cohorts take Alex to an apartment. There, Alex is locked in a room and forced to listen to classical music; the pain is so great that he jumps out a window in a suicide attempt. Alex wakes up in the hospital to find that he has received a blood transfusion, which has nullified his Reclamation Treatment. In the hospital, he finds out that F. Alexander has been imprisoned because the author, after realizing that Alex was responsible for the lethal rape of his wife, made threats on Alex's life. Alex then returns to his old lifestyle with a new group of droogs. However, he is less interested in causing violence and mayhem than he was when younger. After reencountering his former droog Pete, who now lives a tame, married life, Alex decides that he has grown up, and wishes to settle down and live harmlessly.

- Genre: Science Fiction, Satire - Title: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court - Point of view: First Person - Setting: Sixth-century Britain, during the reign of the legendary King Arthur - Character: Hank Morgan. Description: Hank Morgan is the Connecticut Yankee who finds himself thrown into sixth-century Britain and the court of King Arthur at Camelot. There, he takes on Clarence as a protégé, Sandy as a damsel in distress and later as his wife, and the knights of the Round Table, particularly Sir Sagramore, as impediments to his goal of using technological innovation and schools ("man factories") to create a 19th-century civilization in Arthurian England. Hank is a man of paradoxes; though he is a dedicated advocate of American democracy, he aspires to be "The Boss" of his new society and relishes using his power (like when he forces Morgan le Fay to release her prisoners). He is bent on imposing his version of the ideal 19th-century society—one that is democratic, Protestant, capitalistic, and a technologically advanced superpower—on medieval Camelot, whether medieval society wants this change or not. Despite espousing self-determination, calling his schools "factories," suggesting that he's only interested in making one kind of person. Hank is a masterful showman, easily able to out-class Merlin and usurp his place as Arthur's chief advisor. Hank confesses his addiction to performing these "effects"—the gaudier the better—and in the end, they are his downfall. Flaunting his wealth alienates people like Marco, Phyllis, and Dowley, and disparaging the laws makes him sound like a maniac. Finally, the "effect" by which Hank aspires to prove his superiority once and for all—defeating 30,000 knights with a force of fewer than 60 men and boys armed with machine guns—traps him and his supporters behind a wall of corpses and condemns them all to die of starvation and disease. According to Clarence, Merlin puts Hank into a magic coma. M.T. then encounters Hank in the 19th-century present, where Hank dies in a hotel room after crying out for Sandy. - Character: King Arthur. Description: King Arthur sits at the top of the feudal hierarchy in medieval England. With his wife, Queen Guenever at his side, he rules from Camelot, home to Sir Kay, Sir Launcelot, Sir Gawaine, Sir Sagramore, Sir Dinadan, and the other knights of the Round Table. Although he's followed Merlin's counsel since his youth, Arthur elevates Hank Morgan to an important position in the kingdom after seeing apparent proof of the time traveler's superior magical powers. In this way, King Arthur shows that he is no less superstitious than his medieval peers. Yet, although Hank looks down on the uncivilized, occasionally barbaric ways of Arthur's England, he develops a great deal of respect for Arthur himself. In his personal excellence of character, King Arthur represents an idealized form of chivalry. He is brave in the face of danger, either in personal combat or battling illness; he expects nothing of his knights that he's unwilling to do himself; he has self-respect and pride that cannot be extinguished by enslavement or being viciously whipped; and while he consistently defends feudal principles, he also empathizes with common folks' suffering and has a willingness to change social paradigms. When Arthur is sold into slavery, for instance, the experience inspires him to abolish slavery, and he is open to Hank's idea of retiring the monarchy with Arthur's own death. Nevertheless, Arthur equally represents the medieval mindset's limitations: he's unable to develop empathy for the commoners until he gains firsthand experience with their hardships; his respect for Hank is founded on a belief in Hank's magical powers; he's unable to see or accept that the wife he thinks is honorable is having an affair with Sir Launcelot, his best and most admirable knight; and he's unable to abandon his desire for fighting and revenge, even when he knows his life is in danger. Arthur's unwillingness to back down from a fight with his nephew and potential usurper, Mordred, allows him to kill Mordred, but it also leads to his own death, which occurs before Hank has finished transforming medieval society with 19th-century technology and ideals. - Character: Sandy. Description: Demoiselle Alisande la Carteloise, whom Hank Morgan quickly begins to call "Sandy," is a young woman who travels to Camelot with a tragic tale of being imprisoned (along with dozens of other fine ladies) in a castle guarded by ogres. Hank accompanies Sandy on a quest to free the remaining women. When they arrive to find a herd of pigs, Sandy insists the women have just been enchanted to look like pigs. In this way, Sandy represents the superstitious imagination and illogical belief systems of the uncivilized, medieval Britons. But, like Clarence, Sandy plays a key role as one of Hank's sixth-century interpreters. She learns to translate his 19th-century slang and teaches him the meaning of medieval idioms. She also tells him the history of other knights he encounters and teaches him the conventions of knight errantry (for instance, once Hank has defeated the "ogres," his responsibility to the ladies/pigs is over, and he doesn't have to escort each one home individually). Sandy shows her devotion to Hank when she searches all over England for him after he disappears without warning from the Valley of Holiness (he is traveling incognito). Hank eventually realizes Sandy's value and comes to see her as a wife and a friend. Sandy names their daughter Hello-Central because she mistakenly thinks that this is the name of one of Hank's long-lost 19th-century beloveds, implying not only that she believes his outlandish tale of travel though time and space, but that she loves him enough to care about his life before he came to England. She and Hank are separated when he leaves her and Hello-Central (who is recuperating from a serious illness) in France and returns to find that England has plunged into civil war. - Character: Clarence. Description: Clarence is a 12-year-old page at the court of King Arthur when Hank Morgan finds himself thrown into medieval England. Although everyone believes Sir Kay's claims that Hank is a dangerous monster with sharp teeth and claws, Clarence nevertheless befriends the man. This suggests his innate good sense and his ability to rely on hard evidence rather than the superstitious beliefs of his peers. Nevertheless, Clarence initially believes in Merlin's power, suggesting the strength of the beliefs that his medieval society trained into him in his childhood. After Hank proves himself to be more powerful than Merlin, Clarence becomes Hank's protégé, helping him to establish the "man factories" that will introduce 19th-century civilization into Arthurian England. Although Clarence truly believes in the value of Hank's civilization project, he still clings to aspects of his medieval training, like his instinctive respect for the institution of monarchy. Nevertheless, he follows and supports Hank until his death in the cave where Hank and his true believers made their final stand for civilization over barbaric chivalry. - Character: Merlin. Description: Merlin is a sorcerer who serves King Arthur. Because he represents (and draws his power from) superstition and belief, Merlin is a natural foil for Hank Morgan, and the two men maintain a professional rivalry throughout the book. Merlin fails to restore the fountain in the Valley of Holiness or to protect Sir Sagramore with his magic, but he gets the last laugh (literally) when he infiltrates the camp of Hank and his allies and enchants Hank into a coma at the end of the book. Merlin dies when he accidentally touches the electrified fence surrounding Hank's base of operations. - Character: Morgan le Fay. Description: Morgan le Fay is King Arthur's sister. A powerful enchantress and ruler in her own right, she has an antagonistic, competitive relationship with her brother. She has a reputation for wickedness, yet she is also exceptionally beautiful and charming. When Hank Morgan and Sandy are guests in her home, she both repels and fascinates the Yankee. As with the rest of the ruling class in medieval England, Hank attributes her cruelty and callousness toward others (especially her prisoners) to her training and upbringing in a society he finds superstitious and barbaric. - Character: Dowley. Description: Dowley is an affluent blacksmith in a small English village. He was orphaned as a child and had odd jobs until he attracted the attention of the old blacksmith, who took him on as an apprentice. In this way, Dowley's story is a medieval version of an American self-determination, where a person who has nothing raises his status in the world through hard work and initiative. Dowley is proud of his success and happy to brag about it to Hank Morgan when mutual acquaintance Marco introduces the two men. But Hank shames Dowley by flaunting his own wealth during a dinner party he attends at Marco's house. And when Hank then accidentally threatens Dowley while trying to make a point about the injustice of certain medieval English laws, the blacksmith attacks Hank in an act of self-preservation. - Character: Sir Launcelot. Description: Sir Launcelot is the strongest and mightiest of the knights who serve King Arthur and sit at his Round Table. He's also Queen Guenever's lover, a fact that is common knowledge to everyone but Arthur. When Hank Morgan overthrows the chivalric order in England, Launcelot becomes the president of the stock board and takes to destroying his rivals financially rather than through physical combat. He and Hank are close friends, and Launcelot loves Hank's daughter, Hello-Central, like a niece. But when Launcelot's affair with Guenever is revealed, his indiscretion plunges the kingdom into civil war, ultimately leading to Arthur's death and Hank's downfall. - Character: Marco. Description: Marco is a freeman who, along with his wife Phyllis, hosts Hank Morgan and King Arthur while they travel the country disguised as commoners. In thanks, Hank buys new clothes, furniture, and lavish amounts of food for the couple. The book insinuates that "Marco" is a name assigned by Hank, who often gives his medieval acquaintances modern names. Marco is a charcoal burner who makes a small living for himself but isn't as rich as others in his village, like the blacksmith, Dowley. Nevertheless, he is generous and conscientious. He treats Hank and Arthur with kindness until Hank's attempts to show off his superior intellect scare Marco, Dowley, and the other villagers into attacking the strangers in their midst. - Character: Sir Sagramore. Description: As a knight, Sir Sagramore serves King Arthur and sits at the Round Table. He is a physically imposing and powerful knight. When he overhears Hank Morgan wishing ill on Sir Dinadan and thinks Hank's malice is meant for him, he challenges "The Boss" (Hank) to a duel. This duel becomes a symbol battle between medieval civilization and 19th-century civilization, with Sagramore representing the medieval chivalric ideal and Hank representing the 19th-century ideal. Despite his experience and enlisting the magical help of Merlin, Sagramore loses his dignity, the duel, and his life to Hank. - Character: Sir Gawaine. Description: Sir Gawaine serves King Arthur and as one of the knights of the Round Table. Sandy tells Hank Morgan about Gawaine's chivalric exploits, which include fighting with and befriending the Irish prince Marhaus. When a brutal civil war breaks out between Arthur and Sir Launcelot over Guenever's affections, Launcelot accidentally kills two of Gawaine's brothers. Gawaine refuses to forgive Launcelot or sign a truce, and he loses his life in the ongoing conflict. - Character: Marhaus. Description: Marhaus is an Irish prince. He's a central player in the story Sandy tells Hank Morgan while they ride on Hank's quest. Marhaus once crossed swords with Sir Gawaine and, impressed by Gawaine's brave fighting and dauntless courage, befriended him. Marhaus later defeats a duke and his six sons, sending them to Camelot to serve King Arthur. - Character: Sir Kay. Description: Sir Kay is the first knight whom Hank Morgan encounters in medieval England. Kay captures Hank and brings him back to Camelot as a prisoner. Claiming that Hank is a powerful magician, Kay wants Hank burned at the stake, but his plan falls through when Hank convinces everyone that he is a powerful magician. Sir Kay dies in the civil war that breaks out after King Arthur discovers Guenever's affair with Sir Launcelot. - Character: Sir Dinadan. Description: Sir Dinadan is one of the knights who serve King Arthur at Camelot. He is a prankster and a jokester, although Hank Morgan finds his sense of humor unfunny and outdated. He is the inadvertent cause of Hank's duel with Sir Sagramore after Sagramore overhears Hank wish that that the Dinadan would die in his joust and mistakenly believes Hank's comment is directed at him. - Character: Mordred. Description: As King Arthur's nephew, Mordred was left in charge of the kingdom when his uncle accompanied Sir Gawaine to attack Sir Launcelot in one phase of the kingdom's brutal civil war. Mordred attempted to proclaim himself the king and marry Guenever but was frustrated on both accounts. He and Arthur then fought each other, and in their last battle, each delivered a fatal wound to the other. - Character: M.T.. Description: M.T. is the narrator who writes the first chapter and final postscript of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The narrator's initials match Mark Twain's name, suggesting that readers are meant to take the narrator as the book's author. The novel opens with M.T. encountering Hank Morgan at Warwick Castle and eagerly reading the manuscript Hank hands him at their hotel later that night (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is a framed story, and the main story comes from Hank's manuscript). - Theme: New World vs. Old World. Description: Hank Morgan, the protagonist of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, is torn from nineteenth-century America and transported back in time to sixth-century England. The novel uses Hank's experiences to explore the contrast between the democratic, egalitarian ideals of the American "New World" and the "Old World" ideals of medieval England. This contrast is a favorite theme of Hank's, who is a big fan of the New World and of the revolutions—American, French, and Industrial—that advanced democracy. Hank describes himself as a "true Yankee," a working-class man born and raised in Connecticut who rose through the ranks at the local arms factory to become the boss of 1,000 workers. As a self-made man, Hank respects those who earn their position through hard work. Therefore, he respects (and feels a sense of competition toward) medieval blacksmith Dowley, who worked his way into the medieval version of middle-class success after a childhood of poverty. Hank resents the limits that the monarchy's strict, hierarchal social classes impose on merit. Despite his relative wealth and his advanced technological know-how, the fact that he wasn't born with a noble title limits his influence. This contrast between a democratic meritocracy (where the best and smartest rise to the top) and an aristocracy can be seen with acute clarity during the episode where Hank and King Arthur examine army officer candidates. Hank's man, although clearly much more qualified, is a commoner, and so he loses to an unqualified but nobly born knight. Although Hank believes in the New World's inherent superiority, the book also examines its limits. The contrast Hank draws between the America of his birth and medieval England becomes less distinct when he considers the inhumanity of slavery in both societies. Hank may think it's better for Sir Launcelot to channel his fighting instincts into a 19th-century innovation like the stock market, but Launcelot's aggressive trading is nevertheless violent enough to instigate a civil war. The book also shows how technological progress doesn't automatically assure the public good. Some of Hank's technological innovations allow for fast, accurate communication across the kingdom (the telephone and telegraph lines); but other novel products, like land mines, bring nothing but wholesale destruction. In this way, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court praises many of the ideals of New World American democracy while simultaneously suggesting that it's challenging—if not impossible—to create a just and human society regardless of time, place, or political philosophy. - Theme: Imperialism. Description: When Hank Morgan, the protagonist of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, finds himself stranded in sixth-century Britain, he thinks of himself a new Robinson Crusoe, Christopher Columbus, or Hernando Cortéz. Each of these men (Crusoe is fictional; Columbus and Cortéz are historical) is responsible for imposing his rule on the unsuspecting population of a distant land. As soon as Hank realizes that he's landed in a less advanced society, his first goal is to rule it. Near the end of the story, he's even preparing to re-enact and preempt Columbus's voyage by 700 years with an expedition of his own to "discover" America. Hank displays an imperialist tendency to dehumanize conquered people in his ongoing comparisons of the medieval Britons to irrational, unintelligent animals. Similarly, his ongoing habit of comparing the "savage" and uncivilized Britons to "Comanches" and "white Indians" mirrors the vexed relationship between the Native American tribes in the New World and the European colonizers who ultimately established the United States. Hank sees the technologies and values that he introduces to medieval Britain—soap, the telephone, the telegraph, trains, gunpowder, and the factories that make these things—as unmitigated goods. But the story suggests that the colonizer's story is more complicated and less triumphant than Hank makes it out to be. Cleaning the bodies of the gentry doesn't change their political values; despite superior communication technology, the Church still manages to strand Hank in France while the kingdom falls into civil war; and, in the end, Hank's ability to command the total annihilation of life is also his undoing. His belief in the superiority of his own beliefs blinds him to the good and noble in the medieval world, like King Arthur's noble gentleness. By failing to see the value in these beliefs, the colonizer—Hank—underestimates how deeply committed people are to them. The dangers that imperialism poses to the colonizer are subtle. But Hank's failure to see the humanity of his newly minted modern citizens leads to his own annihilation. The village locals turn on Hank when he tries to prove the superiority of his economic theories and unwittingly oversteps and insults them. And after he unleashes a previously unimaginable amount of destruction on the ranks of English chivalry with gatling guns and land mines, Hank finds himself trapped behind a wall made up of his enemies' rotting bodies. Believing in his own superiority, Hank ensnares himself in his own trap, belatedly learning that that the danger in trying to conquer others is at least as great as the perceived rewards. - Theme: Nature vs. Nurture. Description: In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Hank Morgan travels back in time from nineteenth-century America to sixth-century England, where he becomes the second-most powerful man in King Arthur's kingdom. In this position, he tries to single-handedly establish an industrial civilization 13 centuries ahead of its time. But to succeed in this effort, Hank must overcome the "training," of Arthur's citizens. Hank maintains that training—the values and ideals a person is taught—is the strongest determiner of a person's character. Thus, his efforts to establish a new civilization also examine whether nature or nurture (a person's upbringing or, in Hank's words, "training") has a more powerful role in shaping a person's personality. Hank attributes the many flaws he sees in medieval society—from the nobility's arrogance to the lower classes' extreme, self-defeating respect for authority—to the training that medieval institutions (especially the Roman Catholic Church) have imposed on society. In other words, he believes that training is more powerful than nature and, by extension, that new training can easily replace old training. Thus, he thinks that if he can simply inject 19th-century values into medieval society through advertising, technological advances, and "man factories" (Hank's term the schools he establishes), then he will be able to single-handedly bring about the most peaceful governmental revolution of all time. But there are indications along the way that Hank's ideas are misguided. King Arthur, for example, retains a noble bearing despite being captured, sold as a slave, and viciously beaten over the course of the novel. This should suggest to Hank that nobility and courage are innate parts of Arthur's character, not just the result of his royal training. Meanwhile, Hank is so convinced of the superiority of his modern, democratic, American ideals that he never considers that he himself, though vastly outnumbered by medieval, feudal Britons, refuses to abandon his own training. The book never fully resolves the question of whether nature or nurture plays a stronger role in shaping society or influencing a person's behavior, but it does suggest that a person's character—as a combination of both nature and nurture—rarely strays from its well-worn path. When civil war and religious strife break out, the medieval people quickly revert to their old ways, forcing Hank to admit that his project has failed. He then blows up his "civilization-factories" and makes his last stand with his protégé Clarence and 52 boys young enough that they've spent more than half of their lives in Hank's educational factories. Thus, the novel suggests that once a person's character is fully entrenched, it can never completely change—regardless of how their character comes to be, - Theme: Superiority, Power, and Authority. Description: Hank Morgan, a nineteenth-century American man who's travelled backward through time and space to sixth-century England, upholds many believes about himself and his beloved American democracy; but above all else, Hank believes he's superior to everyone in the medieval world. And in order to persuade his unsuspecting medieval followers of this superiority, he uses his superior technological know-how to create one stunning "effect" or "miracle" after another. During a natural eclipse, he pretends to have power over the sun. He goes on to blow up Merlin's tower with a lightning rod and blasting powder, restore a miraculous fountain to working order, and accurately predict King Arthur's arrival at a holy site. These performances earn Hank the second highest position in the kingdom and the title "The Boss." Hank's ascendance demonstrates that one route to power lies in convincing people of one's own superiority; meanwhile Merlin, who was only powerful because people feared him, loses authority in the face of Hank's seemingly more powerful, fearsome magic. In contrast, King Arthur's authority comes not from fear but from love. The commoners love their sovereigns, and King Arthur shows that he is worthy of this devotion when, disguised as a commoner, he cares for some of his lowliest citizens, a woman and her daughter who are dying of smallpox. Further, Hank realizes that King Arthur's power would be compromised if people stopped believing in his ability to heal "the king's disease" (the skin infection scrofula). Because Hank has earned his power through force and fear, not love, his authority is doomed to be temporary. When he tries to flaunt his wealth and superior knowledge to Marco, Dowley, and other simple villagers, he earns their distrust and fear instead of their respect. At one point, as Hank prepares to abolish the monarchy, Clarence warns him that the people love their kings and queens and worries that the social order will collapse without the cult of royalty. But Hank, blinded by the knowledge that his showmanship and technological know-how are superior to anyone else in the kingdom, fails to hear Clarence's message. When Hank "magically" defeats nearly a dozen knights in a tournament, he proves the superiority of nineteenth-century technology over sixth-century chivalry. But the defeated chivalric order's resentment simmers in the background until its knights have a chance to challenge Hank again. In the climactic Battle of the Sand Belt, Hank unleashes the full extent of his power in a show of wanton destruction: he massacres thousands of knights with land mines, electric fences, and gatling guns. But this last "effect," while powerful in sending a message about his destructive capabilities, also shows the limitations of his power. Having defeated the knights by a show of his power, without earning the true love and respect of the medieval population, Hank traps himself behind a wall of dead bodies. Showing the full extent of his destructive capabilities ironically deprives Hank of his power over the kingdom, offering a stark reminder that brute force alone is not enough to earn true authority. - Climax: Hank and his small band of "republicans" confront 30,000 knights in a battle to determine whether England will be controlled by medieval chivalry or a 19th-century democratic technocracy. - Summary: A narrator identified as "M.T." (pointing to the book's author, Mark Twain) encounters a strange tourist (Hank Morgan) at Warwick Castle in England. It turns out that both men are at the same hotel, and later that night, Hank begins to tell M.T. his life story. He was born and raised in 19th-century Hartford, Connecticut. Hank blacked out after receiving a blow to the head during a workplace brawl, though—and when he woke up, he was in medieval England. M.T. becomes too tired to go on, and so he gives M.T. a book containing his life story to read. Hank's book begins with a knight named Sir Kay capturing Hank and bringing him to Camelot as his prisoner. In Camelot, Hank manages to escape execution and establish a reputation as a powerful magician by predicting a total solar eclipse. Afterward, he uses his 19th-century knowledge to blow up resident sorcerer Merlin's tower. (Hank creates blasting powder, places it in the tower, and connects it to a lightning rod. Then, he uses his talent for showmanship to work the miracle during the next thunderstorm, utterly convincing the primitive medieval people that he has the power to control nature itself.) Hank's first two miracles vault him to the second-most powerful position in the kingdom after King Arthur, earning him the title "The Boss." Hank is busy laying the groundwork for an educational, social, and political revolution when Sir Sagramore challenges him to a duel. Fortunately, the date is set three or four years into the future so that Sagramore can go on a quest for the holy grail. Toward the end of this period, Hank is assigned a quest of his own when a young woman named Sandy arrives at Camelot with a horrific tale of being imprisoned (along with dozens of other ladies and princesses) by a trio of ogres. On their way to rescue the ladies, she and Hank have some other minor adventures. They stay the night with Morgan le Fay, whose brutality both horrifies and impresses Hank. When they reach Sandy's "ladies," Hank is shocked to find that the women are really a herd of pigs, and her "ogres" are a trio of scrawny swineherds. But Sandy is convinced that they've been enchanted to look like animals to Hank, and Hank "rescues" them to humor her, thus completing his quest. No sooner have Hank and Sandy turned back toward Camelot than they encounter a group of pilgrims who are traveling to see a miraculous fountain in the Valley of Holiness. When the bad news arrives that the fountain has dried up, Hank uses 19th-century technology to restore it, adding another "miracle" to his repertoire. Following the success of his quest and his growing list of miracles, Hank decides to see how the common people live by disguising himself as a freeman and traveling incognito around the kingdom. King Arthur, delighted with the idea, insists on joining Hank. During their travels, King Arthur and Hank learn how difficult life is for the common people, who are denied mercy and common humanity by the knights, their lords, or church authorities, die of smallpox, and can barely support families thanks to heavy tax burdens. But when Hank, ever the showman, overreaches and offends a group of freemen in a small village, he and the Arthur find themselves running for their lives. A gentleman rescues Hank and Arthur from a mob of angry villagers—only to sell them into slavery. sells them into slavery. Hank and Arthur witness more scenes of brutality as they're taken to London to be sold at auction. In London, Hank escapes and instigates a slave uprising that kills the slave master, for which all the slaves are condemned to death. Hank is recaptured and taken to the gallows with the rest of the slaves, but Sir Launcelot and a rescue party of 500 knights rides into the city on newfangled bikes and rescue them just in the nick of time. Restored to his position of authority in the kingdom, Hank prepares for his duel with Sir Sagramore. In the years since his arrival, he's quietly been laying the groundwork for a civilizing revolution that will bring 19th-century technology, moral sensibilities, and democracy into the sixth century. Only the chivalric code of knights and the Church stand in Hank's way, and the duel with Sagramore is his chance to show his superiority to chivalry once and for all. Although Merlin has allegedly enchanted Sagramore's armor to protect him, Hank kills the man with one shot from his revolver before dispatching nearly a dozen other knights in the same way. Having utterly humiliated and defeated knighthood, Hank is free to go public with his secret plans to reform sixth-century society. Three years later, Hank sits at the head of a humming 19th-century economy. He's now married to Sandy, and they have a daughter named Hello-Central. Hank is working on the final part of his plan: getting King Arthur to make a decree dissolving the monarchy upon his death. But then Hello-Central falls sick, and Hank and Sandy take her to recover by the sea in France. While they're gone, a civil war breaks out between King Arthur and Launcelot, and Arthur's nephew Mordred seizes the throne. Arthur and Mordred kill each other in battle, the Church places the island under interdict, and Hank's 19th-century innovations come to a screeching halt. Hank returns to England to find his second-hand man, Clarence, and 50 young boys ready to fight with him on the side of 19th century; 30,000 men ride against them. Hank and his boys defeat the knights with electric fences and explosives. But in doing so, they trap themselves behind a wall of dead bodies. The decomposition of these corpses causes disease, Hank falls into a coma, and the rest of the boys die, too. M.T. finishes reading the manuscript and goes to the stranger's room. The door is ajar, and when he pushes it open, he sees the stranger lying in bed, delirious. M.T. stays and listens to his feverish ravings until the man's strength fails, and he dies.

- Genre: Short story - Title: A Day’s Wait - Point of view: First Person - Setting: An American family home - Character: The Father. Description: The father is the story's unnamed narrator. He treats his nine-year-old son with affection and tenderness, encouraging him to rest and allow his body to recover rather than stubbornly ignore the symptoms of illness. His care and concern for his son, whom he lovingly calls "Schatz," meaning "treasure," ultimately backfires. The father and the doctor both fail to share medical information with the boy—the difference between temperatures in Fahrenheit and Celsius—and inadvertently causes him great alarm. - Character: Schatz (The Son). Description: The father's son is a nine-year-old boy nicknamed "Schatz," or treasure. When he falls ill with influenza, he attempts to appear mature, manly, and unemotional. Rather than admit to the weaknesses of illness, confusion, loneliness, or fear, he denies himself rest, company, and sympathy on what he thinks is his deathbed. At his age, he doesn't understand enough about the world to realize that America uses a different temperature scale than most other countries; since his French classmates told him that a 44-degree fever is fatal, and he has a whopping 102-degree fever, the boy mistakenly believes that he is dying. When the boy's father assures him that he isn't going to die, the boy quits trying to act so mature allows himself to cry over minor upsets. - Character: The Doctor. Description: The doctor visits the household and measures the son's temperature at 102 degrees. He then gives the father medicine for his son and tells him that the boy has influenza, part of a mild epidemic of the flu. The doctor confidently declares that the boy will be fine as long as his temperature stays below 104 degrees and he doesn't contract pneumonia. The doctor explains this diagnosis to the father but not to the boy himself—something that would have prevented the boy from silently fearing his imminent death. - Theme: Silence and Miscommunication. Description: In "A Day's Wait," a sick nine-year-old boy, called "Schatz" (German for "darling" or "treasure") by his father, confuses Fahrenheit with Celsius and imagines that his temperature is fatally high. This false assumption is left uncorrected for an entire day as the boy fearfully waits to die. His father, meanwhile, spends the day enjoying himself outside, utterly unaware of the terror his son is facing. Hemingway's short story is thus a tragedy of miscommunication; the boy wouldn't have endured so many hours of solitary fear had he spoken up to his father, or had his father done more to inquire into his son's state of mind. In this way, Hemingway illustrates how the failure to communicate openly and honestly can result in a knowledge gap, to be filled with painful confusion and misunderstanding. The sick boy tries to suffer in silence from the very beginning of the story. At first, he refuses to go back to bed or to admit that he's ill, even though his father seems sympathetic and attentive to his discomfort. In fact, the father, who narrates the story, speaks quite tenderly of his son, noting how he initially looks "a very sick and miserable boy of nine years." Nevertheless, even when the boy hears the doctor note that his temperature is 102 degrees and mistakenly thinks that he will die of such a high fever, he still says nothing. Having heard his French classmates say that a fever of 44 degrees (Celsius) was fatal, the boy thus believes his 102-degree fever (Fahrenheit) certainly means death, not knowing that different temperature scales exist. The boy's insistence on keeping to himself allows his macabre imagination to go unchecked, thus suggesting how silence creates an opening for trauma. Of course, the miscommunication at the heart of the story is hardly the boy's fault; both his father and doctor also fail to communicate clearly and openly with the child in their care. When his father and the doctor leave the room after examining the boy, they discuss his condition in great detail—noting, for instance, that a flu is going around and that it is "nothing to worry about if the fever did not go above one hundred and four degrees." This simple fact would certainly alleviate the boy's fear, but neither adult explains this diagnosis to the boy. When the boy and his father do talk to each other, they don't speak of his condition in any meaningful way. When the boy's father asks him, "How do you feel, Schatz?" he responds merely, "Just the same, so far." He doesn't explain his feelings about being close to death, and though his father can tell that something is wrong, the latter doesn't pry. The father notices that his son seems "very detached" and that he is "looking very strangely," yet when the boy repeatedly urges his father not to stay in the room with him, he doesn't question his son about his odd behavior nor prompt him to confess what's going on. Instead, he tells himself that "perhaps [the boy] was a little lightheaded" and leaves to give him some space. He only imagines physical causes of his son's discomfort and fails to look into signs of emotional turmoil. The adults' silence on the matter of his health reinforces the boy's idea that he, too, must remain silent, and he thus continues to keep his distress to himself. Indeed, while neither the boy nor his father is trying to hurt the other, miscommunication only breeds distrust in the story. Because the boy began his day by insisting to his father that he was "all right" when he was actually feeling sick, he may suspect his father of lying in the same fashion when his father says, "Your temperature is all right […] It's nothing to worry about." The boy continues to lie to his father when he claims, "I'm taking it easy," when he clearly isn't. He doesn't believe that the medicine will work, and even when his father assures him that "You aren't going to die […] People don't die with a fever of one hundred and two," he refuses to believe him until his father explains exactly how different types of thermometers and temperature scales work. Having spent all day hiding his true feelings, the boy knows how people are capable of dishonesty and fears his father is lying. It is only when the boy and his father talk openly that the former's fear is overcome. The boy asks when he is going to die, in response to which the father finally pushes his son to elaborate on what he's thinking about. This is how the father learns that, because the boy lacked vital information—that is, because he was making assumptions amidst a sort of silence—the boy had misunderstood the difference between Celsius with Fahrenheit, and that his fever reading on the latter was nothing to be concerned about. The boy's father then tries to explain the measurements by comparing them to miles and kilometers, using clear, explicit communication to assuage the child's fears. Of course, if they had been more willing to discuss both the illness and their feelings from the beginning, there never would have been such a needless misunderstanding. Instead, a prolonged miscommunication born of mutual silence created traumatic consequences. - Theme: Masculinity and Heroism. Description: The book that the father reads to his son in "A Day's Wait" is notably a book about pirates—men who embody toughness, bravery, and absolute autonomy; who chase after danger and meet death with pride and refuse to show weakness until the last. The mention of this book suggests that the boy is following the example of famous male heroes when he forces himself to be so stoic in the face of supposed death. Indeed, the boy's behavior reflects the fatalistic heroism that is on display in much of Hemingway's work. Here, Hemingway specifically positions ideal masculinity as a combination of courage and composure in the face of death. Though the boy's unnecessary trauma, however, the story also exposes the potential harm of such strict (and in today's world, decidedly outdated) standards of masculinity. The ideals of toughness and self-assurance in fact lead the boy to engage in damaging emotional restraint. Before the boy even hears the temperature that causes him to think he is dying, he tries to bear his painful symptoms with staunch stoicism, refusing to go back to bed despite his pounding head, chills, and bodily aches. However, pushing himself to dress and go downstairs like normal does nothing but aggravate his poor condition. As his father observes, "[W]hen I came downstairs he was dressed, sitting by the fire, looking a very sick and miserable boy of nine years." The boy lingers in a state of acute torment for the rest of the day, as Hemingway illustrates in his tortured stare: "His face was very white and there were dark areas under his eyes. He lay still in the bed and seemed very detached from what was going on"; "[H]e was looking at the foot of the bed, looking very strangely"; "I […] found him in exactly the position I had left him, white-faced, but with the tops of his cheeks-flushed by the fever, staring still, as he had stared, at the foot of the bed." The terrible toll of his long day spent silently awaiting his death sentence is also illustrated in his unusual behavior the day after, when "he cried very easily at little things that were of no importance." He could be crying excessively because the normal effort to master his emotions feels too painfully reminiscent of the previous day's ordeal, or because he is still struggling to process the overwhelming grim fear that haunted him for so many hours. Either way, he is clearly suffering from the aftereffects of his silent, drawn-out martyrdom. Ironically, in many respects the boy's father actually presents a contrast to Hemingway's typically emotionally reserved male characters. When the young boy falls ill, readers can see immediately how he enjoys a loving and protective relationship with his father. The father tells his son that he should go back to bed three times, suggesting he would hardly think less of the young boy for his bout of weakness or dismiss his condition as nothing serious. That he lovingly calls his son "Schatz," or darling, further reveals his willingness to be openly warm and affectionate. Nevertheless, the father still exhibits several stereotypically masculine behaviors, such as following a heavily paternalistic attitude towards his son that leads him to exclude the boy from a key conference with the doctor. While his choice to shelter his son is well-intentioned, it is also patronizing. The idea that women and children should be sheltered from potential danger or distress, leaving men to bear the burden alone, promotes the false assumption that only men can maintain their wits and composure and respond with bravery and rationality. Furthermore, the father spends his day hunting quail while his son is sick, effectively killing as his son thinks he's dying. This again connects masculinity with death, and specifically with control or bravery in its face. Hunting is also a typically masculine pursuit associated with men providing for their families; yet by going out to shoot quail, the father has basically abandoned his son when the boy needed him most. This again points to a sort of paradox or folly inherent to hypermasculine heroism. Learning from his father's example, the boy in turn tries to shelter his family by keeping them away from his bedside, where they might catch his fatal illness while caring for him or experience terrible grief while watching him die. Yet the boy's pursuit of a fatalistic and selfless death does nothing but leave him terrified and isolated as he both denies himself the comfort of his family's presence at his "deathbed" and prolongs his tragic delusion. Unfortunately, in trying to emulate a heroic martyr's stoic embrace of death, the boy makes his father's mistake of assuming that he knows what's best for everyone else. His father believed that what was best for the boy was not hearing about his illness; now, the boy believes that what is best for his family is not seeing him suffer. When they withhold information to spare people pain, the father and son not only engage in an unnecessary martyrdom, but also directly limit the free will of those people who deserve to make their own choices. As the story illustrates, such overprotectiveness is too often a paternalistic mistake that men feel entitled to make when they feel heroically duty-bound to exercise their "superior" nerve and brains. Even as Hemingway's story present a certain ideal of masculinity, it also implicitly links this "heroism" to a distinct sense of miscommunication and suffering. As such, the story is as much a condemnation as it is an appreciation of traditional fatalistic heroism, the insistence on which does little to actually spare another from pain. - Theme: Maturity and Innocence. Description: In "A Day's Wait," the nine-year-old Schatz clearly attempts to emulate the adults around him. He approaches his impending "death" with a brave face that not only reflects the story's conception of ideal masculinity, but further points to the child's equation of growing up with a sense of stoic acceptance and lack of emotionality. His father, meanwhile, reveals a glaring ignorance of his son's maturation, often treating the boy like a much younger child than he is. The father's blind paternalism heightens the boy's internal suffering by leaving him in the dark to fear the worst, and failing to recognize and soothe the boy's fears when they appear in a more muted manner than a young child's openly emotional demeanor. Hemingway's story ultimately reveals the broader parental urge to deny their kids autonomy and fail to recognize when they're growing up. Throughout the story, the father ignores his son's efforts to exhibit maturity and acts as if the boy is younger than he is, effectively denying that he is growing up. The boy doesn't want to be coddled, claiming that he is "all right" and does not need to go back to bed like his father tells him to. When his father offers to read to him so he won't be bored, the boy doesn't admit that he would like to be read aloud to, only saying, "If you want to." He won't indulge any desire for company or comfort, instead telling his father to leave him if "it"—that is, watching him "die"—"bothers" him. Later, the boy refuses to let anyone else into the room, insisting, "You can't come in […] You mustn't get what I have." The boy's belief that maturity means hiding all weakness and pretending to know everything may be misguided, but his father has not helped him to figure out a true path to maturity, preferring instead to act as if his son is still a simple child. Furthermore, that his father affectionately calls his son "Schatz," a German term of endearment that means "darling" or "sweetheart," reflects love and affection yet is also somewhat infantilizing—further suggesting that the father fails to see his child as a maturing young man. When the boy says, "I don't worry…but I can't help from thinking," his father responds, "Don't think…Just take it easy." Telling someone "Don't think" is rarely good advice, and here it suggests how the father believes he can still control how his son perceives the world. He imagines that his son respects his judgment unquestionably rather than holding distinct, informed opinions. The father's ignorance of his son's maturing consciousness leads him to exclude the boy from his discussion with the doctor, thinking it unnecessary to involve his "Schatz" because the boy would just follow his father's lead and not become alarmed. Because he does not think of his son as intellectually complex, he is unable to recognize the boy's internal distress after the doctor's visit, perceiving his mental agitation ("He […] seemed very detached from what was going on," "[H]e was not following what I was reading," "[H]e was looking at the foot of the bed, looking very strangely") as physical affliction: "I thought perhaps he was a little lightheaded." The father can effectively read the boy's bodily symptoms, despite his protests to the contrary—"I saw he looked ill. He was shivering, his face was white, and he walked slowly as though it ached to move […] 'You better go back to bed.' 'No. I'm all right.' 'You go to bed.'"—but he cannot perceive his son's separate thoughts. However, his son is certain that he has legitimate knowledge of his own. He refuses to simply accept his father's vague assurances that "Your temperature is all right […] It's nothing to worry about," and "Of course" the medicine "will do […] good." His father could have explained to him exactly what the doctor had said—that "One [pill] was to bring down the fever, another a purgative, the third to overcome an acid condition. The germs of influenza can only exist in an acid condition, he explained. He seemed to know all about influenza and said there was nothing to worry about if the fever did not go above one hundred and four degrees"—but he does not think such a detailed answer is necessary to reassure his son when his word alone should be enough. Even when the father finally addresses his son's specific fear—"You aren't going to die […] People don't die with a fever of one hundred and two"—the boy retorts, to his father's surprise, "I know they do. At school in France the boys told me you can't live with forty-four degrees." The boy no longer trusts his father's assurances after his father wouldn't tell him the medical truth to begin with, and requires thoroughly factual evidence to convince him. The next day, the boy becomes more childlike, crying "very easily at little things that were of no importance." This change in demeanor from how he carried himself at the beginning of the story suggests how he had freely expressed his feelings in the past. As a young child, his emotions were much closer to the surface and more transparent. As he has aged, he has developed control over he expresses his emotions, but his father underestimates this self-restraint and still expects the boy's feelings to surface. When the boy exhibits no familiar signs of distress, his father wrongly assumes he is unconcerned. The dramatic revelation of his son's developing consciousness and strengthening willpower will hopefully lead the father to overcome his resistance to the boy's maturation, because otherwise the boy is dependent on other, less suitable figures to guide him. When his father won't talk to him about death and adulthood, he gets his ideas from unrealistic popular narratives (The Book of Pirates, for example) or other flawed sources. When "A Day's Wait" was first published in 1933, Hemingway's own son would have been ten years old, barely older than "Schatz." An older child's inevitable maturation and its accompanying pitfalls would clearly have been on the author's mind as he witnessed his own son at that age, and in this story he rebukes the parent's reluctance to accept his child's evolution into a more independent and equally complex being. - Climax: The young boy asks his father when he's going to die. - Summary: The unnamed narrator of this story, the father of a nine-year-old boy nicknamed Schatz, notices one morning that his son seems ill. He urges the boy to go back to bed, but the boy denies that he's sick until his father feels his forehead and confirms that he has a fever. The doctor comes to examine the boy. He takes the boy's temperature and tells them that the boy has a fever of 102 degrees. Downstairs, the doctor gives medicine to the boy's father and diagnoses the boy with mild influenza, which he says isn't dangerous as long as the fever stays below 104 degrees. When the doctor leaves, the father reads to his son aloud from a book about pirates. He notes that the boy looks very pale and inattentive. Eventually the boy tells his father that he doesn't have to stay in the room with him, "if it bothers you." His father denies this, but the boy only repeats himself, "No, I mean you don't have to stay if it's going to bother you." Reasoning that his son must be feeling a bit lightheaded, the father gives him more medicine and leaves him alone to rest. The father heads outside with his dog to hunt quail. The landscape is entirely coated with frozen sleet. He kills several birds with difficulty due to the icy conditions, but he is happy to have found a covey of quail so close by and looks forward to hunting more birds in the future. When he returns home, the father learns that the boy hasn't allowed anyone to come into his room, insisting that no one else must catch his fever. The father goes in, anyway, and takes his temperature again: 102.4 degrees. The boy asks about the temperature, and his father says it's nothing to worry about. The boy admits that he can't help thinking about it. His father gives him the next dose of medicine, and the boy asks if it will do any good. His father assures him that it will, but the boy still seems preoccupied. Suddenly the boy asks his father what time he's going to die. The father is startled and reassures him that he isn't going to die. The boy replies that he heard the doctor say his temperature was 102 degrees, and he learned from his classmates in France that a fever over 44 degrees is deadly. The father realizes that his son has spent the whole day waiting to die. He explains to the boy that France and America use different thermometers and units of temperature, just like they use different units of distance—miles and kilometers. The boy simply says "Oh," but his whole body relaxes. The story ends with the father noting how the next day the boy had loosened his "hold over himself" so much that "he cried very easily at things that were of no importance."

- Genre: Fiction; short story; literary realism - Title: A Family Supper - Point of view: First-person - Setting: Kamakura, Japan - Character: Narrator. Description: The narrator of "A Family Supper," who remains unnamed, is a young Japanese man who is living in America when he learns that his mother has died by eating a poisonous fish called fugu. At the beginning of the story, the narrator reveals that before he learned of his mother's death, "[his] relationship with his parents had become somewhat strained." Two years after his mother's death, the narrator returns to his childhood home in Kamakura, Japan to visit his father and his younger sister, Kikuko. During the his first conversation with his sister, he informs her that he is no longer with his girlfriend Vicki, and that he is unsure whether or not he will return to California. While remembering the fact that they used to believe that a ghost haunted the well in their backyard, Kikuko tells her brother that their mother "never blamed [him]" and that she did not think that she and the narrator's father raised him as well as they did Kikuko. The suggestion that the narrator's decision to move to America deeply hurt his parents is confirmed later, when the father explains that the mother did not understand the narrator's choices in life. During the climax of the story, the narrator confronts his father about his business partner Watanabe's suicide, and the father not only reveals the violent details of the suicide that he previously withheld, but also admits his hope that both of his children will move back home. However, it seems unlikely at the end of the story that the narrator really will return for good. - Character: Father. Description: The narrator's father, who also remains unnamed throughout the story, is a Japanese man of retirement age. The narrator describes him as stoic, "formidable-looking," and "proud of the pure samurai blood that ran in the family." At the beginning of the story, the father picks the narrator up from the airport, where they have an awkward conversation about the collapse of his law firm and the fact that Watanabe, his partner at the firm, committed suicide out of shame as a result. During this first conversation, the narrator's father says that he considers Watanabe "a man of principle." When he gives his son a tour of his home, which includes a model of a battleship that he has taken up building for a hobby, it becomes clear that his wife's death, as well as the death of his partner Watanabe, has caused him a great deal of loneliness and loss of purpose. During a pivotal conversation that serves as the climax of the story, he reveals that his partner also killed his own wife and children, and he says that "there are other things besides work," a statement that charts a change in his perspective with regard to Watanabe's suicide. During this vulnerable moment, he expresses the hope that both of his children will return home, but neither of them appears interested in the prospect. - Character: Mother. Description: Though the narrator's mother is not alive during the short story, her presence looms large in the lives of her family members. At the beginning of the story, the narrator explains that his mother died a "hideously painful death" after eating an improperly prepared poisonous fish called fugu at a friend's house, where she was invited for dinner. Her death's connection to upholding conventional expectations of etiquette furthers the theme of the painful consequences of sticking to traditional values. Throughout the course of the story, the mother takes on a ghost-like quality. First, while discussing a childhood belief that the well in the backyard was haunted by a ghost, the narrator tells his sister Kikuko that he sees a ghost in the form of an old woman in a white kimono, and she thinks that he is trying to scare her. Later, the narrator sees a photograph of an old woman by the same description on the wall, and his father is surprised to discover that the narrator does not recognize the woman in the photograph as his mother. When the father takes the son on a tour of the home, he reveals his suspicion that the mother's death was not an accident, but a suicide, explaining that she suffered from "many worries. And some disappointments." - Character: Kikuko. Description: Kikuko is the narrator's bubbly and energetic younger sister, who returns to her childhood home from university in Osaka for the family supper. Though she is obedient to her father, her behavior at the house demonstrates that she has an inclination toward independence and is beginning to shake off the traditional gender role that her father wants her to fulfill. In her first private conversation with her brother, she smokes and hides her cigarette, and reveals that she is interested in hitchhiking in America with her boyfriend Suichi. She also tells her brother that their father did not tell him the complete story about Watanabe's suicide, explaining that Watanabe not only killed himself, but also violently murdered his wife and two children. In this way, Kikuko serves as a contrast to the narrator's neutrality when it comes to confronting the tragedy of recent events. Without her intervention, the narrator might not have initiated the vulnerable conversation about life, death, and work with his father that occurs toward the end of the story. The siblings' father says that he would like Kikuko to move home, but she does not seem to intend to do so. - Character: Watanabe. Description: Like the narrator's mother, Watanabe is never physically present during the events of the short story. However, the narrator, his father, and his sister discuss the fact that he killed himself after the collapse of the father's law firm several times, and, like the mother of the family, the violent nature of his passing seems to haunt the family. While talking with the narrator in the backyard, Kikuko reveals that Watanabe murdered himself by stabbing himself in the gut--recalling the way in which Japanese samurai committed acts of honor suicide—and subsequently murdered his wife and two children. - Theme: Heritage and Tradition. Description: "A Family Supper" follows an unnamed narrator returning to his native Japan from the United States two years after learning of his mother's death. Though the story is not clearly set during a particular period of time, readers can assume that the story is set in the modern day due to the presence of modern technology and language familiar to 21st-century readers. This modern setting creates a clear tension between the progressive sensibilities of the story's unnamed narrator and the perspective of his parents' generation. The narrator's observations about the circumstances of his mother's passing, as well as his conversations with his father and younger sister Kikuko, reveal conflicting perspectives on the role of traditional values in modern life. Ishiguro questions the value of upholding tradition for tradition's sake by demonstrating the ways in which his characters' tendency to fulfill traditional cultural expectations has painful consequences in their lives. Ishiguro quickly establishes the commitment to honor and self-sacrifice prioritized by Japan's older generations. Central to the story is the death of the protagonist's mother, who died after eating a fish called fugu that is poisonous to humans if prepared incorrectly. According to the narrator, the mother did not typically eat fugu—a traditional Japanese dish popularized during the war—but ate it in order to avoid offending a friend who invited her to dinner. Her resultant death must have been "hideously painful." Another key event is the suicide of Watanabe, the narrator's father's business partner. During the car ride home from the airport, the narrator's father explains that his law firm's collapse led Watanabe to commit suicide, an act that corresponds with the long history of honor suicide in Japan. In imperial Japan, the act of killing oneself after committing an unethical or shameful act was an acceptable, and even obligatory, form of penance. The ritual form of honor suicide practiced by Japanese samurai, called seppuku in Japan and hara-kiri in the West, entailed disemboweling one's stomach with a knife. The narrator's father, himself "particularly proud of the samurai blood that ran in the family," praises Watanabe on two occasions throughout the story, calling him a "man of principle and honour." The father's praise suggests that he approves of his partner's decision to kill himself after the dissolution of the law firm. For both Watanabe and the narrator's mother, it's clear that rigid respect for tradition has led to immense suffering. The story thus implicitly questions the worth of continuing to honor to such cultural expectations. By populating "A Family Supper" with intimate conversations between the narrator and his father about ethics and family values, Ishiguro demonstrates the narrator's youthful individualism and highlights how it contrasts with traditional Japanese cultural expectations. While discussing his father's new hobby, building model battleships, the narrator and his father briefly talk about his father's time serving in the Japanese Navy. The father assumes that his son doesn't "believe in war," which the son admits is true. Their differences in opinion demonstrate a marked contrast between the institutions and values that father and son respect, which Ishiguro suggests is at least partly due to their generational differences. The narrator's father's respect for Watanabe is complicated by the fact that he seems to adjust his assessment of the suicide at the end of the short story. When he finally opens up about the suicide during a private moment with his son, he admits that Watanabe brutally killed his wife and two children before killing himself, and concludes that "there are other things besides work" that one should value in life. The father's revelation suggests that the murder-suicide has him to reconsider what he once thought was honorable: self-sacrifice, stoicism, and a firm commitment to one's career. This incident, coupled with the death of his unhappy wife and the absence of his adult children, seems to have convinced the father that his generation's loyalty to these qualities may have destructive consequences in the lives of individuals and their loved ones. Furthermore, Ishiguro's decision to include a paranormal element in the story, the presence of a "ghost" in the backyard of the narrator's childhood home, illustrates that the death of traditional values is perhaps inevitable. When they were children, the narrator and his sister believed that the well in their backyard was haunted by a ghost. When Kikuko asks her brother if he sees a ghost by the well during his visit, he claims that he does, and describes an old woman in a white kimono. Kikuko cannot see the woman and thinks that her brother is trying to scare her. Later in the story, the narrator's father is surprised to find that the narrator does not recognize an old woman in a photograph as his mother. The woman in the photograph matches the description of the ghost. The narrator's failure to recognize his own mother is a result of the amount of time he has spent away from Japan, as well as the way in which his mother's face has changed due to the aging process. In this way, the narrator's moment of misrecognition represents the way in which he has become distanced from his cultural and familial roots. Unlike her brother, the narrator's sister Kikuko cannot see the ghost—which represents both the siblings' mother and the past itself (given that the siblings associate it with childhood memories). The fact that Kikuko, the youngest child in the family, is not "haunted" by the specter of the past suggests that traditions fade despite attempts to uphold them. This theme is even further evidenced by the fact that the siblings' father wants them to move back home to care for him, but that they have both set their sights on futures outside of Japan. Throughout "A Family Supper," Ishiguro questions the worth of cultural expectations and socially constructed values, especially when those values lead to suffering. By juxtaposing his young, Westernized narrator's views with those of the narrator's aging father, Ishiguro suggests that his characters' ideas about ethics are shaped by their ages, generations, and cultures. Furthermore, by demonstrating the ways in which his young characters are alienated from the "haunting" presence of their mother, and how they are largely uninterested in their father's traditional ways, Ishiguro illustrates the difficulty—and perhaps even impossibility—of preserving traditions in a more globalized generation of Japanese youth. - Theme: Gender Roles and Expectations. Description: Though "A Family Supper" has a relatively uneventful plot, the story is rife with instances of cultural and societal expectations. One of the most prevalent of these is the pressure to adhere to traditional gender roles, which exert their influence on every member of the narrator's family. The narrator's father not only embodies the prototypical hard-working, stoic, and self-sacrificing Japanese father, but he also attempts to propagate traditional gender roles through his role as a parent—encouraging his daughter Kikuko, for instance, to step into the role of caregiver following her mother's death. However, despite his attempts to encourage his children to act according to Japanese gender customs, the siblings' desire to forge unique identities for themselves, regardless of gender, appears to ultimately overcome their father's influence. In addition to critiquing the value of unquestioned tradition, then, the story also suggests that traditional gender roles—however influential—are ultimately too restrictive and limiting to persist in the modern world. Ishiguro's depiction of Kikuko focuses in large part on the way in which she has begun to occupy some of the submissive, domestic, and maternal qualities expected of a traditional Japanese woman. The narrator's father praises Kikuko for completing domestic tasks and places her in the role of a mother or caretaker. For example, he calls her "a good girl" for preparing the food to be served at dinner, and he excludes her from a private conversation with the narrator by ordering her to make a pot of tea. The narrator notices Kikuko adhering to her father's orders whenever he is physically present, even if those orders are nonverbal. For example, describing the father's actions when he finishes looking at the photograph, the narrator says: "He held it out to Kikuko. Obediently, my sister rose to her feet…and returned the picture to the wall." Her tendency to submit to male authority, much like her willingness to complete domestic tasks, reflects her understanding of gender expectations of a respectable Japanese woman devoted to her family. At least within the confines of her childhood home, Kikuko temporarily fulfills these expectations, seemingly out of respect for her father. Ishiguro suggests that the influence of traditional gender expectations is so strong that both the narrator and his sister have begun to mimic certain gendered behaviors of their parents. The narrator, who has returned to Japan after living alone in the U.S., remarks to his father that he has left behind "empty rooms" in America, directly paralleling the remarks his father makes while explaining that their house in Japan is now too large for him after the death of his wife and the departure of his children. The protagonist's narration also emphasizes the fact that Kikuko fulfills her father's requests even though she often expresses hesitation before doing so. Kikuko's submission to her father's domestic demands parallels the relationship between her mother's death and gender-based ideas of etiquette. Her mother ate the poisonous fugu, a dish she "always refused to eat" in the past, because she did not want to offend a friend who invited her to dinner. However, it's also clear in the narrator's family that the influence of traditional Japanese gender roles, though still strong, is waning. Because the siblings' mother has died and their father is aging out of his ability to function as the head of the household, Kikuko and her brother are expected to step into their adult roles, suggesting that family structures and aging are wrapped up in the inheritance of traditional gender roles. Yet even as the narrator and his sister embody several features of their respective gender roles, they also challenge gender expectations in marked ways throughout the story. Despite Kikuko's apparent domesticity and obedience, Ishiguro reveals that she has not truly adopted all of the maternal or daughterly qualities her father expects of her, and she even rejects some of these qualities outright. For example, she smokes cigarettes (a habit she is clearly trying to hide, given that she attempts to cover up her cigarette butts in the garden) and proclaims a love for hitchhiking. Perhaps most important in terms of her rebellious qualities is her confession that, like her brother, she is interested in living in America. Like Kikuko, the narrator himself also moves away from the gendered expectations that his father still holds. The father comments more than once that he considers Watanabe, his former business partner, an honorable man for committing suicide after their law firm failed. Though the father seems to question this perception later on, it also seems that he wishes the narrator would follow Watanabe's masculine example by putting honor above everything else. However, the narrator clearly abhors Watanabe's actions and seems uninterested in becoming the kind of honorable businessman that his Watanabe and his own father epitomize. Finally, the narrator and Kikuko's reluctance to move home and take care of their father serves as a pointed rejection of the demands of traditional gender roles. Though it is clear that the father in the story wants both of his children to move back to their childhood home in Japan, Ishiguro implies that neither the narrator nor his sister plans on doing so. When the father asks the narrator if he plans to stay in Japan now that he has come to visit, he responds with ambivalence, and though Kikuko is also not certain about her future, she confides in her brother about her desire to move away from her boyfriend and her childhood home. In this way, though Japanese tradition dictates that respectable sons and daughters stay home to care for their aging parents, both children express very little interest in adhering to this custom. Gender roles exert a strong influence in "A Family Supper;" the story's narrator and his sister in particular fulfill many of the respective gender expectations of males and females in the domestic sphere. In fact, the narrator and Kikuko perform many of the habits and daily tasks of their mother and father, suggesting that they have learned from their parents' gender performances. Kikuko has filled the mother's role as the family caretaker to some extent, while the narrator may have become a lonely bachelor like his father. However, the fact that the siblings often diverge significantly from these roles, and that they both demonstrate a clear desire to leave the space in which they learned gendered habits, suggests that tradition is perhaps easier to circumvent for young people who are unmarried, relatively independent, and capable of imagining alternate futures for themselves beyond those prescribed for them by gendered traditions. - Theme: Grief, Absence, and Presence. Description: "A Family Supper" centers around the death of the protagonist's mother, and so it is clear from the start that grief is one Ishiguro's primary thematic concerns. The consequences of the mother's passing—as well as the circumstances that led up to that unexpected event—are present on every page. By highlighting both literal and figurative forms of absence in a brief depiction of an uncomfortable family dinner, Ishiguro demonstrates the way in which grief fixates on a departed person's nonexistence, while simultaneously allowing their memory to haunt the spaces they have left behind. Though the narrator's family cannot speak candidly with one another about the depth of their grief, they express their complicated experiences of grief by acknowledging other painful absences (and presences) in the family home.  Ishiguro employs empty space as a motif to highlight the ways in which the physical absence of the narrator's mother is felt by the members of his family. The sudden absence of the narrator's mother is emphasized by the conspicuous quantity of empty rooms in the house. While giving the narrator a tour of the changes to his childhood home, the narrator's father describes the empty rooms as useless and excessive, especially now that there is no one but him left to occupy them. Later, in a moment of vulnerability, the father suggests that his children move back into the home. In this way, not only is the mother's death brought into relief by her physical disappearance from the rooms she once occupied, but the father's largely unspoken grief is made apparent by his request that his children fill those unoccupied spaces once again. The presence of ghosts and the phenomenon of "haunting" in Ishiguro's narrative adds further depth to this tension between absence and presence. The ghost suggests that the characters in "A Family Supper" utilize the paranormal to navigate the irony of the fact that their mother is suddenly absent from their lives, but that the tragedy of her death makes them feel her presence more acutely than ever. The well in the backyard, which the siblings thought was haunted during their childhood, represents the narrator's mother and her memory. The first time the siblings mention their mother is in reference to the stories she told about the ghosts in the backyard. Later, the narrator looks out at the well while having an emotional conversation about death with his father, suggesting that he is thinking about his mother's passing. The well is haunted by a ghost whom the narrator describes as an elderly woman wearing a white kimono. At the end of the story, during the family supper for which the story is named, the narrator finally recognizes an elderly woman of the same description in a photograph as his mother. Though the narrator has returned home because of his mother's death, it is not until he recognizes the image of his elderly mother as "the ghost" that he appears to acknowledge the fact that by traveling to America, he missed a large portion of her life. Like his father's description of the house's empty rooms, the narrator's acknowledgment of the painful absence of his mother's death is mediated through entities that are still present: the ghost and its accompanying photograph. "A Family Supper" is saturated with numerous silences and lengthy pauses in conversation. These silences—literal absences of words—further highlight that which is ultimately inexpressible about grief, as well as the family's inability to verbally process the tragic nature of the mother's death. Throughout the narrator's visit, the family discusses the fact that their father's law firm partner, Watanabe, disemboweled himself. The narrator eventually learns that Watanabe also murdered his wife and two children. Rather than focusing on the death that has brought them together, the family fixates on this murder-suicide, again using a proxy to confront the loss that affects them most. The most significant silence in the short story occurs during the dinner itself. The lack of sustained conversation during the dinner seems to be primarily due to the family's inability to address the uncomfortable fact that they are eating fish, the same food that killed their mother. When the narrator asks his father what kind of fish he has prepared, he refuses to answer him directly, responding that it is "just fish." With the exception of a brief moment when the narrator's father mentions his suspicion that the mother's death was a suicide, the narrator's family largely avoids the topic and conceals specific details about her "hideously painful" death. The family's fixation on the violence of Watanabe's own suicide—and their more substantive conversations about its ethical ramifications—proposes that they are all grappling with the mother's death internally, but that they can only manage to articulate that struggle indirectly. Employing several forms of presence and absence—in the materiality of the home and its rooms, in the mysterious occurrences of the paranormal, and in the revelations and omissions that form the family's uncomfortable conversations—Ishiguro explores how grief seeks to understand and overcome the pain of losing a loved one. Though the family has difficulty frankly discussing the pain of the mother's death, the fact that they focus their conversations on emptiness, haunting, and silence, qualities associated with the sudden absence of a human being, suggests that they are still navigating profound grief. However, they are doing so by using a less painful shared language: that of their home, their childhood memories, and stories about someone outside the family. - Climax: The narrator confronts his father about the details of Watanabe's suicide. - Summary: The narrator, a young Japanese man who has been living in America, explains that fugu, a fish popularized in Japan after World War II, has a "special significance" to him because it killed his mother. His mother ate fugu, which is poisonous if prepared incorrectly, after a friend served it to her for dinner. The narrator adds that he learned the details of his mother's death two years after her passing, when he traveled to Japan to visit his family. The narrator's father picks him up from the airport and drives him to his childhood home. The narrator mentions the collapse of his father's law firm, and his father explains that he considers his partner Watanabe, who was so ashamed about the firm's collapse that he committed suicide, a "man of principle." They are soon greeted by the narrator's younger sister Kikuko. Kikuko is quiet around her father, but becomes more animated when he leaves the siblings alone. When the siblings go to the backyard to chat, Kikuko tells the narrator that she and her boyfriend are considering hitchhiking through America. The siblings then discuss the well in the backyard and the ghost that they used to believe haunted it. The narrator mentions Watanabe's suicide, and Kikuko reveals that Watanabe murdered his wife and two children before killing himself. Without responding directly to this news, the narrator tells Kikuko that he sees the ghost, and describes her as an old woman in a white kimono. Kikuko thinks he is trying to scare her. The siblings' father sends Kikuko to finish making dinner while he takes the narrator on a tour of the house. He shows the narrator several empty rooms, and then a single cluttered room that houses a model battleship. The father briefly confesses his belief that the narrator's mother committed suicide. When the family sits down to dinner, the narrator examines a photograph that depicts an old woman in a white kimono. The narrator's father is surprised that he doesn't recognize her as his own mother. When they begin to eat, the narrator asks the father what kind of fish he has prepared, and he replies: "Just fish." After a long silence, the narrator asks if there is enough fish for seconds. The father replies that there is plenty, and they all reach for more. After dinner, the narrator sits with his father in the tea-room. The narrator confronts his father about Watanabe's suicide. His father admits that Watanabe murdered his family, an act he labels "a mistake". The story ends as the father expresses his hope that his children will come back home to live with him. He admits his suspicion that the narrator will return to America, but believes that Kikuko will come home after finishing college.

- Genre: War Novel - Title: A Farewell to Arms - Point of view: First-person; (Frederic Henry is the narrator.) - Setting: Italy and Switzerland during World War I, 1916–1918 - Character: Lieutenant Frederic Henry. Description: An American who volunteers for the Italian ambulance corps before the United States joins the war. Various Italian characters also refer to him as "Tenente" (Lieutenant) or "Federico" (Frederic). Henry is a classic Hemingway hero in that he is a stoic who does his duty without complaint. Yet Henry also undergoes tremendous development through the course of the novel. At the beginning of the novel, he has never experienced true loss, believes that war is dreadful but necessary, has a lust for adventure, drinking, and women, and sees Catherine as just another diversion. As the stakes of the war intensify, however, he becomes deeply pessimistic about the war and realizes that his love for Catherine is the only thing he is willing to commit himself to. - Character: Catherine Barkley. Description: An English nurse in Italy, she bears the spiritual scars of having lost her fiancé in the Battle of the Somme. When she meets Henry, she is ready to throw herself into a new relationship in order to escape the loss of the old one, enlisting Henry to pretend that they are deeply in love almost as soon as they meet. Emotionally damaged, she can never bring herself to marry Henry, but wants to be with him in an idealized union apart from the rest of the world. Through the constant understatements and deprecating humor in her dialogue, even at moments of extreme danger such as the labor that goes wrong, she reveals herself to be a stoic match for Henry, the female side of the Hemingway hero, who does much and says little. - Theme: War. Description: A Farewell to Arms takes place in Italy during World War I, and the lives of all the characters are marked by the war. Most of the characters, from Henry and Catherine down to the soldiers and shop owners whom Henry meets, are humanists who echo Hemingway's view that war is a senseless waste of life. The few characters that support the war are presented as zealots to be either feared, as in the case of the military police, or pitied, such as the young Italian patriot Gino. To Henry, the war is, at first, a necessary evil from which he distracts himself through drinking and sex. By the end of the novel, his experiences of the war have convinced him that it is a fundamentally unjust atrocity, which he seeks to escape at all costs with Catherine. - Theme: Love and Loss. Description: Much is made throughout the novel of Henry's aversion to falling in love. Yet in spite of his natural cynicism about love, he falls for Catherine. At the other end of the spectrum, Catherine craves love to an unstable degree, to the exclusion of everything else in the world. But their relationship is always surrounded by loss: the loss of Catherine's former lover to war before the novel begins, and the foreshadowing of the loss Henry will have to live with at the novel's end, when Catherine dies in childbirth. In fact, the incredible intensity of Henry and Catherine's relationship seems almost dependent on the loss surrounding them. Without the specter of loss threatening them from every side, Henry and Catherine would not have had to fight so hard to be together. - Theme: Reality vs. Fantasy. Description: Throughout A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway shows how the harsh truths of reality always infiltrate and corrupt the distracting fantasies that characters create to make themselves feel better. In terms of war, Hemingway shows how ideals such as glory and honor quickly fade when one is confronted with the stark or absurd realities of battle—for instance, when Henry is maimed by a mortar shell while eating macaroni and cheese. Many characters create escapist fantasies to make the war around them easier to bear. Catherine pretends that she and Henry are deeply in love to escape the pain of her fiancé's death in battle. Henry's fellow officers celebrate America's entry into the war by drinking in a hospital that is being cleared out to make room for casualties. Most tragically, Henry and Catherine retreat from the world to live an idealized private life in the mountains of Switzerland, only to have the specter of reality return when Catherine and her baby die during childbirth. - Theme: Self vs. Duty. Description: Henry is an ambulance driver and Catherine is a nurse, so each of them has a responsibility to others during wartime. However, as Henry's love for Catherine deepens and Henry begins to see that the war is unjust, he begins to adopt a philosophy of "every man for himself." When the Italian Army fractures during its retreat and the military police Henry because he is an officer, Henry makes a final break from the army and throws off his responsibilities. Following the priest's advice to find something he can commit to, for the second half of the novel Henry's chief and only concern is for Catherine. Even after escaping the war, neither of them wants the responsibility of having a child. By turning away from the world and trying to seek their own happiness, Henry and Catherine find more meaning in their relationship than in any other obligation. - Theme: Manhood. Description: Henry is a classic Hemingway man: a stoic man of action with a personal code of honor who also enjoys the pleasures of life. For instance, the three doctors who fail to treat Henry's leg are the antithesis of Hemingway men. Besides being timid and unsure, they fail the test of manhood by refusing to drink with Henry when he offers. While Henry has many attributes of a Hemingway man at the start of the novel, he nonetheless evolves over the course of the novel. He gives up the macho posturing and womanizing of his fellow officers in favor of a life of commitment to Catherine. He also asserts his individualism by refusing to participate in what he sees as a corrupt and pointless war. - Theme: Religion. Description: A saying that came out of the trenches, or foxholes, of World War I was, "There are no atheists in foxholes." Henry, who sees the world as a bitter realist, does not love God. However, he is not above turning to religion in times of crisis, as can be seen in the St. Anthony medallion he puts under his shirt before going into battle or his moving, desperate prayer when Catherine is dying. While Henry never becomes a conventionally religious man, he does follow the advice of the priest and Count Greffi, who in separate conversations outline a sort of humanist theology for Henry: he should commit with religious devotion to the person he loves, who is Catherine. Even this personal form of religion, however, fails Henry in the end. - Climax: Catherine Barkley dies during childbirth. - Summary: It is World War I, in 1916, and the Italian army is trying to hold off the united forces of Austria and Germany. The narrator, Lieutenant Frederic Henry, is an American who has joined the Italian ambulance corps as a volunteer. As the novel opens, Henry is about to take his winter leave. He spends the evening with his fellow officers, who mock the regiment's priest for his celibacy. Then the officers go to the officers' brothel for the night. When Henry returns from leave, his roommate Rinaldi introduces him to two English nurses, Catherine Barkley and Helen Ferguson, and although Rinaldi had been interested in Catherine, the immediate chemistry between her and Henry is obvious. On their first meeting, she tells him the sad story of her fiancé who was killed in the war, whose riding crop she still carries. As their flirting deepens in the following days, Henry is able to coax kisses from her, and she asks him to say he loves her before acknowledging that this is only a game. Soon, Henry goes to the first major battle in which he has taken part. He is innocently eating macaroni and cheese with the other ambulance drivers when a mortar shell crashes through his bunker, killing a driver and injuring Henry's leg. Henry is taken to an American hospital in Milan for treatment. When he arrives, he discovers the hospital is badly managed and the doctors are incompetent. Fortunately one doctor, Valentini, is able to remove the shrapnel from Henry's leg. While Henry is recuperating, Catherine Barkley is transferred to the hospital and when Henry sees her again, he realizes he loves her. She begins to sneak into his room at night and they conduct a love affair all summer. But Henry eventually has to return to the front. Before he leaves, Catherine tells him she is pregnant with his child. Henry returns to Gorizia and is plunged into battle. The Austrian and German armies have broken through the Italian lines, and a massive retreat from the front begins. Since the main road is blocked with so many vehicles, Henry and his ambulance drivers try to cut across the countryside. They become stuck in the mud, and two sergeants they have picked up try to flee rather than help. Henry shoots at them, hitting one. Another ambulance driver, Bonello, executes the sergeant with a bullet to the head. When they reach the Tagliamento River, there is a cordon of Italian military police who, out of paranoia and misguided patriotism, are shooting their own officers for having retreated. Henry escapes by diving into the river. He makes his way back to Milan, having decided that he will no longer fight for the Italian army or participate in the war. Henry learns that Catherine is in the Italian town of Stresa, a resort town near the Swiss border. He goes there, and he and Catherine reunite. Soon, Henry learns from a friendly bartender that the military police are coming to arrest him for desertion. He and Catherine escape across Lake Maggiore to Switzerland, where they successfully pass for tourists and receive visas to stay. In Switzerland, Henry and Catherine live outside the quiet ski town of Montreux, waiting for Catherine's baby to arrive and utterly content with each other's company. They go on holiday to the nearby town of Lausanne to be closer to the hospital. When Catherine's contractions begin, Henry takes her to the hospital. As the day progresses, it is clear that Catherine's labor is becoming increasingly complicated and dangerous. The doctors try to give her a Caesarian operation, but the baby is stillborn and Catherine eventually dies of multiple hemorrhages. Henry, now alone, walks back to his hotel in the rain.

- Genre: Southern Gothic Short Story - Title: A Good Man is Hard to Find - Point of view: Third-person, mostly following the Grandmother - Setting: Twentieth Century Rural South - Character: The Grandmother. Description: The Grandmother is an elderly Southern lady, and Bailey's mother. She is a naïve woman, despite her age, and seems to only think of herself. Against her son's wishes, she brings her cat along in the car, ultimately causing the wreck that leads to the family's deaths. While the rest of the family dresses casually, the Grandmother puts on her best clothing for the trip, including a fancy hat that she believes will ensure she is identified as a proper lady if they get in a car accident and are killed—showing how concerned she is with the appearance of respectability. When speaking with Red Sam Butts, she recites clichés about how much better and simpler things used to be, but when faced with the threat of death by the Misfit she is completely unprepared to face her own mortality. Unable to believe that the Misfit might actually be as amoral as he seems to be, the Grandmother repeatedly insists that he must be good at heart, even as the rest of her family is taken into the woods and executed. At no point does she seem to realize that these are her last seconds alive until she reaches out for the Misfit, in a brief moment of connection, claiming that he too is her son. - Character: The Misfit. Description: The Misfit remains largely a mystery throughout the story. The Grandmother first reads about him in the newspaper—he is an escaped convict and murderer, and is thought to be headed to Florida (like the family). When he comes across the family after their car accident, The Misfit seems to actually just want to get their car fixed and send them on their way. But when the Grandmother shouts out that she knows he is The Misfit, his plans change, and he has each member of the family killed. While the others are being shot, the Misfit carries on a largely philosophical conversation with The Grandmother. He explains that he doesn't view actions in terms of right or wrong—if he does something that other people consider wrong, he gets punished, and that's it. He acknowledges that praying to Jesus might save him, but he claims that he doesn't need that kind of help. The Misfit's attitude, in general, is apathetic toward any notion of morality—he simply does what he wills. When the Grandmother makes her final grand gesture, reaching out to The Misfit as if he were her son, he shoots and kills her. With the story's final line, however, the Misfit chastises his henchman for taking pleasure in the killings, and we get the sense that something about the encounter might have changed him. - Character: Bailey. Description: The patriarch of the story's central family, Bailey is the Grandmother's son and June Star and John Wesley's father. Despite the constant distractions from his mother and children, he simply wants to go on a trip to Florida as planned. He is reluctant to take a detour to visit the house that the Grandmother remembers, and only gives in to stop being harassed by his children. Bailey seems to be a weary and irritable figure, worn down by the constant conflict in his family—particularly his mother's self-righteous nagging and his children's insolence. - Character: Bailey's Wife (the Mother). Description: Bailey's wife, who is never named, is described as having a face "as broad and innocent as a cabbage." She is John Wesley and June Star's mother, and the Grandmother's daughter-in-law. For most of the story, she goes along with whatever the rest of the family is doing. Like the rest of her family, she eventually is executed by the Misfit and his henchmen. - Character: John Wesley. Description: John Wesley, is Bailey's eight-year-old son, a stocky boy with glasses. He is rude and vocal about his opinions, and treats the Grandmother with none of the respect she feels she deserves. John Wesley is the character most interested in visiting the house that The Grandmother speaks of remembering for her youth, and mostly seems curious about the secret panel. - Character: June Star. Description: Seven-year-old June Star (John Wesley's sister) is loudmouthed and critical. When Red Sam's wife teasingly asks her to come live with them, June Star says that she wouldn't live in their home in a million years. As adorable as adults seem to find her, she treats them meanly and without respect. - Character: Red Sam Butts. Description: Red Sam Butts, whose name we first see on billboards along the highway, runs a combination filling station and dancehall that also serves food. He is a fat man with a red face, and he advertises himself as a veteran with a "happy smile." In conversation with the Grandmother, Red Sam expresses nostalgia for a simpler time when you could leave the front door unlocked. The Grandmother eagerly agrees with this and calls Sammy a "good man." Sam states that "a good man is hard to find," and claims that people are terrible nowadays. He also accepts the Grandmother's theory about how Europe is to blame for moral decay in the United States. Throughout, Red Sam Butts is quick to participate in easy nostalgia for a romanticized past, although we also sense that he uses this kind of talk as a part of his sales pitch, and is in fact more callous and greedy than he likes to appear. - Character: Red Sam's Wife. Description: Red Sam's wife serves the family when they stop for sandwiches at Red Sam Butts' filling station. She chats with the family and is chastised for taking too long to serve them by her husband. She is thinks June Star is adorable, even when June Star insults her home. Like her husband, she too puts on a show of "Southern hospitality," and expresses the sentiment that people have gotten less moral in modern times. - Character: Bobby Lee. Description: Bobby Lee is one of the Misfit's two henchmen. He is described as fat and, to June Star, looking like a pig. He follows the Misfit's orders and helps execute members of the family in the forest. At the story's end, after the Misfit has killed the Grandmother, Bobby Lee exclaims, "Some fun!" and the Misfit chastises him for taking pleasure in the killings. - Theme: Violence and Grace. Description: At the story's end, the Misfit says of the Grandmother, "She would of been a good woman . . . if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." Flannery O'Connor may not necessarily believe that being exposed to violence makes us better people, but the message is clear: violence changes us.As Flannery O'Connor said when delivering remarks on the story, "I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace." Up until the very end, each member of the family, most of all the Grandmother, acts almost exclusively out of self-interest. They do not consider questions of right and wrong, religion and grace, or even how to take into account the needs of others. They simply act on their petty instincts without much reflection or moral thought. But when she is subject to violence and forced to confront her own impending death, The Grandmother is suddenly capable of a more authentic and spiritual experience. The Grandmother's everyday considerations are likely the most petty and banal of anyone in her family, but when she is faced with her own mortality she encounters an unexpected moment of "grace"—she feels as if the Misfit were her own son, and reaches out, physically, hoping to save or comfort him. In Christian tradition (and O'Connor was a Catholic) "grace" means the unearned favor of God, but in many of O'Connor's stories, it more specifically signifies a moment of beauty and truth that is divine in nature—an epiphany that can pierce through the harshness or pettiness of life.In the end, however, the Grandmother's "moment of grace" only results in her death. O'Connor's world is a harsh one, and grace does not come easily. Instead, it is often accompanied by suffering, violence, and death. For someone like the Grandmother, who is so caught up in everyday banality and her own self-interest—someone so insensitive to real life—only the harsh awakening delivered by violence can cause her to open her eyes and experience something on a different, more spiritual plane. - Theme: Goodness. Description: The characters of "A Good Man is Hard to Find" live by a variety of moral codes, and both the story's title and the Grandmother's conversation with Red Sam bring up the idea of goodness, and what makes a "good man." In the end, as the Grandmother still insists that the Misfit—who has just murdered her entire family—is a "good man," the question lingers: does being "good" depend on one's internal character or external actions? Or does it depend on something else entirely?The Grandmother seems to believe that being a good person means being honest, respectful, and polite. She tells Red Sam that he is a "good man," even though all she has seen of him is that he puts on a show of friendliness and easy nostalgia in order to help his business. The Grandmother also laments that the family can no longer leave their screen door open without fear of theft—as they used to, apparently. She blames, somehow, Europe for her own country's decay, and criticizes Europeans for spending too much, as frugality seems to be another part of her criteria for decency. Speaking to the Misfit, she repeatedly insists that he would never shoot an old lady. Her sense of goodness is so based on traditional morals (and just tradition) that, even in the face of cold-blooded murder, she thinks that her old age and "respectability" will prevent the Misfit from harming her.To the Misfit, however, the question of what makes a good man seems utterly irrelevant. He claims to have always known that he was not a good person, that he was always different from his sisters and brothers. He views crime casually—a way to make the most of his limited, pointless time on Earth. Other than when he is talking to the Grandmother, he does not seem to compare himself against any standard of good character—and thus he does not consider himself morally inferior or wicked. Instead, he simply does what he wills.O'Connor does not attempt to answer what true "goodness" is, but rather adds complexity to the question itself. By presenting different and even ironic models of a "good person"—the Grandmother, Bailey, Red Sammy—she makes the reader feel the difficulty of the question, and the ambiguity of morality itself. Then, cutting through the heart of the issue entirely, she brings in the Misfit, whose very existence threatens the validity of any kind of objective "goodness." O'Connor's purpose is not to answer such questions, but to dissolve them: to make us more aware of how verbalized concepts and platitudes cannot touch the true mysteries of existence. - Theme: Punishment and Forgiveness. Description: Much of the discussion between the Grandmother and the Misfit concerns ideas of punishment and forgiveness. A vision of the world is presented in the Misfit's words: "Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?" A fundamental question in Flannery O'Connor's Christian worldview is the problem of evil: why do bad things happen to good people, and vice versa?We are given no tidy answers, but O'Connor clearly presents a world in which unjust or at least seemingly-unjust punishment is the norm. The Misfit is unable to remember what he was even first put in prison for—it may have been an unjust punishment, for all we know. The Grandmother, for her own part, ends up causing the death of her entirely family simply by mentioning that she recognizes the Misfit. Even though this is clearly a mistake, the resulting suffering far outweighs the "crime." Here O'Connor shows the unflinching nature of her worldview—Christian faith and action is all-important, but it is never easy. Even as the Grandmother forgives the Misfit for all his misdeeds, and even for intending to kill her, she gains nothing but a fleeting moment of grace, and she is killed anyway. At the story's end, however, we see that that this forgiveness might mean something to the Misfit. Earlier in the conversation he claimed the only reasonable thing to do in an absurd world was to enjoy one's days causing violence and mayhem, but after The Grandmother reaches out and insists that he still must be a good person, The Misfit chastises his henchman for suggesting that there was "pleasure" in the murders. The Misfit has, in the smallest way, been changed by the redemptive power of her forgiveness. Each character suffers beyond what they may "deserve," but that does not rob forgiveness of its value and power. - Theme: Familial Conflict and Familial Love. Description: Only at the story's end do we get the slightest hint of familial love. Not only does the Grandmother shout "Bailey Boy! Bailey Boy!" as the only real affectionate moment inside her family, but she then goes on to refer to the Misfit as her own son. These moments of familial love, arriving only when the Grandmother faces death, appear in stark contrast to the rest of the story, which is filled with family members ignoring each other, arguing, and acting selfishly.In the world Flannery O'Connor portrays, familial conflict is the norm. The story opens with the Grandmother trying to show Bailey an article and being completely ignored. Her grandchildren openly mock her. The Grandmother wants to go to Tennessee, the kids want to do whatever looks fun, and Bailey wants to just keep driving toward Florida. Only by inventing a "secret panel" can the Grandmother trick her family into attempting to stop by a house that she remembers nostalgically. Not only is there constant conflict between the family members and their individual wishes, but this conflict is almost never acknowledged. Instead, the family members mostly ignore and mock one another. Ultimately, it takes the arrival of violence to get any members of the family to display their actual love for each other. When Bailey is taken off to the forest, Bailey's wife cries out. The Grandmother, who is usually so petty and insensitive to life, and always in conflict with her family, cries out "Bailey Boy! Bailey Boy!" as her son is killed. And, finally this familial love extends outward, as the Grandmother reaches for the Misfit, feeling as if he were her own child. Thus, just as violence can bring moments of grace, it can also bring familial love out from beneath everyday arguments and conflict. The idea of familial love then seems to expand to take on a Christian aspect, with the Grandmother feeling love for the Misfit as if every man and woman were part of the same human family. - Theme: Moral Decay. Description: The story's title itself refers to the apparent moral decline witnessed by the Grandmother and others. There was a time, the Grandmother believes, when it was not so difficult to find good men, though we might wonder if that was ever actually true. To the Grandmother, though, the story's action supports this belief. When stranded after a car crash, the family is not tended to by friendly neighbors, but by a killer and his henchmen. Just as the Grandmother laments early on that they could no longer leave their screen door open without fear of theft, so the past kindness of strangers, in her mind, has been replaced with brutal violence.Throughout the story there is a tension between this modern nihilism and a more traditional sense of morality. The Grandmother chastises her grandchildren for not respecting their home state and their elders. Red Sam, whose name has become an icon of the area, agrees that things just aren't the way they used to be. The Grandmother has to prevent her grandchildren from throwing their trash out the car window, and she chastises them constantly. And, even with a gun practically in her face, she yearns for and insists upon the existence of good, old-fashioned morals and respect. It is as if she cannot even acknowledge that a different kind of morality, or absence of morality, exists in the world. The Misfit comes to almost personify this nihilism that the Grandmother so fears. He not only disobeys conventional morals, but views himself as completely outside of them. For example, he does not deny that praying to Jesus might lead to his salvation, but he states that he does not need salvation. The Misfit claims to not only accept the immorality of his crimes, but to forget his crimes entirely. Thus he is outside the scope of an old-fashioned view of right and wrong. The Grandmother and Red Sam Butts may cling to a conventional view of an objective morality, but the Misfit simply does not. In his own view, The Misfit is not actually "immoral." He simply acts how he chooses, without regard for (what he perceives as) the Grandmother's imagined morals. Ultimately, this apathy toward social conventions and morals is what makes him a true "misfit," someone who in their own eyes is not a villain, but simply refuses to go along with what everyone else believes is right. - Climax: The Grandmother reaches out and touches The Misfit, exclaiming, "You're one of my own children," and he shoots her three times. - Summary: The story opens on a family about to take a road trip. The Grandmother—who wants to convince her family to travel not to Florida, but to Tennessee—shows a newspaper article to her son, Bailey, and Bailey's wife. The article is about a convict known as the Misfit, who has escaped federal prison and is believed to be headed toward Florida. The Grandmother says that she would never take her children near such a dangerous criminal, and that she "couldn't answer to [her] conscience if [she] did." Bailey and his wife ignore the Grandmother, and Bailey's children, June Star and John Wesley, mock her. The next morning, the Grandmother is packed and ready to leave, sitting in the car before anyone else. Unlike the rest of the family, she is dressed up, wearing a fancy hat. They leave, headed south for Florida. In the car, the children fight, and to keep them quiet the Grandmother tells them a story about a suitor she had when she was younger. The family stops at the Tower, a filling station and dance hall run by Red Sammy Butts. The Grandmother makes conversation with Red Sammy about how society has gotten worse over the years. They say that it's impossible to trust anyone any more, and Red Sammy notes that "a good man is hard to find." After the family drives off from the Tower, The Grandmother tells the family of a plantation nearby that she had visited once when she was younger. Knowing that Bailey will not want to visit, the Grandmother lies, saying there was a secret panel in the wall somewhere with silver behind it. After the kids throw a tantrum about wanting to see the house, Bailey agrees, and drives down a deserted dirt road looking for the house. Just as Bailey is ready to turn around, the Grandmother realizes that the house she is remembering is actually hundreds of miles away, in another state. She is so distressed by this thought that she accidentally lets her cat—which she had snuck into the car—out, and it jumps onto Bailey. Bailey swerves and the car crashes. It car rolls over and rests again upright in a "gulch off the side of a road." Another, "hearse-like" car approaches. Three men get out, each of them carrying a gun. One of the men inspects the family's car to see how easy it would be to fix. As Bailey attempts to explain their situation, the Grandmother interrupts, saying to one of the three men, "You're the Misfit." The man admits that he is the Misfit, but says that it would have been better if she had not recognized him. The Misfit instructs his two henchmen, Hiram and Bobby Lee, to take Bailey and John Wesley over to the woods. Two pistol shots are heard. The Misfit has a lengthy conversation with the Grandmother about his past, his time in prison, and his nihilistic outlook on the world. Meanwhile the rest of the Grandmother's family is taken to the forest and shot. The Misfit continues speaking with the Grandmother, and she repeatedly insists that he must be a good person at heart and would never shoot an "old lady." Suddenly she says to him, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" and then reaches out and touches him on the shoulder. The Misfit jumps back at her touch and shoots her in the chest three times. The henchmen return from the woods, and the Misfit picks up the Grandmother's cat. Speaking of the Grandmother, the Misfit says "She would of been a good woman… if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

- Genre: Micro-fiction, modernism, "ghost story" - Title: A Haunted House - Point of view: First person - Setting: A large, old house in the South Downs - Character: The Narrator. Description: The narrator, who is given no name or gender, is one half of the living couple who now live in the "haunted house." The narrator seems to be the only living person able to perceive the ghostly couple, at first hearing them and, finally, at the end of the story, catching a glimpse of the ghosts in the light of a lamp. In the story, the narrator leads a leisurely life, reading in the garden, and "rolling apples in the loft." The narrator seems likely to be well-off, based on the size of his or her house, while the narrator's tone and vocabulary suggest a significant degree of education. The narrator is deeply curious about the ghosts, searching through the house for them and attempting to find out what they themselves are searching for. The narrator also clearly has a deep love for his or her spouse, and it is this love that seems to allow the narrator to realize that "the light in the heart" of a loving couple is what the dead couple are searching for. - Character: The Husband. Description: The husband, also unnamed, is one of the two ghosts who figure in the story, searching the house for the dead couples "treasure." He lived "hundreds of years ago" in the house with his wife, but after her death, he fell into mourning and left the house to travel the world. Eventually, however, he returned to the house, "dropped beneath the Downs," and—presumably after his own death—was reunited with his wife's ghost. Though the story provides little space for either of the ghosts to be given a unique personality, Woolf establishes the husband as a romantic and poetic person who cares deeply for his wife. When the dead wife comments only, "Here we slept," the husband responds, "Kisses without number." The husband is also the one to notice the "love upon [the] lips" of the living sleeping couple. He and his wife are never separated during the story, emphasizing how profound their love for one another is. - Character: The Wife. Description: The wife, the other ghost who appears in the story, spends it searching the house with her husband for their "treasure" and reminiscing about their lives together. During their lives, she died first, "hundreds of years ago," and Woolf implies ("left it, left her") that she became a ghost immediately and was left alone for some time while her husband traveled. His desertion does not seem to have affected her love for him, however—as ghosts they are always together, going through the house "hand in hand." Based on the dialogue she shares with her ghost-husband, she seems to be the more confident and authoritative of the two: she declares, "Here we left it," before her husband adds, "Oh, but here too!" She is also the first to speak in the next paragraph of dialogue, recalling, "Here we slept," and, eventually, the one to realize, "Here we left our treasure." - Theme: Love. Description: Love is the central strand of Virginia Woolf's "A Haunted House," bringing comfort and happiness to everything from the undead to the titular haunted house itself. Far from being a typical ghost story, "A Haunted House" details a much gentler kind of haunting. In the story, two ghostly lovers glide through the house where they once lived, searching for a "treasure" that they had buried there before death. In the end, it seems that the so-called treasure is simply the love they shared in life, which is alive and well in the living couple to whom the house now belongs. In "A Haunted House," Woolf ultimately suggests that love knows no bounds—it survives the test of time, it overcomes boundaries between people, and it even endures beyond the grave. As the story unfolds, it's clear that the ghostly couple's love still lives on in the house and in the garden even though the ghosts haven't lived there in several centuries, suggesting that love can survive the passage of time. The ghostly couple's exchange at the beginning of the story—"Here we left it." "Oh, but here too!" "It's upstairs." "And in the garden"—grounds their treasure in the house. Though the living couple has "inherited" the treasure, it is the house, which has safeguarded it for many years, that makes that possible. The representation of the house as a living creature also indicates that the house itself embodies the couple's love and lives on. Throughout the story, Woolf repeats the refrain, "'Safe, safe, safe,' the pulse of the house beat." The house protects the "treasure" in it, suggesting that the love will be passed on to the next couple to live in the house. The use of "pulse" and, at another point, "heart," to describe the life of the house also connects it with the organ traditionally associated with love, and suggests that even as time goes by, the couple's love will continue to "beat" in the house. Similarly, the garden functions as a symbolic connection between the living couple and the dead couple. The first location the dead couple gives for the treasure is "in the garden," and the narrator (half of the living couple) makes mention of reading in the garden, which is "still as ever"—suggesting that for many years the garden has remained as it is now, as when the woman of the dead couple remembers being "in the garden reading." Also, though the narrator is not able to see the ghosts, they see "reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves […] green in the glass" where the ghosts should be, so that the ghosts are in a sense reflected back to her in the form of the garden, the repository of the love that connects the two couples. Not only does love transcend the boundaries of time and death, it also transcends the boundaries between individuals. This is clear through the way that the ghostly couple is described as a unit, like two strands woven into a single cord. The ghostly couple is unified throughout the story, acting and speaking in concert. They drift through the house "hand in hand" like two puzzle pieces snapped into one. They complete each other's sentences and are referred to with the pronoun "they," as though talking in exact unison. Later in the story, they interrupt one another rhythmically, almost like a song in harmony: "Waking in the morning—" "Silver between the trees—" "Upstairs—" "In the garden—." Love makes it possible for them to have an intrinsic understanding of one another's minds and to act like a unit. Most radically of all, the story suggests that love endures even after death. Although the ghostly couple is searching for the love they shared as living people, it's clear that they are devoted to each other beyond the grave. The story introduces them going "hand in hand" through the house, and they complete each other's sentences and speak as a unit, as in, "'Quietly,' they said, 'or we shall wake them.'" Once again, the pronouns "they" and "we" emphasize that the two lovers are truly a pair and speak with one voice. They may have been dead for hundreds of years, but they are the model of a loving couple. Later, the narrator describes how "death [came] to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house […] He left it, left her […] sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs." When death divided the couple, the man left his house behind, the symbolic home of his love. However, the story then transitions into the refrain of "'Safe, safe, safe,' the pulse of the house beat gladly. 'The Treasure yours,'" suggesting that even in light of his wife's death and his own absence, the love he shared with his wife is still pulsing through the home. At the end of the story, the ghostly couple's love supersedes death in a new way: by inhabiting the young couple who live in their home. As the ghostly couple leans over the sleeping lovers, the woman sighs, "Here, [...] sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—" The living lovers mimic these activities, sleeping in the bedroom and reading in the garden. When the narrator wakes, they say, "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart"; Woolf's italics suggest both that the narrator has realized what the treasure is—love itself—and, furthermore, that the treasure was previously the ghostly couple's, positioning the living couple as inheritors of the dead couple's life and love. In "A Haunted House," love is able to overpower any barrier it faces, from separation to death to the ravages of time. Even the individual self is not impervious to the force of love, which seems at times to combine two people into one. - Theme: Happiness and the Home. Description: The title of the story, "A Haunted House," demonstrates the importance of the house to the story's narrative. The story takes place almost completely within the house's walls, as a ghostly couple drifts quietly through the house they once lived in hundreds of years ago. As the ghosts recall their fond memories of things that happened at the house and admire the living lovers who now inhabit it, Woolf suggests that the concept of home is central to one's happiness, and that one will always be pulled toward home. As the ghosts search for their "treasure," they swap fond memories of living in the house, highlighting how their joy in life was intimately connected to the home. Approaching the living couple, the ghosts exchange brief recollections of moments in the house: "'Here we slept,' she says. And he adds, 'Kisses without number.' 'Waking in the morning—' 'Silver between the trees—' 'Upstairs—' 'In the garden—' 'When summer came—' 'In winter snowtime—.'" Their memories, and their love for one another, are so intrinsically connected to the house that they do not even need to specify what took place upstairs or in the garden; the place itself brings to mind their love and their joy. At the end of the story, as the ghosts watch the living couple sleep, the dead woman recalls, "Here, sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—." She reminisces about the same activities the living couple is depicted doing in the story, all of which take place in and around the titular "haunted house." Like the dead couple, the things that bring the living couple joy seem to be founded on their life in the house itself. The story's description of the world outside the house's doors also suggests that the home is a place of warmth and safety. While searching for the ghosts in the house, the living narrator describes "the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm." Even at this point in the story, when the ghosts have not yet been revealed to be harmless and benign, the soothing atmosphere of the house and yard suggests to the reader that this isn't a classic ghost story—the titular haunted house is a wellspring of peace and comfort, not horror. At one point while the ghostly couple is searching for their "treasure," Woolf explicitly contrasts the wild weather outside with the comfort and safety of the house: "The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain." The outside world is cold, wet, chaotic, and at the mercy of nature and the weather. Inside the house, however, "the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still." The lamp and candle carry associations of light and warmth, making the house a safe haven from the storm. In addition, the detail that the beam of light from the lamp "falls straight" and the candle's flame "burns stiff and still" suggests that the inside of the house is calm, silent, and peaceful. In contrast to the blustering wind and rain that's whipping the landscape up into a frenzy, the house is a refuge, warm, safe, and unmoving. Furthermore, the ghosts' presence in the house hundreds of years after their respective deaths also suggests that it was an important a part of their lives and emphasizes how strong the pull toward home can be. Throughout the story, the repetition of the word "here" affirms the intensity of the ghosts' connection to the house. At the beginning, the dead couple exclaims, "Here we left it," "Oh, but here too!" The appearance of "here" in their dialogue throughout—"Here we slept," "Here, sleeping"—continues to underline the powerful importance of the house in their minds and lives, both before death and after. The story also reveals that the house had a strong pull on one half of the ghostly couple, the man, while he was alive. The story notes that death "[came] to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the window; the rooms were darkened," before noting that the man "left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky." As his travels draw to a close, the man "[seeks] the house, [and] [finds] it dropped beneath the Downs." While the story doesn't make it explicit why the man leaves (perhaps because the house reminded him of his late wife) or why he returns, it is clear that the house has a strong pull on him. Furthermore, it seems that the house welcomes him warmly—as soon the man returns, "the pulse of the house beat[s] gladly" once again, repeating the word "Safe, safe, safe." Even though the house was a source of pain for the man in that it was "darkened," literally and metaphorically, after his wife's death, the house's steady "pulse" in light of his return suggests that it once again becomes a place of love and joy for him. While "A Haunted House" focuses on this one particular house, it also deals with the concept of home more broadly, suggesting that warm feelings like joy, safety, and contentment are intimately tied to the home. - Theme: Death. Description: Though the concept of a "haunted house" assumes a certain degree of tragedy and horror—the death of the people who previously lived there and who have taken to harassing the house's new residents—Woolf presents an entirely different depiction of death and haunting "A Haunted House." Through the ghostly lovers that gently float through the house's halls, reminiscing about their past life, Woolf suggests that death is not the tragic or terrifying end that most people assume it to be but simply the beginning of a new stage of existence. While the very existence of the ghostly couple in the story speaks to Woolf's suggestion that death is not as final as it seems, the things that carry over from the ghostly couple's old life to their new "life" further suggest that death is simply the beginning of a new stage of existence rather than a true end. In the story, the ghostly couple appears quite human. Even though they've been dead for hundreds of years and are now ghosts, they've retained their respective genders, as the story refers to them as "she" and "he": "'Here we left it,' she said." And he added, 'Oh, but here too!'" In addition, they still appear to be very much in love, as they finish one another's sentences, haunt the house while holding hands, and speak with one voice just like they were a living couple. That these characteristics have carried over into death strips death of its finality—the ghostly man and ghostly woman, a couple even in death, are, in a sense, still living. With tenderness, they recall sharing "kisses without number" and "laughing, rolling apples in the loft." The very fact that they are able to reminisce also renders death less of an end than a continuation, albeit in a new form, of their old existence. They seem to retain all memories of their life before death, and thus seem to be essentially the same people they were before they died. With this, Woolf crafts a nontraditional picture of death—one that doesn't look too different from life. Of course, this new "life" isn't exactly the same as the old one, as the couple's nostalgia for their old life suggests that they've moved on to a new kind of existence. Woolf depicts the couple almost solely in the act of reminiscing about their previous life and searching for an artifact of it, as though, rather than finding joy in new activities after death, their sole pleasure consists of nostalgia for their old life. They talk about themselves and their relationship almost wholly in the past tense—"Here we left it," "Here we slept," "Again you found me." These memories emphasize that the ghostly lovers are leading a new kind of existence; if their life has simply continued exactly as it was before their death, their nostalgia would be pointless. Though the couple remains in love as ghosts, the "treasure" they are searching for, the "light in the heart," seems to be the specific experience of love while one is alive. The reader can reasonably assume based on the ghostly couple's search that there is something different and more meaningful about the love and joy of the living that leads the ghosts to pursue their treasure after death. The phrase "buried treasure" at the end of the story emphasizes this distinction—the couple's "treasure," their living love, was buried with them when they died, and although they find it reborn in the living couple, they can never regain it for themselves. Thus, even if death is a kind of continuation of life—a new existence in a new form—it pales in comparison to the richness and joy of living. While Woolf's depiction of death as a continuation rather than an end in "A Haunted House" is in some ways comforting, tucked inside the ghostly couple's quest for their "treasure" is the idea that with death comes a heightened appreciation of life. While the ghostly couple still have one another and their memories, nothing measures up to the joy they experienced while they were alive. - Climax: The narrator seeing the ghosts for the first time and realizing the nature of their treasure - Summary: A "ghostly couple" is moving through the halls of a house, opening and closing doors and sifting through the house's contents, clearly looking for something. They tell each other, "Here we left it," "Oh, but here too!" and decide that thing they're looking for must be upstairs—or maybe in the garden. They whisper to one another quietly as they search, careful not to "wake them." The narrator says that "one might" overhear the ghosts but continue to read quietly as the ghosts carry on their search. When one becomes convinced that the ghosts have finally "found it," he or she might set the book down and get up to look for the ghosts. However, that person would find the house completely empty, doors all flung open, with the only sounds coming from the birds chirping outside. The narrator asks himself or herself, "What did I come in here for?" and notes that his or her hands are empty. Going upstairs to look for "it," the narrator just finds apples in the loft and heads back to the garden, which is "still as ever." Meanwhile, the ghosts have "found it" in the drawing room, but they are invisible to the narrator. When the narrator enters the drawing room, trying to catch a glimpse of the ghosts, all the narrator sees is that an apple has shifted. Meanwhile, "the pulse of the house beat[s] softly," saying, "Safe, safe, safe." Someone or something says "The treasure buried; the room…" but trails off, and the pulse of the house stops abruptly. The narrator wonders if "that [is] the buried treasure." Looking out the window, the narrator remembers the history of the dead couple: the woman had been the first of the pair to die, "hundreds of years ago," and her husband left the house to travel the world soon after that. Eventually, he returned to their old home, which had "dropped beneath the Downs." A storm rages in the dark outside, but the inside of the house is bright and still. The ghosts continue to move through the house, "seek[ing] their joy." The ghosts reminisce about their own life in the house as they approach the bedroom of the narrator and the narrator's partner, who are sleeping. The ghosts stand over the bed, peering down at the sleeping couple for a long while, and conclude that "Here we left our treasure—" The narrator, wakes up due to the light from the ghosts' lamp and exclaims, "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."

- Genre: Short story - Title: A Horseman in the Sky - Point of view: Third person - Setting: Near a cliff's edge in western Virginia during the American Civil War - Character: Carter Druse. Description: The protagonist of the story, Carter Druse is a private in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Carter Although he fights for the Union, Druse was raised in Virginia, a Confederate State. He was born to a life of privilege and refinement, which he willingly gave up to follow his conscience regarding the Civil War, and joined a Union Regiment. This creates a tension between him and his father, for although they both respect each other, they now find themselves fighting for opposing armies and ideals. Druse is frequently described as noble and courageous. After leaving the home of his childhood, he earns the commendation of his comrades and superiors through his bravery and strength of character. Druse spends the entirety of the story (aside from the flashback to the morning that he left his family home) lying in a thicket, posted as a sentry to guard several Union Regiments in a precarious position. His respect for his father and sense justice and morality come to a head when Druse's father, who is doing reconnaissance for the opposing Confederate army, discovers the Union regiments that Druse is supposed to be protecting. Druse is forced to make a decision between upholding his duty as a soldier (by killing his father) or letting his father live, thus failing in his duty and risking the lives of his fellow men. Druse chooses to kill his father, and in doing so he is becoming his own man. Killing the horseman signals the end of one generation of Druse's family also marks the end of an era of slavery. - Character: Druse's Father. Description: Carter Druse's father is a wealthy Virginian and a Confederate officer in the Civil War. At the end of the story, Druse's father is also revealed to be the eponymous horseman whom his son has shot down. Druse's father is described as a man who believes in duty and has instilled such a virtue into his son. On the day that Carter Druse leaves to join the Union Army, Druse's father tells him that although he is a traitor to his Virginia homeland, he should go and do what he feels is his duty to the best of his ability, and that should they both live to see the end of the war, they will speak again. Druse's father is heartbroken at the parting of ways with his son and clearly loved and respected him very much. Druse's father comes to exemplify the horrors of the Civil War in two ways. There is the obvious tragedy of a son and father pitted against each other in war. After the shot has been fired and Druse's father and his horse are falling through the air, he is mistaken for a supernatural warrior, a horseman of the apocalypse by the wandering officer. Druse's father thus also becomes a vessel for the author's oft-used supernatural imagery and the implications of near-biblical violence and devastation of the war. - Character: The Wandering Officer. Description: A Union officer who has wandered away from camp and witnesses Druse's father and his mount falling from a cliff side. Due to the angle of the sight and the officer's precarious mental state, he believes that Druse's father is a flying horseman and an apocalyptic symbol. The wandering officer briefly surmises that perhaps he has been chosen as some sort of prophet of the apocalypse, reinforcing the supernatural imagery used by Bierce to underscores the horrors of the Civil War. - Theme: Duty, Morality, and Justice. Description: In "A Horseman in the Sky," Ambrose Bierce conceals the full scope of the story's moral dilemma until the story's final pages: the conflict between duty and family unique to the American Civil War. The protagonist, a young soldier in the Union Army named Carter Druse, has been posted as a sentry to protect his comrades and keep their whereabouts hidden. The horseman, an enemy officer later revealed to be Druse's father, has discovered their location. Druse is forced to choose between letting his father escape with information that would guarantee the demise of his comrades, or killing his father in ambush. Druse ultimately decides that duty to his comrades and their cause must come before his family, a conviction that his father instilled in him. Bierce thus explores the complex nature of duty in many forms throughout his story, and ultimately seems to suggest a primacy of moral duty that overrides duty to all else—including family. Druse's actions throughout the story are described within the context of duty. Druse is initially introduced as being "asleep at his post of duty"—an infraction for which he would be executed, "death being the just and legal penalty of his crime." The narrator even refers to him in this context as "the criminal." This immediately establishes the hierarchy of military authority and imbues such command with a sense of arbitrariness that would seem to undermine that authority; death hardly seems a proportionately "just" punishment for having fallen asleep on the job. Druse is also repeatedly described by Bierce as a deeply courageous and devoted soldier—purposely contradicting the initial label of "criminal"—making such potential punishment for simply being overcome by exhaustion seem all the more absurd; blind adherence to duty, in this case, would result in the foolish loss of a valuable Union soldier. The story would thus seemingly condemn duty for duty's sake. Yet even as Bierce undermines rigid, unquestioning duty, he valorizes thoughtful consideration of one's duty to higher moral concepts. Before the horseman turns his head and Druse realizes that he is aiming his rifle at his own father, he does not relish the thought of killing an unaware man. Even after he recognizes his father and is agonizing over the decision, the reader is kept in the dark. Bierce initially frames the dilemma with the ethics of killing man from a hidden vantage for the mere crime of possessing dangerous information, as opposed to killing a man in open combat or in self-defense. Druse ultimately decides that he must the man for the sake of his fellow soldiers—that is, in the name of a greater good. In this way, Bierce complicates the justice of violence for a cause before the reader is even aware of the familial connection; Druse experiences cognitive dissonance between duty to his specific troop versus duty to a broader concept of moral violence. Notably, before the main scene of the story, Druse had chosen to place duty before family, a fact that pained his father but was also respected by him. Druse grew up in Virginia, meaning he should have fought in the Confederacy had he chosen to stay true to his family and his home. Although Bierce does not state his motivations explicitly, he describes Druse as a "courageous gentleman" and praises him, making it likely that his decision to fight for the Union was motivated more by ethical conviction than mere rebellion. Bierce cuts away from the main story to describe the moment that Druse announced his ambitions to join the Union army to his father and left his home. His father says, "Well, go, sir, and whatever may occur do what you conceive to be your duty. Virginia, to which you are a traitor, must get on without you." That Druse's decision makes him a traitor in the eyes of his state and his family reveals the complicated and conflicting nature of duty. It's worth noting that the author himself was an abolitionist who volunteered to join the Union army during the Civil War; as such, it's possible that Bierce is suggesting that abandoning an unjust cause cannot be treason—or, if it is, it is just treason in the service of a higher moral duty. Ironically, it is ultimately the words of his father that compel Druse to kill him. His father's admonishment to follow his duty wherever it may lead echo in his head in the moments before he pulls the trigger. By ending his father's life, then, he also pays reverence to him by heeding his advice, painful though it may be. Both Druse and his father, for all their political differences, thus both appear to live above all by the duty of conscience. - Theme: Sons vs. Fathers. Description: Before the Civil War, Bierce implies that Carter Druse has led a wealthy and privileged young life under the shelter of his parents. In joining the Union army, he both physically and ideologically steps away from the domain of his father to assert his independence and discover who he truly is. Despite their diverging paths, however, Bierce describes both Druse and his father as loving and respecting each other. The tension is not born of bitterness or resentment, but the natural need for Druse to become his own man. Through this, Bierce typifies the classic generational conflict between children and their parents, and further suggests that embodied in the Civil War was the conflict between a progressive future and a traditional past. The unspoken point of contention between Druse and his father is the ideological issue at the heart of the Civil War: slavery. Interestingly, neither slavery or the Confederacy are ever explicitly named in the story and the Union army is named only once. However, Bierce, himself an abolitionist, casts Druse as a noble defector from the Confederate ideals, a traitor to the slave state of Virginia and to his father's principles. Although slavery is never mentioned, Druse was "the son of wealthy parents, an only child, and had known such ease and cultivation and high living as wealth and taste were able to command…" It is likely that Druse's parents would have owned slaves, or at least been a member of slave-owning communities. In fighting for the abolition, Druse is consequently fighting for the destruction of a major piece of familial identity. Druse is duty-bound to the Union and to abolition, fighting for a free and progressive future. Contrarily, his father is fighting for the protection of the old ways invariably tied to slavery. Son and father are thus fighting for competing ideals for the future of the country, visions of what has been and what could be. Throughout the war, sons and fathers, friends and neighbors were willing to kill each other to decide whether the country would emancipate the slaves or maintain their bondage. Bierce thus suggests the relationship between Druse and his father as a sort of microcosm of the war itself, positing their personal generational conflict as reflective of the conflict between the past and future of America. Druse leaving his family is also notably an act of self-actualization. By leaving the shelter, comfort, and worldview of his childhood home, he is on a journey to discover who he truly is. Druse is said to be a private in the Union army, the lowest rank. Not only has he stepped out of the comfort of the privileged home, then, but he has stepped down to the level of a poor and expendable foot soldier. Most importantly, he has done it on his own terms. Rather than by privilege, Druse distinguishes himself to his comrades and superiors "by conscience and courage, by deeds of devotion and daring." In his new life as a Union soldier, he has earned his reputation rather than inherited it. Even so, the marks of his high-brow upbringing still remain, most notably when he first spies the horseman: "His first feeling was a keen artistic delight," Bierce writes, describing in detail how the colors of the horseman's uniform harmonize with the backdrop of the sky and how the stern lines make him appear to be carved from marble like some Grecian statue. This hesitation lasts only a moment, however, and his sense of duty quickly overrides his cultured appreciation of the aesthetic forms, fostered by a gentle and well-educated childhood. Even so, Bierce nods here to the way that, for all his independence, the son is still shaped by the father, and will be throughout his life. Thus, Bierce highlights the painful necessity of children to step out from under their parents' wing, despite what love and loyalty may persist. Without leaving his childhood home, Druse would never discover what he believed about loyalty, duty, or conscience, or who he truly is. In shooting down the horseman, Bierce resolves the conflict between the son and the father, between one generation and the next. Druse has killed the only surviving member of his family to fulfill his duty and to champion his own ideals over his father's. Though without malice, he has erased the life, presence, and worldview of his father from the earth to be replaced by his own. This is a reflection of the broader ideological change in America; the Union, with its goal of emancipation, put to death the Confederate ideology predicated on the use of slaves. One societal ideal had to die so that another could find its footing and mature. - Theme: The Horrors of the Civil War. Description: Bierce's telling of the Civil War is justifiably cynical. Although he never explicitly names the unique horrors of the Civil War, they form the background and unspoken context of the story. As exemplified by the tragedy of Carter Druse being forced to kill his own father for the sake of noble duty, the nature of the war confounded people's compassion, ethics, sense of morality, and even ties to friends and family. Bierce eliminates any notion of lasting valor or heroism. For him, the Civil War was not adventurous or exciting, but morally and existentially crushing. In his use of supernatural imagery and portrayal of meaningless pain, he paints the war more as a strange fever dream than any sort of heroic quest. Bierce's story lacks any form of traditional hero or villain. Druse is the protagonist and his father is the antagonist, but neither behave or are rewarded in the tradition of the hero's journey. Despite his heroism, it is noted that Druse would have been executed had he been found sleeping at his post. This one negative action was enough to negate all other positive ones, underscoring the horrific calculus of war. In the timeline of the story, Druse also never becomes more than a private despite gaining the respect and admiration or comrades and superiors. He is neither rewarded nor heralded; rather, Druse suffers for his heroism. Had stayed he asleep, abandoned his post, or elected to let his regiment fall under attack, he would have been able to spare the life of his father and the pain of being the one to kill him. Even the sergeant who first realizes what Druse has done does not offer congratulations or thanks but walks away expressing shock and horror. Bierce staunchly denies any sort of karmic justice within the world of the story. While there are no traditionally evil antagonists (even Druse's father is described as honorable despite being a Confederate officer) the good men still suffer. The evil of the story, then, is existential rather than particular. Any notions of good prevailing over evil, of justice or order or balance are noticeably absent from Bierce's telling. There is no glamor in Bierce's war, only morally perplexing decisions and painful realities. Bierce uses apocalyptic imagery, as he has in other stories, to reinforce the chaos and the horror of the American Civil War, which, in many ways, may have felt as if the world itself was coming apart or ending. America itself was being rent in two. In the moments in which he is grappling with the decision to kill his own father, Druse envisions the horseman as a great black figure creating fiery circles in the sky. Where previously he had seen the horse and rider as a Grecian statue, now they are a figure of dread. Though not an explicit reference, the imagery recalls biblical scenes of judgment such as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or the plague of fire upon Egypt. The wandering officer who witnesses Druse's father falling to his death perceives it as an apocalyptic event, even briefly imagining himself to be some sort of prophetic witness. Even after he hears the bodies hit the trees, he assumes that they have ridden outward into the valley, rather than straight down as a body would fall. The officer, in the chaos and banality of the war, seems to be more susceptible to the possibility that the world must be ending. Druse's father riding through the sky further conjures biblical images of the horsemen of the apocalypse, harbingers of doom that would bring destruction and the end of all things. Bierce's apocalyptic motif specifically draws on biblical scenes of judgment in which God is unleashing a hellish retribution upon mankind for their destruction and consumption of each other, for placing no value on fellow human life. Bierce may have felt that the existential horror of the Civil War was a similar retribution unleashed against America for its consumption and abuse of human beings through the systems of slavery. Just as in the biblical judgments, purification of evil could only come through spilling an unimaginable amount of blood. Bierce contradicts the tradition of the American war story both narratively and symbolically. His narrative arc and use of apocalyptic symbols communicate that entropy, not valor, is the substance of war. Even when a cause is righteous and the actors involved are noble, its experience is nothing but visceral and existential horror. But like the biblical judgments, the horror is sometimes necessary for human progress. - Climax: Carter Druse shoots his father - Summary: It is autumn of 1861, in the midst of the American Civil War. A young Union Soldier named Carter Druse has been posted as a sentry near the edge of a cliff that overlooks a forested valley. In the valley hides five Union army regiments as they rest and prepare to surprise attack a nearby Confederate encampment. Although they are hidden in the valley, they are also vulnerable; there is only one narrow entrance and one narrow exit. The topography is such that they would be severely disadvantaged and unable to escape should their enemies discover them. The narrator briefly recalls the morning that Druse left his childhood home. Druse is the son of wealthy Virginian parents and the product of a comfortable and cultured childhood. As a Virginian, it was expected that he would fight for the Confederate states. Despite this, his conscience compelled him to join a passing Union regiment. At the time Druse's father called his son a traitor, yet also encouraged him to "do what you conceive to be your duty." His father mentions that Druse's mother is on her deathbed, but should both father and son survive the war, they may reconcile then. Both Druse and his father show respect for one another in their final parting, and Druse leaves his parents to become a Union soldier, proving himself both brave and noble. The story returns to the scene on the cliff. Despite the importance of Druse's keeping watch, and despite the fact that he is a noble and courageous man, he has fallen asleep. His rifle is already positioned to be fired, however, and Druse awakes to find that while he was sleeping, a lone horseman, a Confederate officer, has crept up to the cliff's edge and is gazing down into the valley at the exposed Union soldiers. His face is turned so that Druse can not yet see his identity. The horseman is standing still and looks so picturesque and dignified in the afternoon sun that Druse is initially unsure if he is entirely awake. It seems to him that perhaps he has somehow slept until the end of the war and is now staring at a monument that has been erected in memoriam. He spends several moments admiring the splendor of the scene and the form of the horseman, which looks to him like a Grecian statue carved from marble. The horse moves just enough to remind Druse of where he is and what he must do. He aims his rifle at the horseman's breast. The horseman turns his head and seems to look straight at Druse, though he does not actually spy him in the bushes. Druse suddenly goes pale and nearly faints, overcome by the gravity of what he is about to do. He reflects on the ethics of killing an unaware man for the simple crime of possessing dangerous knowledge. He even briefly considers letting him wander on in the hopes that the horseman has not actually discovered the Union regiments, but quickly realizes this is a vain hope. Druse takes aim once more, this time at the horse. The words of his father echo in his head like a "divine mandate," demanding that he put duty before all else. He steadies himself and fires. Both horse and rider fall over the cliff's edge. The horse is killed by the bullet, the rider by the fall. A wandering officer from the Union regiments has found himself standing beneath the cliff's overhang. Looking upward, he sees the horseman still astride his horse, falling to his death. However, rather than perceiving what has actually happened, he mistakenly believes that it is a flying horseman. The vision seems to him an image of the apocalypse. He so sincerely believes that the horseman was actually riding through the air that when he hears the crash of bodies hitting the lower trees, he searches as if they had followed a gliding trajectory rather than falling straight downward. After Druse fires, he reloads and remains lying in the shrub, keeping watch. His face is white, but beyond that he is unmoved. A sergeant crawls up to his position and asks what he has shot at. Without moving or looking at him, Druse reveals that the horseman he shot down had been his own father.

- Genre: Novel, Historical Fiction - Title: A Hundred Flowers - Point of view: Third-person limited, rotating through multiple characters' perspectives - Setting: Guangzhou, a city in southern China, during the Hundred Flowers and Great Leap Forward campaigns - Character: Wei Lee. Description: - Character: Kai Ying Lee. Description: - Character: Tao Lee. Description: - Character: Sheng Lee. Description: - Character: Liang Lee. Description: - Character: Suyin. Description: - Character: Auntie Song. Description: - Character: Tian. Description: - Character: Chang'e. Description: - Theme: Redemption. Description: - Theme: Journeys and Growth. Description: - Theme: Suffering, Strength, and Resilience. Description: - Theme: Home and Family. Description: - Theme: The Promises and Failures of Communism. Description: - Climax: Wei finally gets to speak with Sheng at the labor camp. - Summary: A year before the story begins, Tao watched as Communist Party police arrested his father, Sheng. What his mother Kai Ying and grandfather Wei have not told him is that the Party suspected Sheng of writing a letter critical of the government during its Hundred Flowers Campaign. After his arrest, they sent Sheng to a labor camp 1,000 miles away in the city of Luoyang. The family has not heard from him in six months. Now in the present, in July of 1958, Tao climbs the kapok tree in the courtyard of his family's villa. He misses Sheng, and a dream told Tao to climb the tree and look for his father on the peaks of distant White Cloud Mountain. But near the top of the tree, he loses his grip and falls 30 feet to the ground below. When Wei and Kai Ying bring Tao to the hospital, Kai Ying notices a pregnant teenager (Suyin) staring at her across the waiting room. Suyin has been living on the streets since her family discovered her pregnancy and kicked her out. When Tao returns home after several weeks in the hospital, the family struggles to find a sense of normalcy. Tao anxiously waits for his cast to come off, while Kai Ying worries about Sheng and Tao. And Wei confronts his guilt over the fact that he wrote the letter for which Sheng was arrested—the authorities confused father and son because they share the same name. On the eve of the Autumn Moon Festival, Suyin catches a glimpse of Kai Ying at the market. Taking it as a good omen for her and her baby, she quietly follows Kai Ying home. Later that day, the cast comes off Tao's leg, though it will take time and effort for him to recover his strength and for his limp to go away. The day after the Moon Festival, Suyin bursts into the courtyard in labor. Kai Ying and Wei carry her inside, where she delivers a baby girl. Kai Ying decides to nurse Suyin back to health and secretly names the baby Meizhen. Soon after the Festival, Tao returns to school and finds that everything has changed since his injury. His friend Little Shen has taken his former spot as second student, and the other children tease Tao about his limp. When class bully Lai Hing tells everyone that Sheng was arrested because he was a counterrevolutionary, Tao confronts Kai Ying and Wei. Realizing that it's time to take responsibility, Wei confesses that he wrote the letter. Kai Ying and Tao feel betrayed by Wei's confession, but Kai Ying tries to pretend that things are normal. Throughout the month of October, Wei becomes more and more anguished. He frequently leaves the house for long, restless walks. Finally, he decides to try to make things right by traveling to Luoyang to check on Sheng. Although he hasn't left the city in 25 years and has barely left his house in the last decade, he boards a northbound train on the last day of October for the days-long trip. On the way, a young man named Tian befriends and guides Wei, a lucky turn of events since Wei is unprepared for the journey. Tian is traveling to Luoyang because he used to love a young woman named Ai-li, but she abandoned him for the Communist Party after she became deeply invested in its ideology. As Tian helps Wei navigate the Communist Party bureaucracy in his attempt to visit Sheng, he finally makes peace with his own past. Meanwhile, back at home in Guangzhou, Suyin recovers her strength and worries that Kai Ying will kick her out. She cannot go home; she became pregnant after her stepfather raped her and she cannot face her family again. But she becomes an integral part of the family during the weeks Wei is away, taking on the role of an older sister to Tao and becoming Kai Ying's valued helper and then her full-fledged herbalist's apprentice. Finally, Wei learns that Sheng is alive and receives permission to visit him. Wei begs for Sheng's forgiveness for writing the letter, for letting Sheng take the blame, and for the distance that has characterized much of their relationship. But Sheng tells his father that he doesn't need to apologize for speaking the truth. Instead, he's proud that Wei finally took a stand for his beliefs, something that has always come more naturally to Sheng. Then, their too-brief visit ends. With a letter from Sheng for Kai Ying safe in his pocket, Wei returns to Kai Ying and Tao, who welcome him with forgiveness and open arms.

- Genre: Short story - Title: A Hunger Artist - Point of view: Third-person omniscient - Setting: A nondescript "Europe", probably in the 19th century - Character: The Hunger Artist. Description: The unnamed protagonist of the story, the hunger artist is a man with one sole purpose in life: to starve. He believes this to be his one true calling, and he rejects all other worldly concerns to concentrate on his fasting. There was once a time—as there was in reality—when hunger artists drew huge crowds, and the reader learns that this particular artist had many years of great "success." But although his shows are successful in the sense that they are well-attended and turned a profit, the hunger artist is never fully satisfied. People come to see him out of morbid fascination, or for "a bit of fun," but not for the kind of deep and profound experience that the hunger artist believes his art is worth. Deep down, he embodies a contradiction: he wants the public to respect his art, but he also feels superior to them, and believes they can never fully understand his craft. He is proud of his ability to deny earthly pleasures and to suffer, but the world in which he pursues his art frustrates him deeply. Perhaps because of this, the hunger artist has never, "not after any feats of starvation—that people had to concede—left his cage of his own free will." As interest in him dwindles, the hunger artist splits with his manager and takes his act to the circus, but is left to linger near the animal exhibits and rarely has any meaningful interactions with the crowd. He holds the conviction that he can fast well beyond the forty-day limit imposed on him by his original manager, and at the end of the story has the chance to see if that's true. But this opportunity comes about only because at the circus he is completely neglected. With nobody paying attention to him, even the hunger artist can't keep track of his fast as he wastes away into the straw of his cage. His dying words to the circus staff neatly sum up his contradictory way of life—he says he only ever wanted to be respected, and when they tell him that he is, he says that they mustn't. He finally gives the enigmatic statement that he only fasted because he couldn't find anything he liked to eat—which immediately seems at odds with the dedication to his art that he has shown throughout his life. Almost as soon as the hunger artist is dead, he is replaced in his cage by a panther. Compared to him, it seems full of life, and the audience finds it far more captivating. - Character: The Audience / Public. Description: Comprised of different people at different times, the audience defines what the hunger artist's work means outside of his own perceptions and beliefs. In the hey-day of hunger artistry, the audience is huge. Children "watch open-mouthed, holding each other by the hand for safety," in awe and fear of the hunger artist. Adults, on the other hand, feel either that the act is a frivolous bit of fun, or distrust whether the hunger artist's fasts are really as long as is claimed. Despite their suspicions, the audience verifies how many days the hunger artist fasts by keeping vigil, but they don't take the role too seriously. The audience's tastes change with the times, and by the end of the story they don't care much for the hunger artist's act anymore. They're much more interested in the extravaganza of the circus, and the last image of the story is the audience clustered around the hunger artist's old cage, now holding the more impressive figure of the panther. - Character: The Manager / Impresario. Description: For most of the hunger artist's career—if it can be called that—the manager presides over his act, taking care of the business dealings and apparently looking after the well-being of his investment. But the impresario is a capitalist through and through, and only cares about the hunger artist as a means of making profit. He is also a deceitful figure: when the hunger artist complains angrily about being limited to forty-day fasts, the manager slyly convinces the public that his anger is due to his poor condition (when in fact it's because the hunger artist is depressed at having his "great art" interrupted). The manager is concerned with entertainment, not art. He orchestrates gaudy celebrations at the end of the forty-day fasts, complete with brass bands and flower garlands. He forces a meal on the hunger artist and squeezes him to make him seem even more weak and vulnerable. The public's changing whims ultimately get the better of the manager and his investment, however, and after dragging the hunger artist around Europe in desperate search of an audience, they finally part ways. - Theme: The Artist and Society. Description: "A Hunger Artist" examines the relationship between the artist, their art, and the society in which that art is received. Though the artist in this case—whose act is simply the ability to fast—has a pure vision of his "craft," he can only display his art within the context of an audience that frequently misunderstands and mistrusts him. While art is often held up as being something that "holds a mirror to society"—forcing society to recognize truths about itself—Kafka's story suggests that this is a flawed idea: the hunger artist and his audience, after all, continuously misunderstand each other. Ultimately, Kafka doesn't suggest that there is no role or value for art in society, but instead that it does not function in as clear a way as either the artist or audience expect. There is no doubting the hunger artist's commitment to his art—he has abandoned everything else about his life to make fasting his one sole focus. By ignoring the things that are usually thought of as important in life (friends, family, being happy, etc.), he embodies the prevalent idea that sacrifice is essential to the creation of art that is meaningful and true. In fact, he takes this idea to its logical extreme by making his art about the sacrifice of the very thing that all life needs to go on living: nourishment. His art does not merely require sacrifice—it is sacrifice. His commitment to that sacrifice is total: "no hunger-artist would have eaten the least thing under any circumstances, not even under duress; the honor-code of his art forbade it." Furthermore, he prides himself on never leaving his cage of his own free will—as the reader sees at the end, he is willing to go all the way to be truly great. The audiences in the story don't really understand why the hunger artist is so committed to starvation. It interests them to a degree, but there's no indication that they think of it as great art, and their tastes are subject to change on a whim. They don't understand his sacrifice, nor necessarily want to understand it. They see him more as an entertainment, although occasionally he disgusts them too (for instance, when the two women help him to his meal table at the end of his fast). Because of this misunderstanding between audience and artist, the members of the general public don't trust that the artist is genuine—how could someone truly wish to go that long without eating?  They think he must be sneaking food, and part of the entertainment becomes trying to catch him doing it (the men guarding him to ensure he keeps fasting even seem willing to let him sneak food). They've also got more going on in their lives than to be truly dedicated to verifying the authenticity of the hunger artist—they'd have stay with him the whole time in order to do so. The audience's view of the hunger artist's work as entertainment, then, stops them from even being able to perceive it as art. Yet despite the purity of the hunger artist's dedication to his art, he needs an audience. Though the story makes clear the profound way that an artist can never fully communicate with an audience and all the ways that an audience can further contribute to that misunderstanding, it also shows how the artist is completely dependent on the audience. The artist is in an impossible bind: through his art, he seeks to go beyond the confines of society, but he needs his art to be witnessed by that society in order for it to be meaningful in the world. As all these potential witnesses are imperfect, the artist can never truly communicate the full meaning of his work. This further isolates the hunger artist, pushing him to more and more extreme acts of starvation, ultimately culminating in his greatest (and most meaningless) work—his own death. The one time he is allowed to starve beyond forty days is not due to an audience wanting to see him achieve something great and true—it's because they've moved on and are no longer watching or caring at all. Within the context of the story, then, the prospect for art and the artist seems bleak. The hunger artist is never able to communicate to his audience. His art is never understood, and it's never even seen as being art. And yet, there is an audience that does understand the hunger artist more fully than the people in the crowd ever do, and that can recognize the art in his starvation—the readers of the story. The story, then, suggests that art can never truly communicate what it was originally meant to, even as its very nature seeks communication with an audience. In that paradox, the story obliquely asserts that even if the outcome is never what is intended, and never understood, the effort at communication, and the devotion and sacrifice necessary to that effort, have meaning that must be recognized. - Theme: The Meaning of Existence. Description: "A Hunger Artist" is a deeply philosophical text that is a prime example of Kafka's overall approach to his literature. As with many of his other stories, interpretations of the text vary widely, and for good reason: Kafka deliberately creates tales that are almost fable-like, except that, unlike the typical fable that has a clear moral, the "point" of Kafka's stories are rarely obvious. For Kafka, life is a set of unresolvable questions, and no one way of living can provide solid, tangible answers to the absurdities of existence. The hunger artist pursues some approaches towards finding meaning in life, while his audience and manager take an entirely different approach altogether. The hunger artist is clearly concerned with the greatness of his achievements. He feels that if he can only reach a certain length of days in a fast he will reach the height of his craft. That is, as with many people in life, he strives to better himself (in one very specific area) with the ultimate goal of being—and being recognized as—the best. He prides himself on his strength of will, on the superiority of his fasting ability: "he had never yet, not after any of his feats of starvation—that people had to concede—left his cage of his own free will." He much prefers being watched by those warders who guard him very closely, shining their torchlights on him throughout the night, and loves nothing more than demonstrating how different he is from them: "What made him happiest of all was when the morning came and a lavish breakfast was brought up to them at his expense, on which they flung themselves." Though the artist's skill and craft mark him as different from the average person, the story makes it clear that it's not that simple. Firstly, the hunger artist is dependent on others recognizing his achievement. He is always mindful, therefore, of his popularity and how he is being viewed and perceived. Secondly, he feels that the only way to continue to have meaning is to achieve even more, to give even more of himself to his craft. Of course, because he is a hunger artist, the outcome of such continued achievement is stark: he eventually achieves so much starvation that he dies, and he does so without any audience at all. The quest for achievement, the story seems to suggest, can give one a sense of meaning, but that sense is fleeting and ultimately self-devouring. The hunger artist also seeks meaning in another way that has traditionally been seen as more profound and authentic than the quest for achievement. He denies himself, and more importantly denies his body and his physical needs. In fact, fasting is often associated with rejection of the material and superficial, and as a means to achieve spiritual understanding of oneself and the world. In other words, it is often seen as a route to finding a higher meaning. It is no coincidence that the hunger artist's fasting performances last forty days. That length of time connects the hunger artist's fast most clearly to Jesus's fast of forty days in the desert. During that fast, Jesus was tempted again and again by Satan. After Jesus refused all temptations, Satan left him, and Jesus returned to Galilee to begin his ministry. In other words, Jesus fasted, denied his body, and found the truth in himself and the world such that he felt ready to begin to preach. The hunger artist, too, seeks a truth and meaning beyond what society has to offer. It frustrates him that his manager won't let him go beyond the forty days and prove his greatness—he thinks that going beyond that limit would be both a source of pride and help him find true meaning. When he does eventually fast for more than forty days, though, after essentially being forgotten in a cage at the circus, he dies without any revelation at all, having long ago lost the ability to keep track of the length of his fast. There are glimpses of other ways of life in the story. The card-players, the family that see the hunger artist at the circus, the manager—all of these have a different set of more immediate and less lofty concerns than the hunger artist. They fail to comprehend his total dedication, and live life without a desperate search for meaning or great achievement. The reader, then, is left with no easy moral—were the hunger-artist's efforts totally in vain and pointless, or is he the only character with a true sense of purpose? Kafka deliberately leaves this question unresolved, because for him that is a closer representation of actual life. But the text itself is an examination of its own attempt to generate meaning—to represent life—further strengthening the sense that instead of an answer there is only a question—but that there is meaning and value in asking the question, even without hope of an answer. - Theme: Art, Entertainment, and Capitalism. Description: The hunger artist's refusal to do anything other than his art is a rejection of capitalist ideals: he refuses to have a job, to engage with money, or to consume. But, of course, this is not as simple as it sounds. Though he might have rejected the most immediate interactions with capitalism, and is literally barred within his cage from the rest of the world, the hunger artist is still very much under society's constraints. Put more bluntly: the impresario has commodified the hunger artist's art (that is, he has turned it into something with monetary value), and in doing so interferes with the hunger artist's vision and greatness by protecting his investment and always limiting the show to forty days. However, without the manager to organize the spectacle (through finding a venue and promoting the show to the public), the hunger-artist would have no audience for his art—and, as the reader sees at the end, would simply waste away. In a very real sense, then, the artist and impresario depend on one another. And through their dependence, the story portrays the way that art and entertainment are always inextricably intertwined. The first thing the reader learns in the story is that the "interest in hunger-artists has suffered a marked decline." Fashions for entertainment are changing, and unfortunately this means the hunger artist is destined to be left behind. Further demonstrating that the hunger artist is isolated in how much he cares about his art, no one can even remember how the decline in hunger-artistry came about: "because by then the shift in taste referred to above had taken place; it was almost sudden; perhaps there were profounder reasons for it, but who cared to find them out." The hunger artist's literal value is generated by how much people are willing to pay to see him, but having witnesses to his fasts is also how his act acquires any meaning at all. Trends—and value—come and go: "one day the pampered hunger-artist saw himself abandoned by the pleasure-seeking public which now flocked to different displays." Though the hunger artist doesn't care about money, his manager certainly does. Without his manager to organise the shows and their publicity, the hunger artist would have no audience at all. The only other major character in the story, the manager/impresario is a capitalist through and through. His prime concern is for money, and he only looks after the hunger artist insofar as he needs him to generate a profit. He is willing to go to any lengths to make money, deceiving both the public and the hunger artist. The impresario sets the terms on which the hunger artist can exist, and makes sure they are favorable to him, the impresario. He also limits the hunger artist's fasts, not out of genuine concern, but because over time he has realized that forty days is the best fasting length to generate a profit. The manager, by making the hunger artist's act about profit rather than meaning per se (he's not bothered about the quality or message of the art), reduces the act to mere entertainment and encourages the whims of the audience. The hunger artist wants his art to be the subject of the audience's interest, but the impresario makes sure that it is the audience's interest in the spectacle of the hunger artist himself that is piqued and then satisfied. But the manager is not, ultimately, presented as some all-powerful nefarious villain exploiting the hunger art. That is not to say that he isn't exploiting the hunger artist. He certainly is. Rather, the story implies that the impresario is just one aspect of the broader capitalist forces that move the world. Further, the story shows how the hunger artist, despite his idealism, artistic vision, and force of will, is himself beholden to the main driving force of capitalism: supply and demand. When the hunger artist fires his manager and joins the circus, it's in part because he still naively believes that his great art can find a great audience. But he's also following the basic principles of capitalism himself, taking his act where it has the greatest chance of making money (a chance that is unfortunately all too slim). The hunger artist wants an external verification that can only be brought about by an audience willing to pay to see him—but they'll only pay if he's worth the money and entertains them. As the audiences dwindle, the hunger artist's "value" drops, verification and meaning become impossible and, most tragically of all, the cage becomes more valuable than his life. So, though the hunger artist aspires to go beyond society and its material concerns, the success of his act is governed by those very things. His art has been overshadowed by the "spectacle" of the profit-making show (e.g. the gaudy display at the end of the forty-day fasts). In this way, the story shows the depressing dynamic through which the artist and their art are always doomed to be captured and exploited by capitalist forces, reduced and packaged into entertainment, and then discarded when they cease to make a profit. This outcome, the story suggests, will always be the story of art in the world, because it is the only way that art can ever reach a wide audience. It is the price that must be paid. When the hunger artist finally achieves his greatest ever fast, it is because he has been literally forgotten as some sideshow in a circus. It is art, but (and because) no one is watching. - Climax: The death of the hunger artist - Summary: "A Hunger Artist" is a bleak, fable-like story without any clear moral at the end. It tells the tragic tale of the hunger artist, a man so utterly dedicated to fasting that he denies himself anything else in life. He spends his life in a cage, only leaving if someone makes him. The narration is mostly told retrospectively—hunger artistry has already had its hey-day when the story begins. The reader is given a sense of its former popularity, a time when whole families would go and witness the hunger artist's fasts. Though it was popular, it was never seen on the terms that the hunger artist would have wished. Sometimes his thinness scared people, and sometimes it was just "a bit of fun"—kids, understandably, found it terrifying. Much to the hunger artist's frustration, it was never seen as high art, and people found it difficult to believe that he wasn't cheating. During this heyday, members of the public keep vigil over the hunger artist. They don't take this job too seriously, though, and it frustrates the hunger artist that some of his warders deliberately try and give him a chance to sneak a snack—to him, the honor of his art is far too important to do so. Some of the warders take it more seriously, shining their torches at the cage all night, conversing with the hunger artist, and gratefully receiving a breakfast at his expense in the morning (a source of great pride for him). But as no-one will ever be willing to watch him throughout an entire fast, there is always a suspicion that the hunger artist is dishonest. In those days, the hunger artist is "managed" by an impresario, whose care for him is really about protecting his investment rather than genuine concern. The manager imposes a forty-day limit to the fasts: the length of a town's attention span when it comes to the artist. This always infuriates the hunger artist, who feels he is capable of much greater fasts. In fact, the hunger artist prides himself on never leaving his cage of his own free will—"that people had to concede." At the end of these forty-day fasts, the impresario orchestrates big, gaudy displays that are not in the spirit of the hunger artist's work. These end-of-fast "celebrations" culminate in the hunger artist being carried to a little meal set at a table, and the manager raising a toast to the audience. Over the years, however, the hunger artist's popularity wanes. Eventually, seeking a new audience and still naively believing that his greatest days are ahead of him, the hunger artist parts ways with his manager and joins the circus. Unfortunately for him, he is low priority for the circus staff, and is placed near the animal cages. He isn't very visible to the general public, and most of his audience interaction comes during the intermissions in the main circus show, or when people are trying to get elsewhere on site. Finally he is free to fast beyond the forty-day limit and achieve his greatest heights as an artist, but without anyone to witness his fasting and give it meaning, even the hunger artist loses track of how many days he has been without eating. Wondering what was wrong with a seemingly decent cage, an overseer and other staff look inside to find the long-neglected hunger artist close to death. The hunger artist says that he's always wanted their respect, but when they offer it to him he chastises them for doing so. His last words are that he only fasted because he couldn't find food that he liked. Almost as soon as the artist he dies, the circus replaces him with a young panther. The panther is much more captivating than the hunger artist, and the last image of the story is of the audience clustering round the cage, enraptured by the muscular vitality of this new exhibit.

- Genre: Feminist Short Story - Title: A Jury of Her Peers - Point of view: - Setting: The Wrights' farmhouse, Dickinson County, Iowa - Character: Lewis Hale. Description: A middle-aged local farmer who visited the Wrights' home and discovered Minnie calmly pleating her apron as her husband lay murdered in his bed. He accompanies Henderson and Peters, although not a legal authority, because of his firsthand account of the case. Mrs. Hale worries that her husband will reveal his tendency to "say unnecessary things" and make things more difficult for Minnie when telling the story of his discovery. - Character: Mrs. Peters. Description: The wife of the sheriff who, in Mrs. Hale's mind, does not look the part because she is "small and thin." Mrs. Peters's physical characteristics are reflected in her subservience to her husband, and to the law, which she struggles to overcome. Mrs. Peters reminds Mrs. Hale of the men's duties and their own responsibilities to the law, but she, ultimately, actively participates in the attempt to conceal the evidence of Minnie Wright's guilt. - Character: Martha Hale. Description: The wife of Mr. Hale and resident of the nearest farm to the Wrights' home. Due to this proximity, as well as her acquaintance with the young Minnie Wright (when her name was Minnie Foster), Mrs. Hale feels immense responsibility for not having visited the married Minnie Wright in twenty years. Martha Hale is established as the protagonist of the story from the first few paragraphs. She is more strong-willed than Mrs. Peters (and is given a first name, unlike the other woman). She defies her husband and the law by concealing the evidence against Minnie Wright, ultimately choosing to ally herself with a fellow woman against the patriarchal society in which they live. - Character: John Wright. Description: The murdered man, and husband of Minnie Wright, whose death forms the backdrop for the events of the story. In the eyes of society, John Wright was respectable. He did not exhibit any of the traits that other men would frown upon such as drinking excessively or failing to pay his debts. Martha Hale, on the other hand, acknowledges the difficult aspects of John Wright's personality, telling Mrs. Peters of his hardness, quietness, and the lonely life he would have given his wife. John Wright's cruelty to Minnie is revealed even further over the course of the story. - Character: Minnie Wright. Description: The woman accused of killing her husband by strangling him in his sleep, she is held at the jail through the course of the story. Minnie Wright lived a life of isolation in her farmhouse. The dead bird found by Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters was her only companion, one well suited to a once lively girl who had loved to sing. The dead bird was strangled and the parallel between this act and John Wright's death demonstrates that Minnie had a motive for killing her husband: he removed her one source of happiness, and otherwise mistreated and silenced her throughout their marriage. - Theme: The Subjugation of Women. Description: In "A Jury of Her Peers," men and women have distinctly different gender roles and the story portrays the different opportunities available to men and women both in terms of the division of labor and in society as a whole. This world is controlled by men because social rules restrict women's ability to move about, to choose their own interests, or to exist as separate beings from their husbands. Minnie Wright and Martha Hale are continuously defined as housekeepers. The responsibilities of caring for a house, and a kitchen in particular, are linked only to women. Martha Hale still thinks of Minnie Wright as Minnie Foster, emphasizing the identity change each woman undergoes when she marries and takes her husband's name as her own, when she becomes defined by her husband's identity and her own separate personality is lost. One aspect of this social subjugation of women explored in the story is the loneliness that results from being stuck in the home. Men have each other's company, but women must remain at home, alone. A childless woman, like Minnie Wright, would have felt this loneliness even more poignantly. The subjugation of women in the story is not confined to the economic and the social. The male characters add to these social rules and expectations with a more personalized form of oppression: by belittling individual women for their weaknesses and their interests. Mr. Peters mocks his own wife's fear of traveling to the home that is the scene of a murder. The men repeatedly say that the items in the kitchen, or the items Mrs. Wright has requested in prison, are below their notice. In this way, the men devalue the women by devaluing the only things that have been left to the control of women.In many ways, Mrs. Peters and Martha Hale accept the treatment they receive from the male characters. In fact, they contribute to the gender roles by believing certain things are only the men's responsibility, such as finding serious evidence. Over the course of the story, though, the women are able to acknowledge their situation to themselves and to each other. They are united by Minnie's predicament because they see that they each have experienced the loneliness, isolation, and mistreatment that led her to kill her husband. In recognizing their shared experience through Minnie's tragic dilemma, the women begin to see themselves as part of a group of all women, and they are unwilling to judge another women who experienced the same subjugation. In concealing the evidence of Minnie's motive, the dead bird, the women stand up against the oppression they've experienced by creating a different sphere in which Minnie's actions are judged and pardoned: a jury of united women. - Theme: Male Obliviousness to Women's Importance. Description: While society and individual men oppress women throughout this short story, another theme in the text is the unexpected power the women have within the domestic sphere. This power is unexpected because the male characters repeatedly overlook the potential of the "trifles" that concern women. Ironically, the two women discover the evidence the men seek among the domestic items that the men dismiss. The men are unable to see the importance of the domestic sphere because they are unable to see the importance and intelligence of the women in their lives. By placing the solution to the murder mystery within the domestic sphere, Glaspell empowers the women with the very information the men unsuccessfully seek. The male characters are oblivious to the domestic sphere because they take for granted their own self-importance. A society with distinct gender roles that oppresses women has also taught men to value and trust their own opinions and minds without question. The men cannot recognize their need to consider the potential, or the threat, of the women near them, as when the county attorney assumes that anything Mrs. Peters would take to Minnie Wright must necessarily be harmless, simply because she's a woman. - Theme: Legal Obligations vs. Gender Loyalty. Description: The two female characters in the story, Mrs. Peters and Martha Hale, have conflicting commitments to Minnie Wright and the male-dominated legal system. Their commitment to Minnie Wright is due to their realization that all women have experienced isolation because of oppressive gender roles. Their commitment to the law is due to their status as citizens, but also, at a time when women could not vote, due to their position as wives subjected to their husbands' wills. Mrs. Peters, the Sherriff's wife, is told that she is "married to the law," which shows that her responsibility to the law and to her husband are the same in the minds of men. The male characters feel a strong responsibility to uphold the law. Yet because the law is controlled, designed, and enforced by men, the law also gives men power. Men control institutions like the legal system, which means that Minnie Wright will not have the opportunity to be judged, in a legal court, by a jury of her peers, as the title of the short story explains. A jury of her peers, other women, can only exist in the domestic sphere where Mrs. Peters and Martha Hale conceal the evidence of her crime. In the official legal system, men, not women, will judge Minnie Wright's crime and assign her punishment, without ever understanding or even caring about her situation. The women, at first, also feel this same responsibility, yet over the course of the story they come to see how the male-dominated law has failed Minnie—and, by extension, themselves. When Mrs. Peters and Martha Hale make the active choice to hide the dead bird, they are restricting this evidence from appearing in the legal court controlled and judged by men. Therefore, this act is a rebellion against the power of the male-dominated institution. - Theme: Crime and Punishment. Description: The story begins like a murder mystery, in which evidence is sought to convict a culprit. A murder mystery examines a crime, which, when the criminal is caught, is appropriately answered with a punishment. However, in this story, the ideas about what constitutes a crime and how a punishment can or cannot account for a crime are made more complicated. The jury of Minnie Wright's peers—Mrs. Peters and Martha Hale—judges her to have been justified in her "crime." Mrs. Peters and Martha Hale conceal the dead bird because they do not believe the legal system will be able to adequately judge and punish the "crime" that was committed. In their eyes, this was not a murder, not the crime one might assume based on that word, but instead was Minnie Foster's only option given the long standing oppression and isolation she was forced into by her husband and by the social and economic subjugation that defines all the characters' lives. The women are able to recognize that Minnie Foster's situation is a special case because, as women, they have experienced these same crimes committed against themselves. Martha Hale says, "we all go through the same things—it's all just a different kind of the same thing." Martha Hale further recognizes that many actions can be crimes that are not acknowledged by a legal system. Therefore, these crimes go unpunished. When she feels guilty for not having visited and assisted Minnie Wright for the last twenty years, she asks, "who's going to punish that?" While Martha directs this question at herself, her quote also subtly points out that the many crimes of the men in the play also go unpunished because the legal system is blind to the crimes that arise from a system of gender-based oppression and injustice. - Climax: Two female neighbors of Minnie Wright uncover the evidence of this woman's motive for killing her husband, and elect to conceal this evidence from the authorities. - Summary: The story begins with Martha Hale's hasty departure from her farmhouse kitchen. She looks around, hating to leave her workspace in disarray, but her husband impatiently tells her to hurry. Mrs. Hale joins the group of people in the buggy outside. The party includes: the county attorney, George Henderson, the local sheriff, Henry Peters, his wife, Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Hale's husband, Lewis Hale. The small group arrives at a neighboring farmhouse and enters the kitchen. Mrs. Hale reflects that she has never set foot in the farmhouse, but wishes she had called on the inhabitants: John Wright and Minnie Wright. Mrs. Hale knew Minnie Wright as a young woman, but she has been caught up in her own busy life, and has not made the effort to visit Minnie in the past twenty years. George Henderson calls upon Mr. Hale to tell his story of the events of the previous day at the farmhouse. Mrs. Hale looks on nervously as her husband speaks, aware of his tendency to mix up stories or to share unnecessary information. She reflects that this could make things worse for Minnie. Mr. Hale explains how he was driving by the Wrights' farmhouse the previous day when he stopped to call on his neighbor. He had hoped to install a party line telephone for both their houses, but Wright hadn't been interested, and Mr. Hale decided to try asking him in front of his wife. Although, Mr. Hale reflects, he doesn't know that his wife's opinion would have made much difference to John Wright. Mr. Hale entered the house to find Minnie Wright in her rocking chair. He asked after her husband and she calmly told him that he was there, but Mr. Hale couldn't speak with him because he was dead. Mr. Hale went upstairs and found John Wright's body in his bed. He has been strangled to death. Minnie Wright said she did not wake up, although she slept next to him, when this murder occurred. Minnie Wright was then arrested and taken to jail. She is being held while the county attorney and the local sheriff search her home for any clues regarding the murder. They are particularly looking for any evidence that would point to a motive for the crime. The men dismiss the items in the kitchen as womanly concerns that will not provide any evidence. But before they move upstairs to examine the scene of the crime, Minnie Wright's ruined canning jars of fruit are discovered. The recently completed canning project has been ruined by the cold weather because the contents have frozen and the jars burst open. Mrs. Peters says that Minnie had been worrying about just this possibility. Henry Peters immediately laughs, joking about a woman who could be so worried about something trivial when faced with a charge of murder. Mr. Hale acknowledges, "women are used to worrying over trifles." Mr. Henderson criticizes Minnie's messy kitchen and poor housekeeping, and Mrs. Hale immediately defends Minnie, reminding the attorney of how much work there is to be done around a farmhouse. George Henderson gives Mrs. Peters permission to take some clothes and things to Minnie in jail. He tells her to keep an eye out for any evidence, and Mr. Hale immediately questions whether the women would know a piece of evidence if they found one. Once the men go upstairs, Martha Hale expresses her unhappiness that they would criticize Minnie's kitchen in her absence. Mrs. Peters says that the men are just doing their duty in coming into the space and searching for evidence. The women gather together the items they will bring to Minnie and they notice the poor quality of her clothes, which reveals her husband's stinginess. Mrs. Hale suddenly asks Mrs. Peters if she thinks that Minnie is guilty, and the two women discuss the strange manner of John Wright's death. Mrs. Hale shares that Mr. Hale said there was a gun in the house, and yet this was overlooked in favor of the more brutal act of strangling John Wright. The women discover an in-progress quilt, and as the men return downstairs they overhear Mrs. Hale wondering whether Minnie was planning to finish the quilt by the regular technique or by knotting it. The men again laugh at the women's trivial interests. The men then leave to go out to the barn. As Mrs. Peters and Martha Hale examine the quilt, they observe an area of the stitching that is messy and crooked, unlike the rest. They suppose that Minnie was anxious or tired or otherwise upset when she was sewing. As they collect the items to take to Minnie, the two women comment on an empty birdcage they find. The birdcage is notable for its broken door. Martha Hale expresses her concerns about not having visited Minnie in twenty years because she was aware of John Wright's unsocial and stern character. She imagines the lonely life Minnie must have had with John Wright. The women look for Minnie's quilting materials, open a red box, and are instantly repulsed by the smell from inside: it is a dead bird, its neck twisted to one side as if strangled. The men reenter suddenly and Martha Hale conceals the box the women have just discovered. After the men leave, Mrs. Peters and Martha Hale reflect on stillness and loneliness. Mrs. Peters recalls a traumatic childhood memory of a neighboring boy who killed her pet kitten. Mrs. Peters acknowledges that she wished to hurt this boy in that instant. Martha Hale's reflections are self-critical. She repeats how much she wishes she had visited Minnie and speaks of her own actions as a crime that went unpunished. The men wrap up their investigation with no evidence to point to a motive. George Henderson starts to look through the things Mrs. Peters is taking to Minnie at the jail, but then stops, laughing that the things are only harmless, womanly things. Hidden among these things is the box with the dead bird inside. The men have failed in their search for evidence, but at least, George Henderson jokes, they found out about Minnie's quilting project. He asks Martha Hale to remind him what the term was for how Minnie might finish her quilt, and Mrs. Hale replies, with certainty, that Minnie Wright was going to "knot it."

- Genre: Genre:Novel of education - Title: A Lesson Before Dying - Point of view: Point of View:First person - Setting: Setting:1940s Louisiana - Character: Grant Wiggins. Description: The local schoolteacher, narrator, and the protagonist of A Lesson Before Dying, Grant Wiggins is initially reluctant when Miss Emma Glenn and Tante Lou give him the task of talking to Jefferson before he's executed. Grant is a college-educated Black man, but he's returned to his childhood home, where his ancestors were slaves, to teach at the segregated primary school where he was once a student. He is often frustrated with the lack of progress he sees in his students and in his community, and he fears that he isn't accomplishing anything at all for his students by teaching them "reading, writing, and 'rithmetic." While Grant believes in God, he questions his faith throughout the novel, and disagrees with Emma, Tante Lou, and Reverend Ambrose for being so concerned with Jefferson's soul. Grant finds it difficult to follow the tenets of Catholicism because he believes that Christianity promotes meekness and the acceptance of one's fate. Grant despises the condescension and outright hostility of white people like Henri Pichot to members of the Black community; it's for this reason that he struggles to accept Christianity, as he sees it as causing Black people to accept their terrible treatment. As Grant spends more time with Jefferson, he begins to see signs that his new student can change; this inspires him and makes him feel validated as a teacher. His beautiful girlfriend, Vivian Baptiste, is also instrumental in encouraging him to spend more time with Jefferson and see the signs that Jefferson is growing braver and stronger. By the novel's conclusion, Grant regards Jefferson as an enormously brave man. He continues to question the virtues of Christianity, but nonetheless respects religion for its ability to inspire hope in its believers. - Character: Jefferson. Description: The defendant at the trial for the murder of Alcee Gropé, Jefferson is sentenced to death by electrocution. During the trial, his defense attorney argues that the jury should show Jefferson mercy because killing Jefferson would be like killing a hog. This drives Jefferson's grandmother, Miss Emma Glenn, to want to find some way to help and teach Jefferson to face his death as a man rather than as a "hog," both for his sake and for the sake of the Black community. It's for this reason that she goes to Grant for help. For the first half of the novel, Jefferson is a callow, despairing young man, and has internalized the idea that he is an animal who need not abide by the rules of human society. When Miss Emma visits him, he shows no signs of love or affection for her, causing her to become ill and deeply depressed. Through his interactions with Grant, however, Jefferson begins to behave in a more civilized fashion, thanking Jefferson for his gifts, being polite to his grandmother, and writing his thoughts in a journal that Jefferson buys for him. Ultimately, Grant's attention and respect inspire Jefferson to behave courageously on the day of his execution, proving to himself, to Emma, to the Black community, and to the racist white people who believe he'll kill himself, that he is a man, not an animal. His bravery shows Grant that education can change a community, and provides a symbol of hope and virtue to his friends and family in the plantation community. Jefferson is a Christ-figure, dying for the greater good of his community and "living on" through the impact of his actions and memory. - Character: Tante Lou. Description: Grant's maternal grandmother, though he calls her his aunt. Tante Lou raised Grant's mother, and after Grant's parents moved to California, she raises Grant, as well. She is a pious woman and a devoted churchgoer, and Grant's refusal to attend church with her gives her great pain. Her frequently stubborn insistence that Grant visit Jefferson in his jail cell is Grant's sole reason for doing so during the first half of the novel. - Character: Miss Emma Glenn. Description: Jefferson's elderly grandmother, or "nannan," as he calls her, Miss Emma Glenn loves Jefferson to the point where his conviction and sentencing make her seriously ill, as does the fact that he has taken the defense attorney's words to heart and sees himself as more animal than man. She desperately wants Jefferson to learn to be a man before his execution, to face his death as a man. It is Emma who first suggests that Grant speak to Jefferson before his execution; despite her obvious desire that Grant do so, she often says that Grant needn't do anything he doesn't want to do. Emma's love for Jefferson also inspires her to talk to Henri Pichot, for whom she worked for many years—it's only after she asks Pichot for permission to see Jefferson that she—and Grant—begin visiting the jailhouse. - Character: The defense attorney. Description: The white attorney who is charged with the task of defending Jefferson from execution for the crime of killing Alcee Gropé. The attorney paints a picture of Jefferson that Grant, Emma, and Reverend Ambrose spend the remainder of the novel refuting: he calls Jefferson an animal and a "hog," and tries to convince the jury to spare his life on the grounds that it's immoral to kill a mere animal. For much of the novel, Jefferson believes the defense attorney's words, calling himself a hog and behaving like one. - Character: Henri Pichot. Description: The wealthy, bigoted white man who reluctantly agrees to the sheriff to allow Miss Emma Glenn and Grant to visit Jefferson. For many years, Pichot employed both Tante Lou and Miss Emma in his mansion; Emma reminds him of this fact when she begs him for the right to visit Jefferson. Pichot is revealed to be a cruel, bloodthirsty man near the end of the novel, when Gaines makes it clear that Pichot made a bet with his friend that Jefferson would kill himself before the day of his execution—he even offers Jefferson a penknife, thinking that Jefferson will use it to hurt himself. In many ways, Pichot stands for the racist white establishment: he's openly hostile to Black people, but also strangely weak in his need to see Black people demonstrate their own weakness. For Jefferson to stand proudly on the day he dies, then, is a major victory against Pichot. - Character: Vivian Baptiste. Description: Grant's beautiful girlfriend, Vivian Baptiste, is a schoolteacher in Bayonne, the nearest town to Grant's home. Vivian is also a mother, and has a husband, though they are in the process of getting divorced. She provides near-constant love and affection for Grant during the months he spends visiting Jefferson. There are many times when Grant is ready to give up and move away from his home—on these occasions, Vivian always encourages Grant to stay and continue helping Jefferson and teaching his students. Though Vivian and Grant argue and bicker throughout the novel, their love for each other is never in any doubt. At many points, Grant finishes a difficult session with Tante Lou or Jefferson and goes to the Rainbow Club in Bayonne, where Vivian is usually waiting to talk to him. - Character: Deputy Paul Bonin. Description: A white deputy sheriff at the jail where Jefferson is held, and the only guard who treats Jefferson and Grant with respect. Paul shows many signs that he wants Grant to succeed in inspiring Jefferson to be brave. He is present when Jefferson is executed at the end of the novel, and he tells Grant that Jefferson was the bravest man in the room. He also shakes Grant hand. (In line with the Christian symbolism of the book, Paul's name may allude to St. Paul, the loyal servant of Jesus Christ who spread the message of Christianity after Christ's death. Paul, too, spreads the word of Jefferson's bravery in death at the end of the novel.) - Character: Reverend Moses Ambrose. Description: An influential minister in Grant and Jefferson's community, and a champion of faith and humility, Reverend Moses Ambrose takes an active role in Jefferson's life from the moment Jefferson is sentenced to death: he visits Jefferson in his jail cell and encourages others to visit as well. Ambrose is suspicious of Grant's religious values, and frequently tells Grant that he must improve Jefferson's soul, not just his life. Ambrose is also skeptical of the merits of higher education, and tells Grant that college has made him more, not less ignorant. Toward the end of the novel, Ambrose reveals that he sees himself as a "liar": a minister who uses his influence to propagate Christian stories of transcendence and hope that, while not literally true, give people the courage to live their lives and thus take on a kind of metaphysical truth. While Grant spends most of the novel in disagreement with Ambrose, he comes to see that Ambrose's strength and integrity, stemming from a sincere belief in God and Heaven, far exceed his own. - Character: Edna Guidry. Description: Sam Guidry's wife. She is one of the only white characters in the novel who shows respect for Black people, though even her respect is less than what one might desire. Edna is instrumental in convincing Sam to allow Jefferson to have visitors, and she continues to show great concern for Jefferson throughout the novel. At the same time, she wishes aloud that the whole thing would just be finished, which seems a callous way to think about a process that will end in the execution of a man. - Character: Matthew Antoine. Description: The Creole man who taught Grant when Grant was a child, Matthew Antoine is a bitter, remorseful man who secretly despises Grant for daring to believe that he could use education to better himself. At the end of his life, Antoine coldly concludes that education changes nothing. Throughout the novel, Grant is in danger of becoming another Antoine; in other words, descending into cynicism. - Theme: Racism. Description: From its first page, A Lesson Before Dying portrays a racist society in 1940s Louisiana. Bayonne, Louisiana is a plantation community in which the descendants of slaves work on the same plantations where their ancestors worked; while they are paid for their labor, they're paid far less than white workers. The legal system is similar. While it's true that a black person in the era of slavery would never have received a trial at all, Jefferson's murder trial, the novel implies, is little better: the all-white jury never takes Jefferson's defense that he did not commit the crime seriously—it treats Jefferson as guilty until proven innocent. The racism inherent in the trial is perhaps made most obvious by the defense attorney whose job it is to represent Jefferson. This attorney urges the jury to acquit Jefferson on the grounds that Jefferson is more similar to a hog than to a man, and deserves mercy for that reason. It is the defense attorney's comparison of Jefferson to a pig that causes Miss Emma, Jefferson's grandmother, to approach the schoolteacher Grant to ask him to help Jefferson to die like a man rather than like a hog. (Note the possibility that Jefferson might appeal and overturn the verdict against him is never even considered; it's simply out of the realm of possibility in the racist world of the novel). The novel can be seen as depicting the struggle of not just Jefferson, but also Grant and other black characters, to live or even to die like humans – with dignity and self-respect – in a brutally racist world.At the same time, the novel also shows how the black characters in A Lesson Before Dying have themselves absorbed the racist ideas of which they are the victims. For instance, Vivian is lighter skinned than most of the black people in Bayonne, which immediately attracts the interest of the other black characters. And, later, Grant thinks to himself that mulattoes—people of mixed racial heritage—despise dark-skinned black people as much as white people do. Even though mulattoes are equally the victims of racism—banned from white bars and restaurants, forbidden from holding high-paying jobs—they try to act more like whites in their hatred of darker-skinned people.In part, Grant agrees to Miss Emma's request that he "educate" Jefferson because he wants Jefferson to fight racism. As Grant puts it, Jefferson will challenge the racists who sentenced him to death when he walks into the courthouse like a man. Grant's advice is truer than he knows: as Henri Pichot's bet makes clear, white racists are counting on Jefferson killing himself before he's electrocuted. We can assume that Jefferson's pride and courage on the day of his execution displeases Pichot and upsets his racist beliefs, if only a little.Ultimately, one man's behavior can only alter a racist society so much, but in the novel Gaines suggests how racism might be fought in the long term. He suggests this first in the way that Jefferson matures and comes to serve as a dignified representative of his people who commands respect. He also suggests how racism might be fought through the friendship that develops between Grant and Paul Bonin, the white deputy guard at the jailhouse where Jefferson is being held. During Grant's visits, Paul gradually develops respect for Grant and Jefferson, and wants to believe that Grant will succeed in his mission to help Jefferson become a man. After Jefferson is executed, Paul shakes Grant's hand and says that he'd like to be a friend to Grant. If racism is a collection of false information about other races, then, the novel suggests, the antidote is education and mutual understanding, of the kind that Paul gradually receives while watching Grant and Jefferson. - Theme: Education. Description: Grant Wiggins, the narrator of A Lesson Before Dying, is a teacher. And education plays a key thematic role in the novel. Yet the novel's portrayal of education is not the simple "education is good" that you might hear from a politician. In fact, in the beginning of the novel, there seems to be no evidence that education, as traditionally understood, yields any long-term results whatsoever.Grant runs a schoolhouse, filled by poor black students, out of the local church. There, he and his student teacher, Irene, instruct children in grades one through six in the three R's: "reading, writing, and 'rithmetic." Yet Grant can't think of a single student who has used education to improve his or her life. Students that survive into adulthood have no option but to take menial jobs that aren't any different from those filled by the old black men who drop off firewood to the school for the winter. Put bluntly, the things taught by "education" have no relevance to the kind of work society permits black people to do. Then there are people like Grant himself, who use their education to get a job teaching to the next generation of students. But the supposed "fruits of education" seem to be either nonexistent or, at best, perpetually deferred. As Grant himself puts it, he teaches the three R's to black students because whites tell him to—the implication being that this kind of education has no empowering function whatsoever, and thus white racist society doesn't view educating blacks as a threat.Yet when Miss Emma and Tante Lou enlist Grant to help educate Jefferson into being a man before he's executed, the novel grapples with what education can and should be, beyond the simple transference of facts and skills. As Grant acknowledges, the education he's being asked to give to Jefferson can't be anything like the kind he gives to his schoolchildren. Not only does Grant not have time to prepare Jefferson for a brighter future; Jefferson has no future. Grant is teaching Jefferson morality, not arithmetic. When Grant visits Jefferson in his cell, he tells him that there is value in acting kindly to one's family and one's friends, a proposition that Jefferson finds ridiculous, at least at first. Here, Gaines captures an old problem that goes back at least to Socrates: how can morality be taught? It's significant that the major breakthrough Grant makes with Jefferson arrives when Grant is about to leave Jefferson's cell: Jefferson stands up and asks Grant to thank Grant's children for donating the bag of pecans Grant has just dropped off.Out of that moment, and for the remainder of the novel, Gaines suggests a more complicated model of education than the one we get in the early chapters set at the schoolhouse. Not only can education be moral as well as practical; education need not consist of a teacher giving information to a student. A better analogy for the process of education appears in A Lesson Before Dying itself: a rough piece of wood can be carved and polished into a beautiful, smooth piece. In other words, the role of teacher—Grant or anyone else—isn't necessarily to give information to the student, but rather to help the student unlock his innate moral knowledge, knowledge that Jefferson proves he already has when he thanks Grant for the pecans.Grant also discovers that education is a two-way-street. Even as he teaches Jefferson, Grant learns to be a more moral person himself, sacrificing his own dignity for the betterment of Jefferson, Tante Lou, and Miss Emma. Grant's moral transformation is only possible because he rejects the model of education whereby the all-knowing teacher passes on knowledge to the student. Thus, the novel's "lesson before dying" refers both to what Grant teaches Jefferson about bravery and morality, and what Jefferson teaches Grant, Miss Emma, and the entire black community. - Theme: Religion, Cynicism, and Hope. Description: Throughout A Lesson Before Dying, Grant, a Catholic living in a largely Catholic community, grapples with questions of religion. Although nearly all of his peers and family members are Catholic, Grant distrusts organized religion, at least as the people around him practice it. In large part, this is because Grant distrusts the concept of Heaven: the notion that all misery and suffering is strictly short-term, because good people will receive an eternal reward for their good behavior. He distrusts this concept because he sees it as a way of keeping the poor and powerless in line. As he tells Jefferson during a visit to the jailhouse late in the novel, white people are comfortable with the black community's minister, Reverend Ambrose, because Ambrose, by getting his congregation to focus on their reward in the next life, encourages his congregation to be docile and accept their inferior position to whites in this one.In a sense, what Grant distrusts isn't religion so much as hope. (Grant actually says that he believes in God, but not Heaven.) And yet, while Grant's logic seems sound, the novel portrays the impact of Grant's distrust for Christianity/hope very clearly: he lives a lonely, cynical life. Even as a schoolteacher—a job that would seem to require the hopeful belief that one's students will grow up to succeed—Grant is cynical. He can't think of a good reason why he's still in Louisiana teaching, and thinks about how few of his students—if any—will go on to use the knowledge he's teaching them. Even though it's his job to change his students, Grant himself refuses to change—and rues his life.A turning point for Grant's understanding of religion and hope comes when Reverend Ambrose confronts him after Grant has given Jefferson a radio. Ambrose tells Grant that, in fact, Grant is the uneducated fool and Ambrose the educated man. While Grant thinks that he understands the truth, Ambrose does something far more sophisticated: he lies. Ambrose lies in his sermons, in his conversations with members of his congregation, and even when he talks to Miss Emma about Jefferson. Ambrose tells these lies because lies can have value: they can inspire hope and optimism, while also bringing momentary peace and contentment to people who are in pain. Grant comes to see how such hope and optimism can provide a strength that Grant himself doesn't have: while Grant is too afraid to attend Jefferson's execution, Ambrose does go, and reads Jefferson the 23rd psalm.At first, Grant believed that religion and the belief in heaven was a kind of trick, designed by people in power to make the powerless accept their suffering. He begins to see that heaven, even if it's not literally true, has a kind of spiritual truth: it brings people the strength to overcome their suffering. By the end of the novel, while he never admits to believing in heaven himself, Grant's experiences with Jefferson and Ambrose have convinced him that hope and belief aren't to be scoffed at: they bring people peace and strength, both the strength to endure injustice and, perhaps, to take the small, slow steps to bring about change. - Theme: Heroism and Sacrifice. Description: During one of Grant's visits to Jefferson near the end of the novel, he gives Jefferson his definition of a hero: "A hero is someone who does something for other people." The broader implication of Grant's definition is that heroes sacrifice their own interests for the interests of other human beings. Grant insists that he himself is not a hero—in fact, he says that he's only looking out for his own interests as an educated black man—but that Jefferson is capable of being a hero.Gaines explores the ethics of heroism and sacrifice in A Lesson Before Dying. In his earliest encounters with Grant, Jefferson rejects heroism, personal sacrifice, and all morality—there's no point in caring about others, he tells Grant, since he's going to die soon. It's up to Grant to convince Jefferson that he does have the desire and the ability to be a hero.Throughout the novel, Gaines is careful to show us the small and large sacrifices the characters make for each other. The schoolchildren's families donate wood in order to keep the school warm through the winter, and the entire community donates clothes, presents, and food for the annual Christmas play that Grant organizes. Emma and Tante Lou make enormous sacrifices for their children: Emma cooks and cares for Jefferson's every need, and Tante Lou works harder than ever to pay for Grant's college education, even after she sustains wounds on her feet and knees. Even Grant, who tells Jefferson that he's a selfish man, has devoted his adult life to teaching children, for reasons he can't entirely explain. The reason Grant does this, Gaines suggests, is the same reason that people donate their wood to the schoolhouse: humans have an innate, illogical desire to help others.By showing sacrifice in its ordinary, everyday forms, Gaines steers us toward the conclusion that it's human to care about others, and to sacrifice. If heroism is sacrifice, this would suggest that all people are capable of heroism. Indeed, Jefferson attains heroism by putting Miss Emma's interests before his own and walking bravely to his death, making Emma happy and proud. It may be that all people are capable of such displays of heroism, even if only a few of them ever prove it.Ultimately, Gaines implies that sacrifice and heroism aren't lofty ideals; they're acts that all humans can perform with the proper encouragement. Even if few of us will become martyrs, it's possible to be a hero in other ways—with this in mind, Gaines points us to the quiet heroism of Emma, Lou, and even Grant. - Theme: Women and Femininity. Description: Dozens of times in A Lesson Before Dying, we hear Emma and Tante Lou say that Grant must teach Jefferson to die "like a man, not a hog." This suggests that A Lesson Before Dying is about how a man should die, and more importantly, what a man should be. This raises the question: what's Gaines's idea of what a woman should be? More to the point, how should a woman live?Especially in the first half of the novel, Gaines shows us how women live in 1940s Louisiana. Black women like Emma and Lou selflessly care for their family members. Even though Jefferson and Grant aren't their maternal children, they treat them like their children, cooking for them, sheltering them, working to pay for them, and, in Lou's case, paying for their education. Edna Guidry, the sheriff's wife, sympathizes with Miss Emma's pain after Jefferson is sentenced to death, and convinces her husband to let Emma, Lou, Grant and Reverend Ambrose visit Jefferson in the dayroom. Edna is white, but her sympathy for Jefferson seems closely tied to her understanding of his grandmother's pain and anguish. This suggests that gender, for women, while not overcoming racial allegiance, at least creates bridges across it. Vivian cares for her schoolchildren far more than Grant cares for his. There are many times when Grant is willing to move away from his home, taking Vivian with him, and Vivian convinces him to stay for the sake of their students. Though we never see Vivian with her children, we know that she has continued taking care of them after her husband left her, and wants to continue caring for them after she finalizes her divorce. Taken together, these examples of feminine behavior fit Grant's definition of heroism: Emma, Lou, Vivian, and Edna sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of others. Women seem to be more in touch with the innate human instinct to help others than the men in the novel.But it's not enough to classify women's behavior as heroic; while it certainly is, their behavior is motivated both by the desire to help specific people and by the more abstract desire to keep their communities stable. At one point in the novel, as Grant sits with Vivian at the Rainbow Club, he tells her that women are terrified that the men in their lives—their husbands, boyfriends, children, and grandchildren—will leave them for a new life somewhere else. We see ample evidence of this in A Lesson Before Dying: Vivian's husband leaves her, Emma's husband leaves her, Jefferson's father leaves him, etc. Thus, it becomes extremely important for women to take care of those who remain behind: they're trying to ensure that their communities won't be fractured any more than they already have been. When Grant explains this to Vivian, he's being dismissive of women—he finds it obnoxious and suffocating that they're trying to keep him and other men from moving away. But he gains more respect for women when he learns that Tante Lou, who's raised him since he was a child, actually injured herself working extra hours to pay for his food and college education, but never complained to him about her pain.What Grant comes to understand, and what A Lesson Before Dying portrays, is the way that women sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others without even the promise of being recognized as a hero, or at all. In this way, the heroism of women in the novel is revealed as truly selfless, truly heroic. - Theme: Roots, Connections, and Morality. Description: Many times in A Lesson Before Dying, Jefferson and Grant are told that they should help other people, or that they owe other people their respect and service. These "other people" include family, members of the plantation community, and even strangers. In the novel, Gaines explores the way that interpersonal connections compel people to behave morally to one another.For Gaines, the interpersonal connection begins with the family. Both Grant and Jefferson are impacted by those who fail to live up to this bond—they are both abandoned by their parents—and benefitted by those who take the bond seriously: Grant is taken in and raised by his aunt Tante Lou as if he was her own, while Jefferson is similarly taken in by his grandmother. As Grant and Jefferson grow up, their families try to instill in them a more abstract feeling of connection with their community and their "roots." In many cases, this feeling takes a religious form. Tante Lou takes Grant to church until he goes to college, and Miss Emma raises Jefferson as a Catholic; they do so to make their children better people, but also to connect them with the other people in the plantation community.As the novel begins, both Grant and Jefferson resent the connection between themselves and their families and roots—they treat it like a burden they must drag with them. Their resentment (and in Grant's case, his sense of being "trapped" in his obligations) makes them feel lonely and cynical. Grant has gone off to college and when he returned to Louisiana, felt no connection to his church or community. When Tante Lou urges him to talk to Jefferson, he's irritated to have to get involved in what he sees as a lost cause. His cynicism about his family and community is so great that he dreams of leaving Louisiana altogether. Much the same is true of Jefferson. Though Emma showers him with maternal affection, cooking him his favorite foods and visiting him frequently, Jefferson doesn't return this affection, and certainly doesn't show any affection to Grant.While moral connections begin with a familial, even biological bond, Gaines suggests that feeling of connection to one's family and one's roots is ultimately a choice. Grant reluctantly chooses to help Jefferson because of his obligation to Tante Lou. Yet as Grant spends more time with Jefferson, he begins teaching him out of a desire to help him, not a sense of obligation. At the same time, he begins to feel a stronger connection to other members of his community, such as the students at his school. Ultimately, he also comes to feel a bond of friendship with the white prison guard Paul Bonin, who isn't a member of his community at all. Much the same is true of Jefferson. Over the course of the novel he freely chooses to be a moral being, telling Grant to thank his children for their pecans, and later embracing Miss Emma, his godmother, before he's executed. By extending their sense of moral connection to their families, their communities, and to strangers, both Grant and Jefferson battle their own cynicism. Grant captures the relationship between morality, emotion, and connection immediately after Jefferson breaks down in tears with Miss Emma: Grant says that Jefferson is crying because he feels that he's part of a whole.The novel suggests that the moral bond begins with the family, but ultimately it doesn't stay there: the moral person must freely choose to get in touch with his family, his roots, and with unfamiliar people. Gaines ends A Lesson Before Dying with a poignant image of the connection between unlike people: Grant and Paul shake hands, showing how people can move beyond the boundaries of race, class, and experience. - Climax: Climax:Jefferson's execution - Summary: In southern 1940s Louisiana, near the town of Bayonne, a young Black man named Jefferson is tried for the murder of an old shopkeeper, Alcee Gropé. The white prosecutor accuses him of accompanying two other Black men to murder Gropé, stealing Gropé's money, and celebrating by drinking a bottle of whiskey. The defense attorney, also a white man, argues that Jefferson was in the wrong place at the wrong time: the two killers gave him a ride into town, and he was caught in a shootout. Ultimately, the defense attorney urges the jury, twelve white men, to spare Jefferson's life on the basis that he is Black and poor, and killing him would be like killing a hog. Nonetheless, the jury finds Jefferson guilty and sentences him to death, at a date to be determined later. The novel's narrator, Grant Wiggins, is a Black schoolteacher who lives with Tante Lou, the aunt who has raised him since he was a child. Lou is a close friend of Jefferson's grandmother, Miss Emma Glenn, who has raised Jefferson since he was a baby. Though Emma says that Grant needn't do anything he doesn't want to do, Lou insists that Grant visit Jefferson in his jail cell and teach him how to die like a man, instead of a hog. Grant refuses on the grounds that Jefferson is basically already dead, but Lou is so persistent and forceful that he agrees to help her negotiate with the sheriff to allow Jefferson to have visitors. Emma, Lou, and Grant go to the house of Henri Pichot, a wealthy white man for whom they used to work, and ask him to allow Jefferson visitors. Pichot responds irritably that he will speak to the sheriff. Several days later, Pichot summons Grant to his house, where Pichot and Sheriff Sam Guidry, both of whom are highly bigoted against Black people, tell Grant that he can visit Jefferson, but that he mustn't cause any trouble. In the weeks leading up to Grant's first visit, he continues teaching first through sixth-graders at the segregated school he runs in the local church. Winter is coming, and the community is going through the annual practice of sending kindling to the schoolhouse so that it can stay warm for the cold months. As Grant watches old men deliver wood, he thinks to himself that his students will end up working just like these men and never use any of the knowledge he's giving them. He thinks back to his childhood, when he was a student at the school where he's now a teacher. Grant fears that he'll end up like his old teacher, Matthew Antoine: cynical, disillusioned, and left with nothing to show for a lifetime of teaching others. Grant spends many of his afternoons with his beautiful girlfriend, Vivian Baptiste, at the Rainbow Club in nearby Bayonne. Vivian is still married, and has children, but she is in the process of separating from her husband. She and Grant are very much in love. During Grant's earliest visits to Jefferson, he's accompanied by Tante Lou and Miss Emma. Jefferson is almost completely unresponsive, even though Emma has cooked him delicious food, and his silence causes Emma great pain. Grant becomes familiar with the process of visiting Jefferson: he's searched, sometimes mocked by Sheriff Guidry for believing that he can teach Jefferson anything, marched past the other prisoners, and then given an hour to speak to Jefferson. On Grant's first visit alone to Jefferson, he brings Jefferson Miss Emma's food, and Jefferson eats it like a hog and says that he's being fattened up like an animal before he's slaughtered. For the next month, Grant continues to visit Jefferson, though these visits are almost as unproductive as the first one. Grant notices, though, that while Jefferson doesn't talk, he's desperate for Grant's company. Grant also develops a friendship with Paul Bonin, the young white deputy who often escorts him to Jefferson's cell. While Paul is white, he doesn't disrespect Grant or Jefferson. Tante Lou, Emma, and the community's minister, Reverend Ambrose, convince Sheriff Guidry's wife, Edna Guidry, to convince the sheriff to allow them to visit Jefferson together, meaning that they have to sit in the jailhouse's dayroom rather than in Jefferson's cell. Meanwhile, Grant introduces Vivian to his family, and we learn that Grant doesn't attend church anymore, causing great pain to Tante Lou, who, like nearly everyone in the community, is Catholic. Tante Lou is polite around Vivian, but she is displeased to hear that she is getting divorced, and tells Vivian to remember God. Afterwards, Grant tells Vivian that he doesn't know what he's doing with Jefferson, and suggests that they move to another city, far away. Vivian refuses to do so, reasoning that she cares too much about the children she teaches. She also encourages Grant to continue talking to Jefferson, suggesting that Jefferson is changing, even if he doesn't seem to be. In December, Grant puts on the annual school Christmas play, which the entire community attends. Though everyone has donated food and clothing to the play, and enjoys singing Christmas songs, Grant is privately depressed, since he organizes the same show year after year, never seeing any change. Then, in early February, Grant learns from Henri Pichot that the judge has set a date for Jefferson's execution: the second Friday after Easter. With Vivian's support, he offers Miss Emma his comfort and support, and she tells him that he and Ambrose must make Jefferson a man before he's killed. On his next visit to Jefferson's cell, Grant learns that Jefferson would like a radio so that he has some form of entertainment while he waits to die. He buys a radio, borrowing money from the owner of the Rainbow Club, Joe Claiborne, and gives it to Jefferson the next day. Reverend Ambrose is furious that Grant has given Jefferson a "box of sin," but Grant insists that Jefferson needs to take his mind off his death. On his next solo visit to the jail, Grant brings Jefferson a bag of pecans that his students have gathered, and tells Jefferson that he's going to give him a notebook and pencil so that Jefferson can write down his thoughts. At the end of this visit, Jefferson stands up and tells Grant to thank his students for the pecans. Grant senses instantly that he's made a "breakthrough." Shortly after his breakthrough, Grant, Tante Lou, Reverend Ambrose, and Miss Emma visit Jefferson together in the dayroom. Miss Emma has made a large pot of gumbo for the visit, but Jefferson refuses to eat any of it. Grant and Jefferson slowly pace around the room. As they walk, Grant tells Jefferson that he must be a hero—more of a hero than Grant himself could ever be—and stand up to the racist white people who have sentenced him to death by being brave and strong. He says that Jefferson must be good to Miss Emma by eating some of the gumbo she's made him; Jefferson sits down and eats some of the gumbo, bringing joy to Miss Emma. Later, Grant celebrates in the Rainbow Club, and gets into a fight with two "mulattoes" (men of mixed race) who think that Jefferson should have been executed long ago. Vivian takes Grant back to her home, where Grant tells her that he loves her and needs her support while he visits Jefferson. Vivian suggests that Grant doesn't know what love is, and Grant is about to leave when he realizes that he has no one else to turn to—he goes back inside Vivian's house and embraces her. Only a few weeks before Jefferson is to be executed, Reverend Ambrose visits Grant and tells him that he is endangering Jefferson's soul by giving him a radio and never mentioning Heaven. This leads to a heated argument between the two of them, in which Grant says that he believes in God but not in Heaven. Ambrose replies that he's had to lie to his congregation, filling their heads with hope and optimism. Grant is a fool, he concludes, for not understanding that people need hope and Heaven to be strong. On Grant's next visit to Jefferson, he tells Jefferson that he doesn't believe in Heaven, but that God says that humans must be good to one another. The following chapter consists of excerpts from the notebook Grant gave Jefferson to use as a diary. In broken English, Jefferson writes that Henri Pichot and his friend gave him a penknife; though Jefferson is unaware of this, we understand that Pichot has made a bet that Jefferson will kill himself before he's executed, and gave him the penknife as a potential weapon of self-harm. Jefferson also writes about saying goodbye to Miss Emma. He concludes by thanking Grant for teaching him, noting that no one else has ever been so good to him. The next chapter is written from the point of view of various characters who witness aspects of Jefferson's execution. Reverend Ambrose prepares to read Jefferson the 23rd Psalm; meanwhile, Black and white workers see a truck carrying an electric chair pull up to the courthouse. In the jail, Sheriff Guidry says that Jefferson must be shaved so that the electric chair will work. Paul arranges for him to be shaved. When Paul is about to leave Jefferson's cell, Jefferson asks him if he'll be there at the execution. Paul says that he will. Grant doesn't attend Jefferson's execution, but he leaves his classroom, telling his students that they must stay on their knees and pray until he receives news that Jefferson is dead. He walks outside and thinks to himself that he was wrong to disagree with Reverend Ambrose: Ambrose has far more strength than Grant will ever have, and this is because Ambrose believes in God and Heaven. Grant senses that Jefferson has been killed, and he goes back to the schoolhouse. As he walks there, he meets Paul, who has just come from the execution. Paul shakes hands with Grant and tells him that Jefferson was the bravest man in the room when he was executed. Paul says that Grant must be a great teacher; Grant replies that Jefferson taught himself. Paul gives Grant Jefferson's notebook, and Grant walks back into the schoolhouse in tears.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: A Little Cloud - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Dublin, Ireland - Character: Thomas Chandler / Little Chandler. Description: Thomas Chandler is the main character of the story. He is Annie's husband and an old friend of Ignatius Gallaher. He is nicknamed "Little Chandler" because of his below-average height and delicate, well-groomed appearance. Little Chandler works an unfulfilling job as a clerk at King's Inn, a legal institution in Dublin, Ireland. He dreams of success and recognition as a poet but has been too timid to bring his dreams to fruition. With a "melancholy," passive, resigned personality, Little Chandler has drifted along in life, vaguely dissatisfied, until one day his old friend Gallaher visits Dublin and invites him to meet at a fancy restaurant. Gallaher left Dublin eight years before to pursue a more adventurous life as a journalist in London. As their meeting approaches, Little Chandler becomes lost in dreams of a more exciting, meaningful life. He grows to feel more empowered, imagining success and personal reinvention as a professional writer. However, upon meeting Gallaher, Little Chandler is somewhat let down. Gallaher's manners and appearance are coarse, and his time away from Dublin has only worsened his already questionable morality. Their meeting leaves Little Chandler resentful and thwarted, as he feels that he's more deserving of success than Gallaher is. These feelings only increase when Little Chandler returns home. Charged with caring for his infant son, he bungles this job badly and makes the baby cry hysterically. Annie chastises Little Chandler harshly, and the story ends with him in tears, once again resigned to his sad, small existence. In the end, Little Chandler experiences an epiphany that he is a "prisoner for life." He is trapped by the mundane world of work and domesticity that he fell into through his fearful inability to pursue his passion. Little Chandler's dreams are much like the "Little Cloud" of the story's title: small and fleeting, drifting away just as quickly as they appeared. - Character: Ignatius Gallaher. Description: Ignatius Gallaher is an old friend of Little Chandler. A native Dubliner, he immigrated to London eight years before the story takes place and is now back for a visit. It's rumored that Gallaher left Dublin because of money troubles brought on by his careless, alcohol-ridden lifestyle. Despite these flaws, he possessed undeniable talent and charisma. During Gallaher's time away, he has made the most of these attributes and achieved success as a journalist for the London Press. Moreover, he has been able to travel widely throughout Europe, experiencing the pleasures of Paris in particular. For Little Chandler, Gallaher represents everything missing from his own life: an engaging personality, career success, cosmopolitan experiences, and personal freedom. However, when the pair meet at a fancy restaurant to catch up, Little Chandler's expectations are not fully met. While Gallaher does appear successful, he is also prematurely aged, coarse, and vulgar. Moreover, his travels seem primarily to have allowed him to indulge in petty vices and sensual pleasures. Gallaher shows no signs of changing his lifestyle, remarking that he does not plan to settle down and start a family—unless he were to marry for money. Little Chandler is left feeling resentful of Gallaher's success and freedom. The contrast between the two makes Little Chandler more conscious of his own limitations in life. Moreover, Gallaher's characterization shows that while Dublin may hinder one's prospects (as Little Chandler believes the city has done for him), emigration may hold out a false hope for personal growth and reinvention. Gallaher has achieved financial and career success, but his personal flaws have only grown worse in his time abroad, and he lacks the self-awareness to perceive any need for improvement. - Character: Annie. Description: Annie is Little Chandler's overworked, frazzled, ill-tempered wife. They have been married for less than two years and have an infant son. Already the marriage is showing signs of strain. Because of limited income, they cannot afford to keep a servant to help with housekeeping and childcare. Annie's sister, Monica, comes in for two hours a day, but otherwise these responsibilities fall solely to Annie. Readers only see Annie from Little Chandler's point of view, and she simply appears as yet another dissatisfying aspect of his life. After his meeting with Gallaher, Little Chandler begins to see Annie as cold, small-minded, and conventional. When Annie goes out to run an errand at the end of the story, she returns to find the baby crying hysterically. Her anger at Little Chandler is fierce: she demands to know what he did to the baby, glaring at her husband with hate in her eyes. By contrast, she takes the baby and coos at him gently, trying to soothe his distress: "Mamma's little lamb of the world!...There now!" This further heightens Little Chandler's sense of imprisonment by his mundane life and his resignation to his fate. He chose the conventional path of marriage and family, and now has to live with the often-disappointing consequences of that choice. Moreover, his lack of connection to Annie leaves him with no one to turn to for comfort when he realizes that his life is an inescapable trap. In fact, his marriage to her is a major component of his imprisonment. - Character: The Baby. Description: The unnamed infant son of Little Chandler and Annie appears in the last part of the story. At the end of their meeting, Gallaher congratulates Little Chandler for fathering a son: "Bravo! […] I wouldn't doubt you, Tommy." It is implied that Little Chandler is proud of his small family when he invites Gallaher to spend an evening with them. However, the child ends up representing Little Chandler's imprisonment by life. Little Chandler is charged with caring for the baby while Annie runs an errand, but grows so frustrated with his crying son that he shouts at the infant, making him cry even more. At the very end of the story, the baby stops crying just as Little Chandler starts to cry himself, suggesting a symbolic role reversal wherein Little Chandler is reduced to a fragile, pathetic child. Like his infant son, Little Chandler is small and helpless. Unlike an infant, though, Little Chandler is aware of his helplessness, leading to his devastating sadness and sense of resignation. - Theme: Resignation vs. Empowerment. Description: Many stories in Dubliners feature characters whose dreams have been thwarted—whether because of happenstance, social obligations, or their own personal limitations, Joyce's characters are often frustrated by their limited lives. Little Chandler, the protagonist of "A Little Cloud," is no exception. He is portrayed as a timid man with a small life, and at the beginning of the story, he seems resigned to his fate. However, a visit from his old friend Gallaher prompts him to reassess his life. Eight years prior, Gallaher emigrated from Dublin to London pursue a career in journalism—a daring move that contrasts sharply with Chandler's own safe, limited life. As Chandler prepares for their reunion, he grows dissatisfied with the stasis of his life and he begins to feel a new sense of empowerment that reignites his dreams of being a famous poet. However, Little Chandler's empowerment is short-lived—much like "a little cloud" passing through the sky—as he moves from resignation to empowerment, then back to an even deeper resignation. Through his progression, Joyce shows that while imagining success and fulfillment is a first step toward change, real empowerment only happens when dreams translate into action. Little Chandler is introduced as unmanly, sad, and passive. Although he flirts with the idea of being a poet, he's held back by timidity. Little Chandler's appearance conveys "the idea of being a little man," hence his name. He is described in feminine terms, with his "white and small hands," "fair silken hair," a perfumed handkerchief, and manicured fingernails. He even has "childish white teeth," making him seem more like a little boy than an adult man. As he looks out the window of his office, taking a break from "tiresome writing," Chandler sees "the glow of a late autumn sunset" on "decrepit old men who drowsed on the benches." These images of lethargy mirror Little Chandler's state: a passive spectator of life, not an active participant. Watching these people, Chandler feels "a gentle melancholy." This sadness prompts a feeling of resignation and helplessness: "He felt how useless it was to struggle against fortune." Chandler's melancholy, resigned thoughts turn to his love of poetry, which he's never shared with his wife since "shyness had always held him back." He merely repeats lines to himself, an activity that "console[s] him." For Chandler, poetry an unrealized dream and solitary activity that soothes his sadness rather than a passion that ignites his spirit. However, as Chandler prepares to meet up with Gallaher—a man of action, at least in Chandler's eyes—Chandler begins to more seriously consider the possibilities of his own life. In imagining success, Chandler seems poised to finally make his dreams a reality. Chandler remembers his friend Gallaher, seeing him as a role model for success, "a brilliant figure on the London Press." Chandler can remember "many signs of future greatness" in Gallaher. Just imagining Gallaher's life leads to Chandler to feel vicariously empowered. Chandler grows critical of his surroundings, and "for the first time in his life" he feels superior to his fellow Dubliners on the streets. He notices their "dull inelegance" and calls them "a band of tramps." Instead, he imagines that emigrating like Gallaher is the only path to success because "You could do nothing in Dublin." Chandler's new feeling of empowerment leads him to imagine a more successful life as a poet. Yearning to escape his "sober inartistic life," he judges that he is at the right age (32), with a "temperament […] just at the point of maturity." He believes himself to have a "poet's soul": melancholy but "tempered with […] faith and resignation and simple joy." Losing himself in dreams of fame, Chandler imagines future success. He pictures recognition by the English press and "a little circle of kindred minds." He imagines reviewers praising his poetry's "Celtic note." Chandler even imagines renaming himself to capitalize on his Irishness. He would adopt his mother's Irish-sounding name, Malone, transforming himself from Thomas Chandler to T. Malone Chandler. Chandler's daydreams of success are rich and detailed, and he seems poised to finally take the steps necessary to achieve them. While Chandler's imagination gives him an escape from his dull life, it does not actually spur him to take action. Daunted by the idea of taking concrete steps to actually achieve his dreams, Chandler finds himself even more resigned to his fate at the end of the story than he was at the beginning. At the story's conclusion, Chandler sinks back into gloomy resignation over his life. Chandler's thoughts are full of the possibilities raised by meeting Gallaher again: "Could he not escape from his little house? Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like Gallaher? Could he go to London?" Even though Gallaher proved shallow and crass rather than cultured and refined, encountering him made Chandler imagine change. However, he fails to take action to change his life, instead resigning to timidly question different possibilities. Chandler picks up a volume of poetry, longing to write. However, he is interrupted his crying baby. His frustration grows as he is unable to focus, and he begins to see his whole life as hopeless: "It was useless. He couldn't read. He couldn't do anything. He was a prisoner for life." Chandler becomes even more resigned than he was at the beginning of the story, seeing himself as a prisoner, powerless to change or escape his state. The final images of the story reinforce just how resigned and powerless Little Chandler has become: as his wife comforts their crying baby, he stands to the side, "tears of remorse" filling his eyes. He is remorseful and ashamed for making the baby cry. But it also seems that he feels remorse for his life and inability to create meaningful change in it and live his dreams. With this bleak ending, Joyce spins a cautionary tale, showing readers how, as the popular adage goes, nothing changes if nothing changes. - Theme: The Illusions of Success. Description: In many of the stories in Dubliners, Joyce portrays Dublin, Ireland as excessively conventional, morally strict, and provincial. After growing dissatisfied with his birthplace, Joyce himself left Dublin early in his life and spent the majority of his years as an expatriate in continental Europe. Like Joyce, Gallaher is an émigré and thus represents an image of success and sophistication for Little Chandler, who is stuck in Dublin. However, their meeting deflates Chandler's idealistic view of his old friend as Gallaher appears crass, vulgar, and even morally corrupted. While Chandler assumes that moving to a more cosmopolitan place will turn a person into a more refined version of themselves, Gallaher's characterization proves that this is not always the case. Gallaher's emigration did not improve him—his seedy lifestyle abroad has actually exacerbated his preexisting character flaws. Through Gallaher's portrayal, the story shows that emigration holds out a false promise of career success, escape from provincial morality, and personal sophistication—dismantling the age-old adage that "the grass is greener on the other side." Through Gallaher, Joyce shows that while Ireland may have its problems and limitations, leaving it is not necessarily a cure-all, either. Gallaher immigrated to London to pursue a career in journalism, and he has achieved fame. However, he seems dissatisfied with his profession, as does Chandler by the end of their meeting. Upon meeting Chandler, Gallaher playfully mocks his own aged appearance, blaming it on the stresses of his career: "It pulls you down […] Press life. Always hurry and scurry." He grouses about journalism's fast pace, which requires "looking for copy and sometimes not finding it: and then, always to have something new in your stuff." He is happy to have some time off, exclaiming, "Damn proofs and printers, I say, for a few days." Gallaher makes his career (which Chandler has imagined as glamorous and important) seem instead tiresome, petty, and frustrating. By the end of their meeting, Little Chandler feels deeply resentful over Gallaher's success. He denigrates Gallaher's profession as "tawdry journalism," reflecting that "he could do something better than his friend had ever done"—if only he had the chance to leave Dublin.  In addition to being disappointed with Gallaher's career, Chandler is let down by Gallaher's poor manners. With his heavy drinking and vulgar, coarse way of speaking, Gallaher does not fit Chandler's image of the sophisticated, successful expatriate. Gallaher drinks heavily throughout the meeting with Chandler and he pressures Chandler to do the same, several times saying things like, "I say Tommy, don't make punch of that whisky: liquor up." Moreover, Gallaher's manners and speech disappoint Chandler. For example, when discussing Paris, Gallaher says "I've been to the Moulin Rouge […] and I've been to all the bohemian cafes. Hot stuff! Not for a pious chap like you, Tommy." Chandler is left feeling "somewhat disillusioned" by Gallaher's coarse manner. He reflects that "There was something vulgar in his friend which he had not observed before." With this, Chandler begins to realize that simply leaving Dublin doesn't make someone glamorous or cultured. Far from being a sophisticated expatriate, Gallaher instead comes off as pleasure-seeking, morally seedy, and callous.  Through this portrayal, the story shows that living abroad actually can have a corrupting influence. Chandler asks Gallaher hopefully about Paris: "is it really as beautiful as they say?"  Gallaher seems confused by the question, as if he had never considered it, and he contradicts himself: "Beautiful? […] It's not so beautiful, you know. Of course, it is beautiful." He then shifts to talk about the Paris's nightlife and its "gaiety, movement, excitement." He seems uninterested in the art and culture of Paris and only interested in the opportunities it offers for sensual pleasure-seeking. Indeed, gaining knowledge of vice and immorality has been a main feature of Gallaher's experience of travel in continental Europe. He describes to Chandler "some pictures of the corruption which was rife abroad." He does not describe the art and culture of Europe but instead focuses on sordid gossip: "He revealed many of the secrets of religious houses on the Continent and described some of the practices which were fashionable in high society and ended by telling, with details, a story about an English duchess." Chandler playfully teases Gallaher about marrying someday, but Gallaher dismisses the possibility crudely: "No blooming fear of that, my boy." He takes a calculating, unromantic view of marriage. Dismissing love as "mooning and spooning about," he insists that his future wife will "have a good fat account at the bank." Gallaher's vulgar, callous attitude shows through as he brags about the "thousands of rich Germans and Jews" he would have to choose from should he set his sights on marriage. Gallaher's already-questionable morality has been corrupted by living abroad, corroding his views on life and love. Prior to leaving Dublin, Gallaher was somewhat seedy. Chandler recalls Gallaher then, remembering that "People used to say that Ignatius Gallaher was wild." He socialized with "a rakish set of fellows […] drank freely and borrowed money on all sides." It was rumored that he had to leave Dublin because of "some shady affair, some money transaction." While he has achieved career success, it has merely given him the financial freedom to express his morally questionable tendencies more fully than he could in Dublin. Joyce himself was an expatriate, and in his portrayal of Gallaher, he seems to be speaking from experience. While he does portray Dublin as stagnant, conventional, and limited in its opportunities for success, he also shows that Chandler's idealized view of living abroad—"if you wanted to succeed you had to go away"—is, in fact, a naïve oversimplification. Gallaher has achieved some career success, but he has also been coarsened and corrupted by the seedy underbelly of life on the continent. Chandler (and the reader through him) face the hard truth that while one's current location might have a host of problems, leaving it won't necessarily lead to personal improvement. - Theme: The Prison of the Mundane. Description: Gallaher's career success suggests to Little Chandler that he, too, could achieve more in life if he could only escape the limitations of Dublin. However, upon meeting Gallaher, Chandler's bubble of expectation is burst. No longer a role model for success, Gallaher instead fuels Chandler's disappointment and causes him to grow resentful. Reconnecting with Gallaher doesn't end up inspiring Chandler to pursue poetry or leave Dublin in the pursuit of greater opportunities. Instead, their meeting causes Chandler to feel more deeply limited, dissatisfied, and resentful about his mundane, ordinary life. He is chained to an overworked and short-tempered wife, with an infant child to take care of, unable to pursue his dreams of writing poetry. Many of the stories in Dubliners end with the main character experiencing an epiphany (a sudden realization), and at the end of "A Little Cloud," Little Chandler has such an epiphany. He realizes that he is "a prisoner for life," locked in a self-created prison of fear, inaction, and resentment—he is as helpless as an infant to change his fate. Through Chandler's inability to change his life, Joyce shows how the mundane is a prison—living a mundane life leads people to lose their zest for life and capacity for action. Chandler feels deeply alienated from his wife, Annie, whom he sees as overworked, angry, changeable, and ordinary. The limitations of their mundane domestic life have caused Chandler to disconnect from her, and their strained marriage contributes to his larger sense of dissatisfaction and paralysis. Due to limited funds, Chandler and Annie cannot keep a servant, so Annie bears sole responsibility for taking care of their home and small child, with occasional help from her sister. She is clearly overworked, leading to her to "bad humour" and "short answers" to Chandler. She orders him around impatiently, as if he were a child. Consequently, Chandler feels disconnected from her, even slightly intimidated by her. His efforts to please her and connect with her often backfire. He recalls an incident where he tried to buy her a nice blouse: Annie at first sharply criticized the blouse as too expensive but then she loved it after trying it on. Chandler's effort to do something nice for Annie faltered because of their limited income. Even though she ends up accepting the blouse, the incident left Chandler wary of her, seeing her as fickle and vain. More generally, Annie's personality dissatisfies Chandler. He meditates on a photograph of her in their house: though pretty, Annie appears "unconscious," with "no passion" and "no rapture." Chandler sees "something mean" in her face—petty and small. He longingly thinks of the "rich Jewesses" Gallaher has met in Europe, and the women's "dark Oriental" eyes. He regrets his marriage to the prim Annie: "Why had he married the eyes in the photograph?" He has no real connection to her, reducing her to mere body part instead of seeing her as his life partner. Annie seems as dissatisfied with Chandler as he is with her, as shown by her explosive anger toward him. Upon returning home from running an errand, she finds Chandler trying to soothe their crying baby. She glares at Chandler, yelling, "What have you done to him?" She assumes that an ordinary fact of domestic life—a crying baby—must be Chandler's fault. As Chandler looks fearfully into his wife's eyes, "his heart closed together as he met the hatred in them." The image of Chandler's heart closing up shows the extent to which the ordinary stresses of his home life have caused him to lose connection to his wife and whatever affection he once felt for her. Similarly, Chandler's efforts to escape into poetry are thwarted by the mundane realities of his home life, and his anger and frustration only exacerbate the situation. While Annie is out running errands, Chandler watches the baby. Bored and unhappy, he opens a volume of Lord Byron's poetry. Reading Byron's melancholy lines, Chandler yearns to write poetry like it. However, he is interrupted by the baby's cries. Chandler's frustration grows as he is unable to focus, and his epiphany occurs as he sees his whole life as hopeless: "It was useless. He couldn't read. He couldn't do anything. He was a prisoner for life." Full of anger and a deeper resentment at his limited prospects, Chandler's anger grows to the point that he actually screams "Stop" in the baby's face. As would be expected, this exclamation only makes the child scream and "sob piteously," and Chandler's attempts to quiet the child only make it cry "more convulsively." Chandler's effort to escape into poetry fails as he is called back to his fatherly duty of comforting his infant. Rather than accepting this completely normal situation, Chandler's frustration erupts into anger that only traps him further in his mundane domestic world. At the story's conclusion, Chandler's epiphany—that he is imprisoned by his life—is heightened by imagery of the ordinary realities of Chandler's home life making him feel deeply alienated, hopeless, and paralyzed. Annie returns from her errand, enraged to find the baby sobbing convulsively, and she immediately blames Chandler. She soothes the infant: "My little man! My little mannie! Was 'ou frightened, love? There now, love!" Ironically, not just her infant son, but another "little man"—her husband—is deeply distressed and in need of comfort. However, Annie cannot know this they since their relationship is so estranged. Blamed and dismissed by his wife, Chandler steps back into the shadows, distancing himself physically and emotionally from his wife and child. He feels paralyzed and powerless to change the situation. As the baby stops crying, Chandler himself begins to cry: "tears of remorse started to his eyes." The parallelism between the baby and Chandler's crying suggests that he is so imprisoned by his ordinary life that he is like a crying baby: consumed by discontent, helpless, powerless to change anything, with no language but a cry. - Climax: At the story's conclusion, Little Chandler realizes that he is trapped by his life. - Summary: "A Little Cloud" describes a day in the life of Thomas Chandler, nicknamed "Little Chandler" due to his below-average height and delicate, childlike appearance. On this day, Little Chandler excitedly awaits a meeting with his old friend Ignatius Gallaher. Gallaher left Dublin eight years prior, having immigrated to London to advance his career as a journalist. Now, back in Dublin for a visit, Gallaher has invited Little Chandler to meet with him. As Little Chandler sits at his desk doing his tiresome work as a legal clerk, he stares out the window and ponders Gallaher's life as "a brilliant figure on the London Press." These thoughts sadden Little Chandler, reminding him of his own relative lack of achievement. Little Chandler aspires to be a poet and owns a collection of poetry books, but he is too timid to even read the books to his wife. At the appointed time, Little Chandler leaves his office to meet Gallaher at a restaurant called Corless's. As he walks to the restaurant, he begins to feel more empowered and hopeful. Little Chandler pictures the restaurant, a high-end establishment patronized by fashionable, wealthy people. He also remembers Gallaher in the old days—his friend was a heavy drinker and bad with money, yet nevertheless undeniably talented and admired by everyone. These thoughts of the restaurant and of his impressive old friend lead Little Chandler to feel a new sense of self-worth: "For the first time in his life he felt himself superior" to his fellow Dubliners. He then casts a critical eye on the city, noticing the shabby buildings and people. This feeling of empowerment reignites Little Chandler's dream of being a poet and escaping from "his own sober inartistic life." He reflects that at 32, he is not too old for a new career. Moreover, he considers that he has the right temperament to be a poet. Little Chandler pictures Gallaher helping him get published in a London paper, and imagines being recognized by English critics as part of the "Celtic school" of new Irish poets. In his mind, he even invents words of praise for his future poems and imagines changing his name to the more Irish-sounding "T. Malone Chandler." He becomes so lost in his dreams that he misses his turn and has to backtrack to the restaurant. When Little Chandler arrives at Corless's, Gallaher greets him warmly as "Tommy" and orders them both malt whiskey. Gallaher appears prematurely aged and balding, with an "unhealthy pallor." He attributes his appearance to the stresses of life as a journalist and complains about its fast pace. The two men catch up on news about their old friends, and then the conversation turns to Gallaher's travels throughout Europe. Little Chandler has not traveled widely, and he inquires in particular about Paris, wondering if it is as "beautiful" and "immoral" as he has heard. Gallaher praises the Moulin Rouge, Parisian prostitutes, and the city's nightlife, commenting that "everything in Paris is gay." He continues sharing various pieces of racy gossip from his travels. Little Chandler feels "somewhat disillusioned" by Gallaher, observing a "vulgar" and "gaudy" manner about him. The conversation turns to Little Chandler's life in the past eight years. Little Chandler tells Gallaher about his wife and their infant son, and invites Gallaher to spend the evening with his family. Gallaher declines the invitation because he is returning to London the next day, saying that perhaps he will visit again in a year. At this point, the two men have had several drinks—typical for Gallaher, but not for Little Chandler, who feels "warm and excited." Talking and drinking with Gallaher stirs up Little Chandler's feelings of inferiority and jealousy, and he grows resentful of Gallaher's success. Little Chandler reflects that his old friend is "his inferior in birth and education." Little Chandler bitterly thinks that were he given a chance, he could do something "higher than mere tawdry journalism." Saying goodbye over their last drink, Little Chandler jokes that Gallaher might be married next time they meet. Gallaher dismisses the possibility, saying that he wants to continue his "fling" and "see a bit of life and the world" first. When he does marry, he says, it will be for money—he will choose from among the "thousands of rich Germans and Jews" he's encountered in Europe. As they finish their drinks, Gallaher callously comments that being tied to one woman for life "must get a bit stale." Little Chandler then returns home to his wife, Annie, who is in a foul mood not only because Little Chandler is late for tea, but also because he forgot to bring her a parcel of coffee. She goes out to get tea and sugar, giving Little Chandler their baby and cautioning him not to wake the sleeping child. Left alone with the infant and his own thoughts, Little Chandler reflects on his wife. Little Chandler looks at a photo of Annie and thinks about her personality with disappointment. She seems to him cold and petty, with "no passion" and "no rapture." Instead, Little Chandler fantasizes about Gallaher's "rich Jewesses" and their "dark Oriental eyes." He even feels dissatisfied with the furniture in their home, finding it "prim and pretty." His thoughts grow resentful as he ponders escaping "his little house" to live "bravely like Gallaher" and become a poet in London. Little Chandler tries to read a book of Lord Byron's poetry but is interrupted when the child awakes and starts crying. Unable to read, Little Chandler grows frustrated, thinking that he is a "prisoner for life." In his frustration, he yells "Stop!" in the baby's face. This action only upsets the infant more—he begins sobbing harder, to the point that Little Chandler fears the baby will die. At this point, Annie comes home. Seeing the baby's distress, she angrily asks Little Chandler, "What have you done to him?" She takes their son and comforts him, and while the baby stops crying, "tears of remorse" well up in Little Chandler's eyes.

- Genre: Historical fiction (part of the book is based on the true story of Salva Dun, but Park emphasizes that the book has been fictionalized in parts) - Title: A Long Walk to Water - Point of view: Third person limited; the book cuts back and forth between the perspectives of the two main characters, Salva and Nya - Setting: Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, United States - Character: Salva Dut. Description: Salva Dut is based on a real person, and one of the two main characters in A Long Walk to Water. Both in the book and in real life, Salva grows up in a small, south Sudanese village. At the age of eleven, he's forced to flee his village to avoid the ongoing civil war in his country. Salva spends much of the next decade of his life wandering across the country with other refugees, trying to find a safe place to live. Throughout the novel, Salva is a model of bravery and steadfastness. He is often terrified by what he experiences in Sudan—at one point even witnessing the murder of his own uncle—but he manages to summon the courage to carry on and the strength to survive. As he grows up, Salva begins to feel a desire to help others, not just himself. While in Sudan, he leads more than one thousand Lost Boys to a refugee camp. He stays in multiple refugee camps in different countries before being adopted by an American couple in Rochester, New York. As a young man, Salva reunites with his father, Marien Dut Ariik, and feels inspired to found a nonprofit organization to help struggling villages in his country. The organization, called Water for South Sudan, has brought clean drinking water to over three hundred Sudanese villages since 2003. A Long Walk to Water is the story of how Salva survives civil war in his country and grows into a young man and a leader with a strong desire to help those in need. - Character: Nya. Description: Nya is the other main character in A Long Walk to Water, also based on a real person. A young girl, Nya spends much of her waking life walking to and from a large pond, miles away from her family's village. She collects water from the pond into a gourd, balances the gourd on her head, and walks home, where she immediately deposits the water, turns back, and does it all over again. Linda Sue Park doesn't spend much time describing Nya's personality—readers know that she's a devoted sister and a loving daughter, but don't know much else about her. In many ways, Nya's role in the book is to serve as a witness to the enormous changes affecting her village in the early 2000s: thanks to Salva Dut's activism, wells are being built, bringing safe drinking water to thousands and saving Nya countless hours of work, which frees her to begin attending school. - Character: Uncle Jewiir. Description: Uncle Jewiir, the uncle of Salva Dut, is a former South Sudanese soldier. During the middle portion of the book, Jewiir acts as a guardian and protector to Salva, while they and thousands of others migrate across Sudan in search of a safe refugee camp. Because of his military training, his gun, and his helpful nature, Jewiir becomes the de facto leader of the refugees. However, he's later murdered by soldiers from the North. Jewiir's death is a traumatic event for Salva, who is forced to fend for himself and beg for food without Jewiir to protect him. However, Jewiir's example of strong and calm leadership continues to inspire Salva. There are many times in the book when Salva, on the verge of giving up, remembers Jewiir's encouragement to move "one step at a time." In this sense, Jewiir is an important influence in Salva's life—and in some ways, a father-figure to Salva. - Theme: Survival. Description: Linda Sue Park's A Long Walk to Water is a story about the lengths to which people will go in order to survive. The book is divided into two storylines, which remain separate until the final chapter (in fact, the final sentence). In the first storyline, set in Southern Sudan in 1985, an eleven–year-old boy named Salva Dut is forced to flee his village due to the outbreak of civil war. In the second storyline, set in 2008, a young Sudanese girl named Nya works hard to gather water for her family, often spending entire days walking to and from the nearest pond to collect the dirty water. The storylines offer two variations on the theme of survival: in each, extraordinarily difficult circumstances force children to fight for the most basic necessities of nourishment and safety. Many of the most moving scenes in A Long Walk to Water revolve around the harsh truth that the concern for one's own survival trumps almost everything else. In a recurring motif of Salva's storyline, adults and other families refuse to give Salva food or protection, even though Salva is an innocent kid who has lost his parents and is in need of help. The adults reason that Salva is so small that he'll slow down the entire group—a serious problem, considering that the group is trying to flee enemy soldiers as quickly as possible. At the most basic level, other people refuse to help Salva because they value their own survival more highly than that of others. Similarly, in Nya's storyline, Nya is forced to spend her days fetching water from the pond—a physically demanding task that consumes almost all of her time and strength. No child should have to work as hard as Nya works. However, the difficult conditions of south Sudan (in particular, the almost total lack of drinkable water) force Nya and the rest of her family to sacrifice their comfort, since the alternative is to die of dehydration. Even though Nya is only a small child, she seems to understand the gravity of her family's situation; as a result, she works hard to gather water. Here, and throughout A Long Water to Water, the necessity of surviving forces the characters to sacrifice their compassion, their happiness, and more. But even as survival is of enormous importance to the Sudanese characters in the book, Park demonstrates that, at times, some things do trump survival. In various instances, characters risk their own survival in order to help others—usually because these other people are a part of their family, or share some kind of strong cultural bond. For instance, when a group of refugees eventually decides to take Salva with them, even though doing so will slow down the group, they offer a simple reason for their decision: Salva is Dinka, a member of the tribe to which they also belong. Along similar lines, Salva's most important protector during the long march out of Sudan is his uncle, Jewiir. Jewiir repeatedly sacrifices his own safety, food, and energy to make sure that Salva stays safe. He makes impractical decisions in Salva's interest—and does so without any hesitation—because Salva is a part of his family. Everyone wants to survive, A Long Walk to Water suggests, and yet, sometimes, people are willing to risk their own survival to help others out of of a sense of compassion or kinship. Although A Long Walk to Water is a book for young adults, it poses some difficult questions about the nature of survival. At one point, Salva witnesses the adults he's travelling with sacrifice a portion of their water supply—an action which seriously endangers their own lives—in order to save the lives of men who are dying of dehydration. Salva wonders if he would do what they had done, and risk his own survival to help other people. Interestingly, Salva never answers his own question, suggesting that many of the moral problems that he encounters in Sudan are too difficult for any easy answer. Nevertheless, A Long Walk to Water suggests that people who have been prosperous and fortunate do have an obligation to help less fortunate people survive. For instance, after being adopted by an American couple and growing up in New York, Salva founds a nonprofit organization with the mission of providing clean water for impoverished Sudanese villages. In this case, Salva isn't sacrificing his survival in any way—rather, he's making relatively small sacrifices in his own life (and encouraging donors to do the same) in order to make a big difference in the lives of countless Sudanese people. Ultimately, A Long Walk to Water has an altruistic message, championing the everyday efforts of those who do what they can to improve their corner of the world. Park isn't asking readers to risk their lives for the sake of others' survival, but she is asking that they use their resources to work together to improve the lives of people who struggle to survive. - Theme: Hope and Resilience. Description: In addition to focusing on the physical realities of people struggling to survive—such as the need for water and shelter—A Long Walk to Water focuses on the psychological and emotional aspects of the struggle for survival. It's not enough to have food and water, Park suggests. Rather, to survive in dangerous times, people need to want to survive, which requires finding a source of strength, determination, and hope. In tough times, the book shows, hope can be as important as food and water, if not more so. First and foremost, Park dramatizes the importance of hope through the relationship between Salva Dut and his uncle Jewiir. Uncle Jewiir teaches Salva how to remain optimistic, even when it seems circumstances could not be any worse. In one of the most poignant scenes in the book, Salva collapses in the middle of the desert, overcome not only by hunger and thirst, but by despair. Jewiir compels Salva to keep moving, urging him to make progress by focusing on taking one step at a time. As Jewiir sees it, the key to holding onto hope is concentrating on concrete tasks instead of becoming overwhelmed by the enormity of the greater goal. If Salva were to stop and think about the magnitude of what he has to do—i.e., walk all the way into Ethiopia—he might give up. Instead, with Jewiir's help, Salva concentrates on doing as much as he can, each moment. At the same time, Salva finds motivation in his desire to reunite with the rest of his family. Even after years of not seeing them, he continues to hope that they're still alive. As A Long Walk to Water portrays it, hope is both idealistic and practical, universal and particular. Salva's hopefulness keeps him focused on the long-term goals of surviving the civil war and reuniting with his family, but it also helps him concentrate on short-term necessities, like continuing to place one foot ahead of the other. As the story goes on, Park shows that hope, in addition to being a powerful force for survival, can be passed on to other people. Just as Uncle Jewiir's calm, cautiously optimistic leadership inspires Salva to stay strong, Salva's hopefulness inspires other people. As a young man, Salva successfully leads over a thousand younger children to safety in Kenya. He takes inspiration from Uncle Jewiir by encouraging the children to concentrate on moving "one step at a time." Later, when he moves to the United States, Salva's hope leads to even more remarkable progress. Speaking in schools, universities, and churches, Salva inspires Americans to donate their time and money to improving the situation in Sudan. His actions—grounded in his confidence that Sudan can be made safer and better—result in hundreds of wells being built throughout the country, helping many thousands of Sudanese people. In this way, the book shows that hope isn't just an emotion—but, on the contrary, it can make possible the enactment of real, tangible changes for the better. - Theme: Social Strife. Description: Although it is primarily set during Sudan's Second Civil War, A Long Walk to Water offers surprisingly little background information about the conflict. Aside from a short author's note, the book is free from any mention of the political forces that led to the long, bloody war. Instead of going into detail about the causes of the violence in Sudan, Park portrays the effects of this violence: displaced villagers, orphaned children, and an overall sense of despair. In this way, her book offers a moving portrait of the social strife in Sudan in the past thirty years. Even though A Long Walk to Water isn't a thorough history of Sudan, Park divides the social strife in Sudan into two clear groups. First, she describes the civil war that took place in Sudan beginning in the 1980s. During this period, North Sudanese soldiers acting on behalf of the government tried to tighten controls over the population in semi-autonomous South Sudan. South Sudanese forces refused to be incorporated into the rest of Sudan, partly because they objected to the Islamic laws of the North Sudanese government, and partly because of the lucrative oil reserves on their land. (For more information on the Second Sudanese Civil War, see Background Info.) Park also emphasizes the social strife between different ethnic groups in South Sudan, such as the Nuer and Dinka tribes. On several occasions, Park notes that these two tribes have been warring for centuries, largely over land and water. These two main forms of social strife have one thing in common: both are premised on cultural difference (even if Park doesn't go into a lot of detail on what, exactly, those differences are) and scarcity of resources (such as oil and water). Park is unambiguous in her depiction of the effects of social strife in Sudan: it tears apart families, terrorizes children, and kills innocent people. The civil war forces Salva to flee his village without his parents and siblings. He and countless other refugees must walk across the country in search of safer conditions in Ethiopia. Furthermore, the ongoing rivalries between different South Sudanese tribes make survival during wartime even more difficult. While the North Sudanese troops think of the southerners as a single entity, the different tribes of South Sudan refuse to work together, instead breaking off into competing factions, which makes them more vulnerable. A Long Walk to Water offers an optimistic, though arguably simplistic, view of how to remedy social strife: development. (See "Development" theme.) The book ends with Salva, now an adult, returning to South Sudan to build wells for many different tribes. In doing so, Park implies, Salva is ending an age-old rivalry between tribes and breaking down barriers. Even more broadly, Salva's well-building initiative arguably improves some of the social strife between North and South Sudan, since it provides impoverished people with the resources they need—some of the same resources whose absence sparked civil war in the first place. However, in recent years, the social strife in Sudan has proven to be far harder to repair than Park suggests at the end of her book. Centuries-old rivalries, based not only on the availability of resources but on basic cultural differences, have continued to contribute to instability in the region. While Park can hardly be blamed for ending a young adult novel on an optimistic note, her novel arguably turns a blind eye to some of the more nuanced social issues that leave Sudan vulnerable to ongoing social strife in the future. - Theme: Development. Description: Especially in the second half of A Long Walk to Water, Park explores the theme of development—in other words, the methods that engineers, politicians, and aid workers use to improve the living conditions of people in Sudan. For the most part, the book takes an optimistic view of development, arguing that factors such as foreign aid and an influx of infrastructural development such as wells will be able to dramatically improve the situation in Sudan. In both halves of the book, but particularly the half featuring Nya, Park explores the positive effects of technological development on Sudanese society. Development empowers entire Sudanese villages by giving the villagers more time for other pursuits, such as education. By installing a simple well in the middle of the village, for example, engineers save the villagers countless hours of walking—adding up to weeks or months, probably—every year. Following the same logic, this type of development empowers women: Nya, for instance, will be able to attend school alongside her male peers and learn how to read and write due to the time the new well saves her. It is often argued that educating and empowering women is the single best "cure for poverty," and A Long Walk to Water shows how a little development goes a long way toward providing this "cure." Finally, the book shows how development might ease cultural tensions in Sudan as a whole. Salva Dut, who initiates an influential project to build wells in Sudan, makes a point of designing wells for many different tribes, not just his own Dinka tribe. In this way, Salva makes sure that the different cultural and ethnic groups in South Sudan reap the rewards of development equally. Furthermore, Park suggests that many of the rivalries between tribes stem from disputes over access to water, meaning that providing clean water for the different tribes will make South Sudan more a more peaceful place for its inhabitants. In sum, Park offers an optimistic account of how development might bring the people of Sudan together and promote peace and equality in a part of the world that has, for decades, been the site of horrific violence. While it is true that violence will continue to afflict the people of Sudan for a long time, Park hopes that development—organized by well-trained and compassionate people—will be able to reduce some of the social strife and the violence it produces. - Climax: The death of Uncle Jewiir - Summary: The book alternates between two storylines: one beginning in 1985 and revolving around Salva Dut, an eleven-year-old boy living in the South Sudanese village of Loun-Ariik; the other beginning in 2008 and revolving around a young South Sudanese girl named Nya. On day in 1985, Salva is sitting in school when he hears the sound of gunfire. There's a violent civil war going on in his country, and Salva's teacher yells for everyone to run away from their village as fast as possible. In the chaos, Salva is separated from his parents and siblings. He spends a few nights staying with an elderly woman in her barn, but the woman eventually tells Salva that he'll need to keep moving, since there's no more food or water. Salva joins up with a large group of people from his village, and the group begins to wander across Sudan in the hopes of finding a safe refugee camp. After weeks of wandering across Sudan, Salva befriends another boy in the group, whose name is Marial. A few weeks later, Salva is overjoyed to be reunited with his Uncle Jewiir, who used to be a soldier. Jewiir, recognizing that Salva's parents are nowhere to be found (and thinking they are likely dead), promises to take care of Salva. He becomes the de facto leader of the group, due to his gun and his military training. One night, Salva wakes up to find that Marial has disappeared. Jewiir guesses that Marial has probably been eaten by a lion. The group of refugees finally reaches the Nile River. By building boats out of reeds, everyone is able to cross to the middle of the river, where there is an island of fishermen. On the island, Salva enjoys more food than he's had in months. The group then proceeds onward to the other side of the river, in Ethiopia. The next stage of Salva's journey is the hardest of all. The group must cross the Akobo desert—a journey that will take them three days. Midway through the long march, the group encounters a group of men who are near death from dehydration. To Salva's amazement, some of the adults in the group give their water to the men, thereby saving their lives. When the group is almost out of the Akobo desert, it crosses paths with a group of soldiers. The soldiers steal the groups' food, supplies, and clothes, and murder Uncle Jewiir in front of Salva. Salva is devastated by his uncle's death, but he promises himself that he'll keep on moving—just as Jewiir would have wanted him to do. Salva and the remaining members of the group march into Ethiopia, where they come to a refugee camp. Salva stays in the camp for six years, at which point the Ethiopian government collapses, and the new government forces refugees out of the country. Salva has no choice but to migrate into neighboring Kenya—a dangerous journey which takes a year and a half, during which time Salva emerges as the leader of his group of more than one thousand young boys. Salva leads the group safely to Kenya, where he stays in two different refugee camps until he's in his mid-twenties. Salva is often lonely, but he befriends a foreign aid worker named Michael, who teaches him how to speak and write English. One day, it is announced that a few thousand Sudanese refugees will be adopted by American families. To Salva's surprise, he is placed on the list of boys that will be adopted, and is flown to Rochester, New York, where he lives with an American couple named Chris and Louise. In 2003, Salva is about to start college. He receives a surprising email from a cousin, whom he's never met before. The email explains that Salva's father, Mawien Dut, is still alive, and is staying in a U.N. hospital in Sudan. Overjoyed, Salva arranges to travel back to Sudan. There, he has a tearful reunion with his father, and learns that his mother and sisters are alive, although two of his brothers died in the civil war. Salva is unable to return to his village, since the risk of being forced to fight in the war is too high. However, he vows to return to Sudan one day. After returning to America, Salva is determined to use his advantages to help the suffering people of Sudan. With the help of Chris and Louise's friend Scott, Salva founds a nonprofit organization with the mission of building wells in impoverished Sudanese villages. In the book's second storyline, which takes place between 2008 and 2009, Nya spends her days fetching water for her family, which means repeatedly walking to and from the large pond located miles away from her family's village. Walking so much is physically exhausting for Nya, but her family depends on her, as many families in the village depend on their daughters, to bring them water while they complete other vital tasks. Furthermore, the water from the pond is not clean, which is a constant source of illness for the people who must drink it. One day, mysterious men arrive in Nya's village and begin speaking with the village chief. The villagers begin clearing the land in the center of the village for construction—although Nya doesn't understand exactly what the men are building. As the months go by, Nya learns that they're building a well that will provide clean water to the area. By the end of 2009, the well is completed. Nya is delighted to learn that she will no longer have to march miles every day just to get clean water—since, from now on, there will be clean water available to her in the center of the village. Nya learns that there will also be a schoolhouse built, where she will able to learn how to read and write, an option that was previously unavailable to most South Sudanese girls, who were expected to spend their time fetching water. As the book comes to an end, Nya introduces herself to the man responsible for designing the well in her village, and thanks him. He smiles and introduces himself as Salva.

- Genre: Short Story, Southern Gothic, Realism - Title: A Memory - Point of view: First Person - Setting: A small town in Mississippi - Character: The Narrator. Description: The narrator is a girl who is most likely in her early teens. A contemplative, observant person, she has been taking painting lessons and is in the habit of creating a rectangular frame with her hands and using this frame to study the world around her. At this point in her life, she is experiencing love for the first time. While lying on the beach, the narrator simultaneously remembers the time she "accidentally" brushed the wrist of the boy she loves in the stairwell at school. She is lost in the sweetness of this memory when a family of bathers makes their way onto the beach. There is a man, an older woman, a younger woman, and two young boys. The narrator is generally repulsed by them. She describes them as ugly and feels contempt for their presence. She notices that the man has begun piling sand on the legs of one of the women. At the same time, she watches the two young boys chase each other while the younger woman angrily looks on. She then sees the man put a handful wet sand into the bathing suit top of the older woman. The narrator is horrified by this, and her memory becomes her refuge from the messiness and chaos ensuing on the beach. While coming in and out of her memory, she opens her eyes and sees the woman pour the sand out of her top. For a split second, she believes the woman's breasts have turned to sand. When she awakens fully, the beach is empty, and only the messy imprints of the family's antics remain in the sand. Feeling awful about this change in the landscape, the narrator turns away and glimpses a white pavilion, which fills her with pity and causes her to burst into tears. She continues to lie there and thinks about the upcoming school year. She envisions a potential encounter with the boy she loves, and she realizes that her future interactions with him will inevitably be colored by her memory of this day spent on the beach. Overall, her time on the beach profoundly impacts the way she thinks about her own lived experience and the way she moves through the world. - Character: The Boy. Description: The boy is the narrator's love interest. He has blond hair and is about the same age as the narrator. She once "accidentally" brushed his wrist on the stairs at school, and she turns this memory over in her mind while lying on the beach. She also remembers how she saw the boy have a spontaneous nosebleed in her Latin class, which stunned her and caused her to faint. As far as readers know, the boy is unconscious of the narrator's interest in him. His family life and circumstances remain mysterious to her, which causes her anxiety. - Character: The Man. Description: The man is part of a family of bathers that have settled close to the narrator's spot on the beach. There is the man, two women (the older woman and the younger woman), and two young boys in the group. The man is most likely the father, though that is never specified. They are described as "common" people and wear old, faded bathing suits. He has flabby arms and is lying on his side, scooping sand into a pile on the legs of the older woman. He is squinting and smiling in amusement. At one point, the man places a fistful of wet sand into the bathing suit top of the older woman, causing everyone he is with to burst into laughter. Pleased with himself, he shoots a complicit smile at the narrator. This shocks the narrator and fills her with contempt. - Character: The Older Woman. Description: The older woman is part of a family of bathers that have set up on the beach near the narrator. The narrator notes her pale skin and that she is overweight, with large breasts that have settled into a heap on the sand. She is lying on her side with her legs stacked atop each other. She stares at the man and laughs slowly and repetitively as he scoops sand into a pile onto her legs. At one point, he places a handful of sand in between her breasts, and she bursts into laughter with the rest of her group. Later, the narrator sees her stand in front of the man and "condescendingly" dump the sand from her bathing suit top. The narrator believes for a moment that the older woman herself has turned into sand. The entire scene horrifies the narrator. - Character: The Younger Woman. Description: The younger woman is part of a family of bathers that have set up on the beach near the narrator. She is wearing a bright green swimsuit and is lying at the man's feet. She has an angry look on her face as she watches the man play with the sand and pile it onto the older woman's legs. After the man places the sand in between the older woman's breasts, the younger woman jumps to her feet with laughter. Then she starts chasing the two young boys—who are perhaps her little brothers—around the beach. The smaller one escapes into the lake while the larger one throws himself over a bench. She follows him and jumps over the bench as well. After she does this, the smaller boy runs out of the water and pinches her on her waist. She angrily pushes him down onto the sand. Though she can still hear their squeals and moans, the narrator tries to escape from all the commotion by closing her eyes and dreaming about the boy she loves. - Character: Two Young Boys. Description: The two young boys are part of the family of bathers that have set up near the narrator on the beach. They appear to be brothers and have very light, straight hair. They are chasing one another and bothering the others in the group – pinching them, tossing sand in their hair, and making obnoxious noises. When the man puts sand into the older woman's swimsuit top, they all burst into laughter. This provokes the younger woman to start chasing the two boys. The smaller boy dives into the lake to get away from her, while the larger boy heaves himself over a bench. The younger woman follows the larger boy and jumps over the bench, too. Then the smaller boy sneaks up behind her and pinches her waist. She angrily pushes him down onto the sand. Their interactions are loud, messy, and chaotic. They intrude on the narrator's daydream and cause her to confront the imperfections of the world around. - Theme: Memory and Meaning. Description: Eudora Welty's "A Memory" illustrates how memory often imbues ordinary life with significance. In the story, the narrator recalls a morning spent on the beach as a child. The meaningfulness of this day is profoundly shaped by its connection to another memory of hers—a memory of the time she brushed the wrist of the boy she loved in the stairwell at school. This memory doesn't simply appear in the narrative as something remote, but instead resurfaces in the present (as the narrator lies on the beach) in ways that continue to affect her. At certain times, the act of remembering seems to put her into a dreamlike trance, providing a sharp contrast between her present reality and her inner world. At other times, the memory conjures an intense emotion or sensation that the narrator carries with her through space and time, manifesting a "heavy weight of sweetness" or an unexplained feeling of happiness. And these feelings, in turn, transform the narrator's experience on the beach, which might otherwise be considered relatively mundane. In this sense, then, the story hints that memory has the power to saturate and even shape a person's current reality, coloring it in unexpected ways. Interestingly enough, the story also suggests that memories can build on each other to create new layers of meaning. This is made evident by the fact that the narrator considers the ways in which her day at the beach will impact her future encounters with the boy she loves. Her memory of brushing his hand on the stairs has altered her experience of lying on the beach next to a group of unruly sunbathers, and now this beach experience itself will impact her thoughts about the boy she loves. According to the narrator, the memory of her time on the beach will now "accompany[]" and augment her memories of the boy. In this way, the story highlights the malleable nature of memory, suggesting that various recollections don't necessarily exist independently from each other—rather, memories can mingle to create new perceptions and associations. - Theme: Reality vs. Perception. Description: "A Memory" showcases the narrator's growing awareness of the divide between her internal and external worlds and how they are increasingly at odds. The narrator is obsessed with making observations about the world around her, but through these observations she is also forced to confront the limitations of her own perceptions. Initially, the act of making frames with her fingers makes these limitations literal, as the frames create actual constraints and boundaries around what she sees. The narrator is admittedly reluctant to let go of her preconceived ideas. As a result, the way she watches the world is characterized by a certain "intensity" and "austerity"—that is, she is perpetually alert and eagerly awaiting some kind of important revelation about life, but she's also terrified that what she'll learn might shatter her prior assumptions. In this way, the story brings to light the tension that exists between reality and how one perceives reality. The narrator herself embodies this tension, since she describes herself as both "observer and dreamer." Throughout the story, Welty repeatedly draws attention to the internal clashes that occur when the narrator becomes conscious of the disconnect between reality and her perception of it. For example, when the boy she loves gets a nosebleed in class, the narrator is faced with the unexpectedly messy reality of his humanness (that he has a body and that it bleeds) and is so shocked by this experience that she faints. Her shock is ultimately due to the fact that the messiness of this reality contrasts so sharply with the way the boy has existed in her imagination—as an abstraction, largely disconnected from the real world. Later on, while she is lying on the beach, the narrator has a similar experience, as she's ultimately forced to confront yet another ugly reality embodied by the family of bathers: the reality that love sometimes looks chaotic and unappealing. Not only do the bathers' noisy interactions yank the narrator from the solace of her daydream, but their physical features challenge her ideas about beauty, etiquette, and decency. This is most evident in the "peak of horror" she experiences when the older woman dumps wet sand from her swimsuit. In this way, the story suggests that the narrator struggles to accept reality for what it is, especially when it challenges her hopes and expectations. - Theme: Childhood Love, Innocence, and Growing Up. Description: Eudora Welty's "A Memory" is in part the precursor to a coming-of-age story. While the narrative provides no reference to the narrator's exact age, it is clear that she is on the cusp of a great life transition. Throughout the story, Welty emphasizes the contrast between the narrator's innocence (which borders on naïveté) and her growing consciousness of the real world. In doing so, Welty hints at a process of maturation that is about to unfold. The reader is led to believe that the narrator has had a sheltered upbringing. The curated environment of her childhood, which the narrator describes as having been "strictly coaxed into place like a vine on [a] garden trellis," starkly differs from the "abandonment and wildness" she is beginning to witness in her surroundings. Nonetheless, in spite of the fear and dread that these observations stir up, her urge to incessantly watch the world is experienced as a need, an impulse indicative of a desire to relinquish some of her childhood innocence. On the one hand, Welty's depiction of childhood love appears to reinforce the protective innocence that the narrator is leaving behind. Lying on the beach that summer morning, the narrator actually calls on the memory of the incident on the stairs to safeguard herself against the "horror" of the bathers. On the other hand, the narrator also seems to see the purity and intensity of first love as something that makes her observe the world around her even more scrupulously. It calls her into a "dual life," and she ends up straddling two modes of experience: that of the naïve "dreamer" and that of the astute "observer." In this regard, the narrator's experience of first love provokes a "constant uneasiness" within her, as she is forced to acknowledge that both life and love might actually resemble the messiness and chaos exhibited by the bathers, not the unrealistic ideas she has crafted in her imagination. When the disappointment of this realization sets in, she becomes so overwhelmed with self-pity that she bursts into tears. And yet, it is also in this moment, when she is forced to confront her own naïveté, that the potential for maturity and growth emerges. - Climax: When the narrator witnesses a man put sand into his wife's bathing suit, his family reacts with laughter and chaos, and this provokes a strong emotional response within the narrator. - Summary: "A Memory" is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who recalls memories from her childhood. The story opens on a beach near a lake one summer morning. The narrator has just taken a swim and is lying on the sand watching the world around her through a rectangular frame she has made with her fingers. She has recently begun taking painting lessons and ever since has been in the habit of making these frames in order to observe her surroundings. The narrator is obsessed with making observations. Fed by a desire to uncover some secret of life, she attempts to extract meaning from every little thing she sees. At the same time, she is terrified of what she might learn. Her fervor is heightened by the fact that she is in love for the first time. She recalls a moment that previous school year when she "accidentally" brushed the wrist of the boy she loves as they passed each other on the stairs. Though she refers to him as her "friend," she admits to having never exchanged so much as a nod of recognition. The experience of first love propels her to observe the world even more scrupulously, and she is perpetually on the lookout for something unexpected to happen. One day, the boy she loves get a nosebleed in Latin class. The narrator is taken so off guard by this that she faints. To this day, she wonders if this occurrence might explain her fear of blood. The fact that she knows nothing about him or his family makes her very uneasy. It causes her to watch him even more closely in an attempt to gain some kind of reassurance. As a result, she can still recall very specific details about him, such as the weave of his blue knit sweater and the way he swung his leg under his desk while he worked. While lying on the beach that summer morning, the narrator is lost in the memory of their brush on the stairs. Her daydream is periodically interrupted whenever she checks in on her surroundings. Without knowing when or how they got there, she notices a family of bathers nearby. They are comprised of a man, two women (one older, one younger), and two young boys. She refers to them as "common" people and describes them as disdainful and vulgar. At one point, the man puts a fistful of wet sand into the bathing suit top of the older woman. This causes everyone in the family to erupt with laughter, but it disgusts the narrator. Satisfied with what he's done, the man shoots a complicit smile at the narrator. Stunned and horrified, the narrator is filled with contempt. Having had enough of their antics, the narrator closes her eyes and attempts to retreat back into her memory about the boy she loves. Lying there on the sand, she drifts in and out of consciousness. No longer able to summon the narrative that accompanies the memory, she is nonetheless left with an unexplained feeling of happiness. At one moment, the narrator opens her eyes and sees the older woman dump the sand from her bathing suit. For a split second, she believes that the woman has turned to sand. Later, when she fully emerges from her daydream, the beach is empty, and all that is left is the evidence of the bathers' presence on the wet sand. The unsightliness of this change upsets the narrator. She looks away but catches sight of an old pavilion. Overwhelmed by self-pity, she bursts into tears. As she continues to lie there, she imagines a future encounter with the boy she loves at school. She realizes that their future encounters will be influenced by her memory of this day on the beach, just as her memory of their brush on the stairs has shaped her experience on the beach that day.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: A Mother - Point of view: Third-person omniscient - Setting: Dublin, Ireland - Character: Mrs Kearney. Description: Mrs Kearney is a stubborn, upper-class, well-educated woman who lives in Dublin, Ireland. She is Mr Kearney's wife and Kathleen Kearney's mother. Her wealth has made her life comfortable, but the opportunities available to her when she was young made marriage her only path to financial security. Her marriage to her husband is pleasant but passionless, and she is invested in appearing successful: she gives her daughters the best possible educations, brags about her vacations, and helps Kathleen gain a reputation in the Irish Nationalist movement. Despite the fact that she only joins the Nationalist movement for the social clout, she gets involved in helping Mr Holohan, assistant secretary of the Eire Abu Society, plan a series of concerts. Leveraging her abilities as a socially respectable hostess, she gets Mr Holohan to sign a contract for four nights of Kathleen's piano-playing at the concerts, demanding an amount (eight guineas) that pointedly reflects her aristocratic standing. Finally, on the fourth night of the concert series, Mrs Kearney gets into a public argument with Mr Fitzpatrick, Mr Holohan, and the rest of the Committee over their reluctance or inability to pay the eight guineas, which devolves to the point that they decide not to pay her anything. Enraged, Mrs Kearney mocks Mr Holohan to his face in front of a room full of performing "artistes," turning everyone against her. In that moment, her stubbornness ruins her family's reputation and her daughter's musical career in Dublin all at once. - Character: Mr Holohan. Description: Mr Holohan is an inexperienced, rather ineffectual event planner and the assistant secretary of the Eire Abu Society who attempts to plan and advertise a series of four concerts celebrating Ireland's culture. At the beginning of the story, Mr Holohan is fairly passive and easily manipulated. After Mrs Kearney provides him with food and wine, he enlists her to help him plan the concerts and invites her daughter, Kathleen, a fairly famous young pianist, to play the accompaniments for the performers. He signs a contract with Mrs Kearney for eight guineas, but when the concerts go poorly the first two nights and the Committee cancels the third, he becomes cagey about when—and whether—Kathleen will get her money. On the fourth night, after Mrs Kearney mocks him to his face, Mr Holohan accuses her of being unladylike, humiliating her in front of all the performers. Angry, he replaces Kathleen with Miss Healy, and he wins general approval for finally standing up to Mrs Kearney. - Character: Kathleen. Description: Kathleen is Mrs Kearney's daughter. Because her mother married Mr Kearney, a wealthy bootmaker in Dublin, she receives a top-notch education like her mother's. However, unlike her mother, she is able to continue her advanced musical study after school and has the potential for an independent musical career. Her mother hires an Irish teacher for her and gets her involved with the Irish Nationalist movement so that she can gain fame in Dublin, and ultimately makes a contract with a concert promoter for an Irish Nationalist organization, Mr Holohan, for eight guineas if Kathleen will play the piano at four concerts. Kathleen submissively goes along with her mother's demands as Mrs Kearney gets more and more frustrated with the state of each concert and the contract's apparent flimsiness, up until the fourth concert. When Mrs Kearney prevents her from playing until she is paid, she complies with her wishes. But when Mr Holohan and Mr Fitzpatrick pay her half the money, she defies her mother's wishes and starts the concert. Although Kathleen is the famous name in the Kearney family, Joyce never provides the reader with insight into her thoughts, suggesting how stuck she is in complying with her mother's demands. Her sudden resistance is only momentary and is left unexplained, inviting the reader to wonder whether she is capable of breaking out from her mother's control. - Character: Mr Fitzpatrick. Description: Mr Fitzpatrick is the secretary of the Eire Abu Society. Mr Fitzpatrick has a "flat" Dublin accent and a "vacant" face, and he doesn't seem too disappointed when the concert doesn't go well. When Mrs Kearney meets him, he is wearing a brown hat, associating him with the dullness and decay Joyce felt pervaded Dublin at the turn of the 20th century. At the Thursday night concert, he behaves disruptively, talking loudly with his friends during the performance and irritating Mrs Kearney. When Mr Holohan refers Mrs Kearney to him to get her money before the Saturday concert, he doesn't seem to be able to help her. Mrs Kearney prevents Kathleen from playing without pay, so Mr Fitzpatrick pays her half—actually, four shillings short of half—of the eight guineas she was promised to placate her. However, like the other members of the Society, he ultimately doesn't seem too invested in either the concert series or Irish Nationalist goals. - Character: Mr Kearney. Description: Mr Kearney is a wealthy bootmaker, Mrs Kearney's husband, and Kathleen Kearney's father. Mrs Kearney marries him for financial security rather than love, and although they respect one another, their relationship is mostly pragmatic and transactional. He is a pious, frugal, churchgoing man, and his brown beard connects him to the dullness and sense of stagnation that Joyce saw in turn-of-the-20th-century Dublin. He is a good husband and father, giving his daughters a good education and paying for Kathleen to continue her music education. When Mrs Kearney gets Kathleen involved in the Irish Nationalist movement for the social advantages, he goes along with it. But despite his reputation and sober-minded demeanor, he is little help when Mrs Kearney brings him along to the Irish Nationalist concert series to help her negotiate Kathleen's pay with the Eire Abu Society, and he placidly follows her when she gets angry at Mr Holohan and forces her family to leave the concert early. - Character: Miss Beirne. Description: When Mrs Kearney asks around to see if there are any Committee members present on the fourth night of the concert series, a steward introduces her to Miss Beirne, one of the Committee secretaries. Miss Beirne can't provide much help and seems mildly disappointed but not particularly surprised when it looks like the fourth concert isn't off to a good start. Miss Beirne appears to be the first Committee member to suggest that they not pay Mrs Kearney the second half of her money. - Character: Mr Bell. Description: Mr Bell is one of the artistes in the Saturday night concert: the second tenor. He competes every year at the Feis Ceoil, an Irish music festival, but has only won one bronze medal in four years. He is a nervous man and jealous of other tenors. Although he is set to take the stage first, when Mrs Kearney stalls the concert over Kathleen's contract, he gets increasingly anxious until Kathleen Kearney decides to ignore her mother and tell him to go on. He takes Mrs Kearney's side in the disagreement between her, Mr Holohan, and Mr Fitzpatrick until she mocks Mr Holohan. Joyce's descriptions of Mr Bell highlight how pitiful the talent is at the concert series. - Character: Mr Duggan. Description: Mr Duggan is another one of the artistes—namely, the bass—in the Saturday night concert. He comes from a humble background as a hall porter's son and worked his way up to subbing for the opera singer who played the king in the opera Maritana when he got sick. Although he is an excellent singer, he reveals his lower-class roots by wiping his nose onstage and saying "yous." He takes the Committee's side in the conflict between Mr Holohan, Mr Fitzpatrick, and Mrs Kearney. Mr Duggan's humble roots contrast with Mrs Kearney's wealthy background, helping to exaggerate the discrepancy between Mrs Kearney's expectations and the concert's reality. - Character: Miss Healy. Description: Miss Healy is one of Kathleen Kearney's friends from the Irish Nationalist movement and one of the artistes, the contralto, at the Saturday night concert. Miss Healy flirts with Mr Hendrick before the concert, supposedly for the social mobility that either getting a positive review or a suitor would give her, before getting caught in the middle of the conflict between Mrs Kearney, Mr Holohan, and Mr Fitzpatrick. Although she sides with the Committee members in the conflict between the Society and Mrs Kearney, she pretends to agree with Mrs Kearney to save face until the whole crowd turns against her. - Character: Madam Glynn. Description: Madam Glynn is a very thin, anxious-looking soprano from London. As a subtly English-colonial presence in the concert, Madam Glynn sings Killarney in a "bodiless" voice, using outdated intonations while looking as if she has been "resurrected," casting the Englishwoman as a corpselike presence at the concert to reflect colonization's continued effect on Dublin. - Character: Mr Hendrick. Description: Mr Hendrick is a reporter with the Freeman, a daily Irish Nationalist newspaper. He is supposed to report on the Saturday night concert, but instead spends his time flirting with the contralto, Miss Healy, and sets his sights on leaving early before being invited to have a drink with Mr Holohan. Although he tasks Mr O'Madden Burke with writing the report, Burke is away from the performance, drinking. Mr Hendrick contributes to the apathy and corruption of the Irish Nationalist movement. - Character: Mr O'Madden Burke. Description: Mr Hendrick tasks Mr O'Madden Burke with writing the report about the Saturday night concert when he decides to leave early. However, O'Madden Burke spends the beginning of his night drinking far away from the concert hall. Although O'Madden Burke faces financial trouble, he is "widely respected." When Mrs Kearney forces Kathleen to delay her performance until she is paid, O'Madden Burke calls her actions "scandalous," and he ultimately makes the final, positive judgment of Mr Holohan's decision to replace Kathleen as accompanist. - Theme: Class, Ambition, and Corruption. Description: In "A Mother," Joyce describes Mrs Kearney as an upper-class, educated woman. She attended school at a "high-class" convent, learned skills that made her an attractive prospective wife, and married her husband for financial security rather than romance. But despite her comfortable lifestyle, including regular vacations and good educations and dowries for her daughters, she still feels compelled to climb the social and economic ladder and will take advantage of the people around her to do so. By depicting how Mrs Kearney takes advantage of the Irish Nationalist cause to secure fame for her daughter and attempts to use her position—and wine—to take advantage of the concert promoter, Mr Holohan, Joyce suggests that ambitious upper-class Irish people tend to be corrupt, attempting to manipulate people, as well as social and political causes, for their own personal gain. Joyce's descriptions of Mrs Kearney's upper-class upbringing suggest that growing up wealthy taught her to view her abilities and her relationships with other people as opportunities for personal gain. Mrs Kearney was educated at a convent, an option that was only available to wealthy Catholic women. Her "naturally" stubborn ways made it hard for her to make friends at school or make compromises when looking for a husband. While she learned piano at school, her musical talents were only useful for impressing potential suitors, which was the only way she could make a name for herself. By describing her stubbornness as "natural," Joyce invites the reader to consider whether it is truly a result of an innate personal quality or a characteristic to be expected of wealthy people. And since Mrs Kearney could only find social and economic success via marriage, and people started to gossip about her when she remained unmarried for an unusually long time, she married Mr Kearney for money rather than love. She sacrifices romance for a life of comfort, vacations, and financial stability—suggesting that personal happiness is less important to her than her social status. Having established this pattern of self-promotion, Mrs Kearney even uses her marriage and her daughter's accomplishments to promote her family's status. While Mr and Mrs Kearney learn to respect and live with each other, Mrs Kearney never stops seeking to climb the social ladder. With her husband's money, she has more resources to do so: she gives her daughter, Kathleen, even more advantages than she had by sending her to the Royal Irish Academy of Music and getting her involved in the Nationalist movement, through which she could gain influence for the whole family. Mrs Kearney's wealth makes it easy for her to provide Mr Holohan with all the wine it takes to convince him to sign a contract with her for eight guineas. The guinea was out of circulation during the time of "A Mother," and it was only used in wealthy people's business transactions. Thus, its appearance is a sure sign that Mrs Kearney draws up her contract to make herself appear aristocratic. Rather than take part in social life in earnest, Mrs Kearney always does so with an eye to personal gain. Mrs Kearney has Kathleen learn Irish and becomes a fixture in the Nationalist movement only when it becomes popular and fashionable. Moreover, she never actually speaks any Irish in "A Mother," instead speaking the French she learned with her upper-class convent education. It's clear, then, that Mrs Kearney regards the Nationalist movement primarily as a means of social climbing, not as a political commitment for its own sake. Likewise, Mrs Kearney's interest in the Eire Abu Society's concert series is less about celebrating Irish culture than it is about securing fame for her daughter and money for herself. Even while attending the concert series, she looks down on the Society members, the performers, and even the audience for not being up to her upper-class standards, again showing that she isn't interested in Society participation for its own sake. Since she can't look past the concert's appearances or shift her focus from the eight guineas Kathleen was promised, Mrs Kearney ends up making a scene and causing her own social downfall. Ironically, then, Mrs Kearney's fixation on personal gain finally undermines the status she's spent her life fighting to maintain. - Theme: Irish Nationalism, Colonization, and Failure. Description: "A Mother" takes place during the time of the late-19th- and early-20th-century Irish Revival, a movement to uplift Ireland's precolonial Gaelic and Celtic language and culture. While the Irish Nationalist movement was intended to help the Irish people to resist their English oppressors and celebrate their own culture, the Kearneys only take part in the Irish Nationalist movement to benefit themselves, since the movement is both fashionable and lucrative for them. In addition to the movement's self-interested members, its leaders lack vision and competence. Joyce demonstrates these qualities with the fictional Eire Abu Society, which catastrophically fails to organize a successful four-night concert series celebrating Ireland's culture—and its leaders don't seem to be that disappointed by their failure. In this way, "A Mother" critiques the Irish Nationalist movement of Joyce's time for its disorganization, apathy, inexperience, and corruption. While the Irish Nationalist movement is a political centerpiece of "A Mother," rather than reflect the actual politics of Irish Nationalism, it appears to be a social outlet for the Kearneys. The Kearneys only get involved in Irish Nationalism when the Irish Revival becomes "appreciable." Once Mrs Kearney notices the Irish Revival becoming more popular, she has Kathleen learn Irish, not because she actually seems invested in the Irish language and Irish independence, but because she sees an opportunity for Kathleen to make a name for herself: Kathleen shares a name with a traditional Irish figure, Kathleen ni Houlihan, which would help boost her notoriety. Furthermore, rather than discuss anything about Irish political independence from England, the Kearneys mostly exchange gossip with their Nationalist friends. Their opportunistic and shallow involvement in Nationalism demonstrates that for them (and perhaps for many upper-class Nationalists), the movement is only appealing as a means of social advancement. Even the members of the Eire Abu Society, a fictional Irish Nationalist group whose name translates to "Ireland to Victory," don't take much care in planning the concerts or ensuring their success, suggesting that they're actually not all that invested in the issues surrounding Ireland's colonial subjugation, either. Mr Holohan seems completely inexperienced in event-planning, to the point that he relies on Mrs Kearney's advice on nearly everything, and when the first concert goes awry, he is nonchalant about letting the first three concerts fail without intervention. When the first concert seems bound to fail, the Committee Secretary, Mr Fitzpatrick, doesn't seem to be that disappointed—or surprised—and he takes advantage of the rowdy atmosphere at the second concert to talk loudly with his friends during the performances, suggesting he's indifferent to the concerts' success. Miss Beirne, a Society Committee member, can't seem to get ahold of any of the other Committee members, and seems fairly resigned to the fact that the Society did their "best" in planning the concerts. When she gets together with all the Committee members at the fourth concert, they seem disorganized as a group and caught off guard by Mrs Kearney's demands. And although the Committee invites reporters from a Nationalist newspaper to report on the concerts, even the reporters, Mr Hendrick and Mr O'Madden Burke, don't seem interested in the performances or in the politics of Irish Nationalism in general. From Joyce's descriptions, the Eire Abu Society seems ironically named: they are completely unprepared to bring Ireland to victory in any sense, and by implication, their disorganization and apathy illuminate part of the reason why Ireland's Nationalist movements have yet to secure freedom for the Irish people. Like Mrs Kearney, the Committee members and other Nationalists seem to take advantage of the concerts for their own personal gain. But, unlike Mrs Kearney, they don't take its failures personally. Mr Fitzpatrick, Mr Holohan, Mr Hendrick, and Mr O'Madden Burke each use the concerts they attend to drink, socialize, and flirt, and none of them even seem to pay attention to the performances that are supposed to celebrate Ireland's culture. The concerts' publicity failures seem to strike the reporters and committee members as commonplace, as well as their hesitancy to pay Kathleen, given the low numbers at the box office. Indeed, what they find "scandalous" is Mrs Kearney's reaction to their disorganization and apathy—suggesting that they don't see the cause as worth getting worked up about. Overall, Joyce suggests that the Committee members' failure reflects the overall history of failed Irish Nationalist rebellions and the stagnation of the movement after it was co-opted by the wealthy and by people more interested in their own success than in Irish independence. - Theme: Paralysis and Decay. Description: When he wrote Dubliners, James Joyce believed that the decades of conflict in Ireland, whether between the Irish and their English colonizers, or between Catholics and Protestants, had left the Irish people in a state of "paralysis": cultural, economic, and political stagnation that led to the decline of Irish society. Many of the characters in "A Mother" seem to be afflicted with some sort of paralysis: Mr Holohan, the inexperienced concert promoter for the Irish Nationalist Eire Abu Society, has a bad leg; Mrs Kearney fixates on her daughter's eight-guinea payment; and Kathleen Kearney seems to sit idly by for much of the story and allow her mother to make all her decisions for her. As the final night of Eire Abu's concert series stalls because of the devolving dispute between Mrs Kearney and the Society Committee over Kathleen's pay, Joyce draws parallels between their relatively inconsequential disagreement and the larger conflicts plaguing turn-of-the-20th-century Ireland to highlight the roots of Ireland's paralysis. Mr Holohan's bad leg is the first sign of Ireland's paralysis in "A Mother," suggesting that organizations like the Eire Abu Society aren't a very effective means of promoting Irish Nationalism. When Joyce dedicates the first paragraph of "A Mother" to describing Mr Holohan, Holohan's most prominent feature is his "game leg" that makes him walk with a limp and leads to his friends calling him "Hoppy Holohan." Since Mr Holohan is the face of the Eire Abu Society when advertising for the concert, his leg simultaneously foreshadows the limping start that the concert series will have before gaining an audience and suggests the "limp" and hobbled state of the Irish Nationalist movement at the time. Towards the end of "A Mother," when Mrs Kearney watches Mr Holohan like a predator as he limps around backstage, Joyce hints at one reason for the Nationalist movement's troubles: wealthy Dubliners taking advantage of the movement's opportunities for social gain. Overall, his bad leg is an omen for the overall ineffectiveness of the Eire Abu Society: none of the Society members seem qualified for their position—or seem to understand what their position is—and all of them have a difficult time acting when problems arise. By overshadowing the final concert's Nationalist aims with her personal fixation on getting her daughter's eight guineas, Mrs Kearney contributes to the Eire Abu Society's disorganization and failure, revealing how individuals' limitations and paralyses can bring down an entire movement. By describing how Mrs Kearney uses Nationalism to make a name for her daughter and enhance her family's reputation, Joyce establishes that she is not actually invested in the Irish Nationalist cause. Thus, when she takes pains to help Mr Holohan order the performers, make the bills, and sell tickets, the reader knows that she does so not to advance the Nationalist cause in Ireland but to co-opt its popularity for her own gain, keeping her stuck in her self-serving ways and, in turn, contributing to the stagnation of the Nationalist cause. Her concern with the concerts' failure is also not about the Nationalist message failing to get out, but about her daughter's money—the concerts have already faced enough challenges, and Mrs Kearney's decision to keep Kathleen from playing until she is paid represents just another petty obstacle to Nationalist success in Ireland. Finally, one of the most paralyzed characters in "A Mother" is Kathleen Kearney—but she also shows the surest signs that she might be able to break out of her paralysis. Throughout "A Mother," Kathleen is talked about far more often than she talks; Joyce never gives the reader insight into her thoughts, and although the concert is supposed to be Kathleen's career opportunity, Mrs Kearney ends up micromanaging the whole thing and taking center stage. Even while Mrs Kearney and Mr Holohan's argument gets most heated, Kathleen only stares at her shoes and keeps quiet, following her mother's directions without question. However, Kathleen is only performing at the concert because it is a good opportunity for her to gain exposure and have a career of her own. While Mrs Kearney and Mr Holohan remain locked in their dispute, Kathleen manages to overcome her paralysis before her mother's demands and start the Saturday night concert without full payment, suggesting that, whatever her views about Ireland's broader problems, she is less set in her ways than the older characters in the story. Kathleen's quiet breakthrough hints that there's hope for the younger generation to carry on the cause in a more proactive and effective way. - Theme: Gender and Power. Description: In "A Mother," Mrs Kearney is an ambitious, upper-class, educated woman who mistreats the people of the Eire Abu Society whom she deems beneath her. While she ends up ruining her family's reputation and her daughter's music career with her efforts to climb the social ladder, Joyce also includes details about Mrs Kearney that invite the reader to pity her: as a woman, her piano-playing was only seen as useful for its ability to charm a husband, while her daughter's musical talent could secure her a career of her own. Furthermore, since Mrs Kearney could not marry for love, she had to marry for improved social status and financial gain. And rather than exercise her power directly or command the kind of respect her husband does, she can only turn circumstances to her advantage by convincing more powerful men to do what she says. The details Joyce includes about Mrs Kearney's upbringing, her views of her husband, and her final argument with Mr Holohan reveal how her abilities to gain respect and power in society are colored by her gender, making her a more sympathetic character. While Joyce's descriptions of Mrs Kearney's wealth emphasize the privileges she has in life, they also point out how limited her power is in shaping her own life. Although Mrs Kearney attended an upper-class school, her talents were only cultivated in order to attract a husband—and her choosiness in doing so only made her the subject of negative gossip. Unlike Kathleen, Mrs Kearney did not appear to have the option of channeling her musical talents into a career. Instead, she had to rely on marriage to shape her financial and social future, meaning she ultimately married for wealth instead of love. Ultimately, although her life is comfortable and she and Mr Kearney respect one another, Mrs Kearney appears to be dissatisfied with her position and to live vicariously through her daughter's successes. Mrs Kearney's views of the men around her bring to light the gendered power imbalances at the turn of the 20th century in Dublin. Mr and Mrs Kearney's marriage is a social and financial transaction more than a decision made for love: Mrs Kearney seems invested in appearing like a happy, prosperous family when she describes her vacations to her friends, but her relationship with her husband seems distant. When she thinks of her husband, she views him as "secure and fixed" like the post office. And, although she does not find him particularly personally impressive, she recognizes his "abstract value as a male," suggesting that her view of her husband is largely pragmatic: he is a means to an end. When she encounters Mr Holohan, Mrs Kearney appears to view him as a means to an end, too. To convince him to agree to her desired contract terms, Mrs Kearney must play the hostess, keeping him supplied with plenty of food and wine to gain his favor. In this way, she leverages a traditionally feminine role to influence the hapless man who actually holds power. Finally, when Mrs Kearney's argument with the Committee members approaches its peak, she immediately thinks that they would have taken her more seriously if she were a man. In particular, the moment she decides to make sure that Kathleen gets her "rights" suggests that the conflict is about more than just the eight guineas Mr Holohan promised her: it is about how she is treated—and how Kathleen will be treated—as a woman mostly doing business with men. Mr Holohan's remark to Mrs Kearney after she mocks him confirms her suspicion that he is using her gender to his advantage: he accuses Mrs Kearney of not being a "lady," which implies that she is both a lower-class (thus, lower-quality) person and a particularly lower-quality woman. When Mr Holohan makes this comment, he takes advantage of the fact that the only power Mrs Kearney has is social: the power of her reputation and of her ability to influence other people. By humiliating her in front of everyone, therefore, he undermines what power she has. And since Mrs Kearney does indeed fall short of societal expectations of a "lady," all the onlookers agree with Mr Holohan. They are primed to be biased: patriarchal expectations mean that they see Mr Holohan's anger as justified and Mrs Kearney's as excessive. But because her outburst is fairly tame, the reader can see just how thin a line Mrs Kearney must walk to maintain her reputation, the source of her power. In this respect, Joyce subtly criticizes the patriarchal expectations of his day and prompts readers' sympathy for the position of women like Mrs Kearney. - Climax: Mrs Kearney mocks Mr Holohan - Summary: In Dublin, Ireland, around the turn of the 20th century, Mr Holohan, the assistant secretary of the Eire Abu Society, has been trying to get a series of concerts arranged for months. But, ultimately, a woman named Mrs Kearney ends up taking care of nearly everything for him. Mrs Kearney is a wealthy, educated Irishwoman who has always been uniquely stubborn. Rather than marry for love, she married the much older Mr Kearney, a stoic, pious boot manufacturer with a large brown beard, for the lavish lifestyle he could give her. Their daughter, Kathleen Kearney, receives a top-notch education like her mother. However, unlike Mrs Kearney, Kathleen has the opportunity to attend the Royal Irish Academy of Music to refine her piano-playing ability. When the Irish Revival (a renaissance of Irish art, music, and culture) becomes popular, Mrs Kearney gets Kathleen involved in the Nationalist movement, and Kathleen gains considerable fame as a pianist in Dublin. Mr Holohan asks Mrs Kearney if Kathleen would be the accompanist for the four-night concert series his Society will be hosting, and she gives him food and wine and works up a contract with him so that Kathleen will receive eight guineas for her performance. From then on, Mrs Kearney takes over, advising Mr Holohan on how to plan the concerts and manage the "artistes" that will be performing, all the while keeping him supplied with plenty of wine. Mrs Kearney spends a considerable amount of time and money getting the concerts ready and preparing Kathleen's dress. But on the night of the first concert, she immediately senses that something is wrong. For all the preparation she did, very few people show up to the first concert. When she meets the secretary of the Society, Mr Fitzpatrick, a man with a brown hat and a "flat" Dublin accent, he doesn't seem too disappointed, and his casual approach to the concert series irritates her. Mr Holohan admits that the Committee made a mistake in planning four concerts since four was apparently too many, and they had decided to just save all the best talent for the last concert. The next concert is better attended, but Mrs Kearney can tell that the rowdy audience is mostly made up of people admitted for free. Mr Fitzpatrick talks loudly throughout the performances and, over the course of the evening, Mrs Kearney learns that the third concert will be canceled. She goes looking for Mr Holohan and insists that despite the cancellation, Kathleen should still get her eight guineas. But he tells her to talk to Mr Fitzpatrick, and Fitzpatrick, too, seems unable to guarantee anything. Before the last concert, Mrs Kearney explains the situation to her husband, who decides to go with her to the last show. Unluckily, the last concert takes place on a rainy night. When Mrs Kearney can't find Mr Fitzpatrick or Mr Holohan before the concert to ask them about Kathleen's payment, she talks to Miss Beirne, a Committee member who is not particularly helpful and fairly resigned to the concert being a failure. The "artistes," including Mr Duggan, Mr Bell, Miss Healy, and Madam Glynn, all arrive and awkwardly mingle as Mrs Kearney continues her search for Holohan and Fitzpatrick. Meanwhile, Mr Hendrick, a reporter from the Freeman, a daily Irish Nationalist newspaper, stands talking with Miss Healy, who appears to have a crush on him. Although Hendrick is supposed to report on the concert, he doesn't actually like music and tells Mr Holohan that Mr O'Madden Burke will write the report instead. However, when Mr Holohan invites Hendrick to have a drink before he leaves, they find Mr O'Madden Burke drinking in a room far from where the concert will take place. Meanwhile, Mrs Kearney has an intense conversation with her husband. Although it is time for the concert to start, Kathleen isn't signaling the first performer, Mr Bell, to get ready. As the Kearneys debate something among themselves, the performers—especially Mr Bell—grow increasingly tense. Mr Holohan enters the room and Mrs Kearney tells him that Kathleen won't perform until she gets her eight guineas. Kathleen stays silent as her mother and Mr Holohan argue, and Mr Holohan leaves the room. The performers talk awkwardly until Mr Holohan comes back with Mr Fitzpatrick, who gives Mrs Kearney some money and tells her that she'll get the other half during intermission. Mrs Kearney tells him that he's four shillings short of four guineas, but Kathleen tells Mr Bell to get started anyway. Backstage, the performers gossip about who is in the right: the Committee or Mrs Kearney. The Committee members think Mrs Kearney has treated them badly, and Mrs Kearney thinks the Committee has treated her badly—and wouldn't have treated her that way if she were a man. At intermission, the Committee decides not to pay Mrs Kearney anything, and when she and Mr Holohan have their final argument, she mocks him to his face in front of everyone. In doing so, she turns everyone against her and her family, and the Committee decides to replace Kathleen for the remainder of the concert. With their family reputation and Kathleen's music career in ruins, the Kearneys leave the concert and O'Madden Burke assures Mr Holohan that he did the right thing.

- Genre: Short Story, Realist, Impressionist, Absurdist - Title: A Mystery of Heroism - Point of view: Third person, free indirect discourse - Setting: an unnamed battle in an unnamed war - Character: Fred Collins. Description: Collins is an infantryman in an unnamed war. As an ongoing battle rages, he watches from safety behind a hill where the infantry is stationed until. However, when he states that he wants a drink of water from the well that sits in the middle of the meadow that is the current battlefield, he is goaded into actually going to get the water by his comrades, who do not believe he's brave or silly enough to actually do it. Collins is impulsive yet introspective. He does go out to the well to get the water he doesn't truly need, but he also recognizes that it is his resentment towards his comrades that leads him into danger. While racing across the battlefield, he is puzzled by the fact that he is not more afraid. He wonders if his lack of fear might make him heroic, but ultimately denies himself the title of hero because of what he assesses to be his prior shame and pettiness. While collecting the water from the well, Collins is struck by true fear, and he is overwhelmed by terror as he runs back across the field carrying a bucket of water towards his regiment and safety. Still, he stops in the midst of the danger to give a dying officer a drink. This action, like his decision to fetch the water, is more impulsive than considered: Collins first tells the officer that he can't stop yet finds himself running back to him anyway. And Collins ends up spilling most of the water on the officer's face rather than just in his mouth. Collins eventually reaches the safety of his regiment to the cheers of his comrades, but has no chance to drink his water because two lieutenants carelessly spill the bucket. - Character: The wounded lieutenant. Description: The lieutenant of the battery is a member of Collins's company who commands an artillery battery, and who at one point rides by the infantrymen. He passes by slowly and calmly on his horse and appears unconcerned about his wounded right arm, which he holds in his left hand as though the arm doesn't belong to him at all. He smiles grimly at Collins's comrades as he rides onto the battlefield and remarks to himself that the enemy is being excessive in their use of cannons. The next time the infantry sees the lieutenant, he has been struck by the explosion of a shell and lies dying on the field with one of his legs pinned beneath his horse. He lies there, with no one to help him or even hear his groans of pain until Collins passes by on his way back to the hill with the water from the well. Rather than crying out to Collins, the lieutenant's face clears, and he politely requests a drink of water. When Collins initially refuses and races by, the lieutenant sinks slowly back to the ground with his face turned towards the battle. But when Collins suddenly returns and turns him over, the lieutenant smiles and sighs like a child. The lieutenant does not complain when Collins accidentally splashes the water in his face and then runs off. - Character: Collins's comrades. Description: When Collins expresses his desire for a drink of water from a well located in the middle of a battlefield being bombarded by shells and gunfire, his comrades of the infantry A Company needle him about how he's going to get it. They laugh at him when he insists he will cross the battlefield to reach the well. As Collins prepares to leave, they are astonished to find that they've goaded him into actually attempting this wild, dangerous journey to the well. They then become animated and excited, gesturing, questioning, warning, and advising him. They repeatedly ask him if he's actually going to go. The entire regiment, not all of them actively involved in Collins's plan, watches him go, even as some of them call him foolish and desperate. As Collins walks away, he feels a gulf between himself and them. When Collins, terrified by his ordeal, successfully returns with a bucket of water, his comrades greet him with laughter and shouting. They, unlike Collins, seem unaffected by the trauma and chaos of the battlefield, safe behind the shelter of the hill. - Theme: Heroism. Description: Stephen Crane's "A Mystery of Heroism" tells the story of infantryman Fred Collins, who crosses a raging battlefield to get a drink of water from a well. His quest to cross the field to get the water is framed within the story as a satirical hero's journey: no one in his regiment is actually in desperate need of water, and Collins insists on making his dangerous journey to the well more out of annoyance at his fellow infantry soldiers for thinking he won't make the trip than for any other reason. Through this situation of a man facing extraordinary danger for a pointless—or even ridiculous—reason, the story explores the nature of heroism. As it portrays Collins racing across the battlefield to the well and then back, the story forces the reader, and at times Collins himself, to ask: Can an extraordinary act toward a frivolous end be heroic? Must a hero feel no fear, or is facing fear a key part of heroism? What is the significance of heroic acts that go unnoticed, or which are truly brave and generous but shoddily done? In the end, Collins does successfully bring a bucket of water back to his regiment, only for two lieutenants, in a joking scuffle, to accidentally spill the water to the ground. Through this ending the story further raises the questions of whether heroism depends on a successful outcome or if heroism exists regardless of the success of the undertaking. The story's exploration of heroism begins as Collins sets out on a frivolous quest. It is a brave act, but it is also thoughtless, impulsive, and emotionally driven. He walks out into danger not to fulfill a need, but because of dumb pride: the desire to prove he can succeed. If he is a hero, he is an unlikely and even unwilling one. The story raises the question of whether any heroic action can arise from such an origin. If the intention is not heroic, can the action be? The good that comes from it, however, in the opportunity for Collins to provide a dying officer with a drink of water on the battlefield, implies that, perhaps, many heroic actions begin in just such accidental and tawdry ways. Setting out across the battlefield towards the well, Collins should be frightened, but instead feels simply dazed. He contemplates heroism; stories have told him that men who lack fear are heroes. This definition, then, should make him a hero. The idea is a dismal one; he feels pitiful and inadequate compared to the heroes of legend. Collins decides definitively that he has too much shame to be considered a hero; he thinks instead that he is "an intruder in the land of fine deeds." However, Collins's definition of heroism is both simplistic and unrealistic. His definition of a hero as fearless and faultless leaves no room for the failings of ordinary men or even the flaws of exceptionally good ones. The story reveals the fault in Collins's definition of heroism through Collins's own actions. When Collins soon does become terrified on the battlefield, he falls outside of his own understanding of fearless heroism. Yet, in the midst of his terror, he turns around on the battlefield to offer a drink to a dying officer, an act of true generosity and heroism. The story does not invite a reader to agree with Collins's idea of heroism, but rather to consider how Collins interacts with it and differs from it. Collins might, the story implies, be more heroic for taking selfless action in the face of his terror than for his initial lack of fear. While Collins's impulsive act of turning back to give the dying lieutenant water can and should be considered heroic, he does not actually succeed in providing the officer's requested drink of water. Instead, he spills the water on the dying man. Though the officer seems comforted by Collins's mere presence, smiling and sighing, the story raises the question of the significance of generous acts that are poorly completed. Collins intends to give the officer a drink of water and fails; does his failure, the story asks, subtract from the true bravery required to turn around on the active battlefield and prolong the risk to his life for the sake of a dying man? This heroic act, too, goes unnoticed by the regiment waiting for Collins—does this alter its significance? The regiment cheers for Collins's success in bringing back the water, but even that success is undermined when two officers immediately and accidentally spill it. Through this doubled undertaking and doubled failure—in giving the officer a drink and retrieving the water—the story invites questions about the heroism of brave acts that come to unfortunate and unforeseen ends. Is heroism, the story asks, a product of outcomes or of intent? The story never resolves the questions about heroism that it raises. Collins's actions in the story are simultaneously heroic and ridiculous, truly brave and yet pointless, profoundly generous and totally wasted. "A Mystery of Heroism" forces these fundamental questions about heroism to the surface while refusing to answer them, and so, as the story's name implies, what becomes emphasized above all is the mystery of heroism, and the complex and even opposed factors that play into the origin and performance of any heroic action. What is further implied in this fundamental mystery of heroism is a debunking of the common conception of heroism, in which a stalwart hero calmly commits heroic actions that save the day. Rather, the story suggests that heroism in war is instead largely accidental and usually unrecognized, and that heroic actions are often unsuccessful or even squandered. - Theme: The Brutality of War. Description: Stephen Crane's "A Mystery of Heroism" depicts an unnamed battle in an unnamed war. The purpose of the war is never made clear, and the tactics or goals of the battle are similarly left muddy. The enemy army is remote and never appears in person. Collins's regiment engages with that enemy only through shells and bullets. Meanwhile, the story often focuses on the terrible destruction of the battle: houses blow up, a meadow burns, soldiers are mangled and die painfully, and even horses die horrifically. By portraying a war and battle that seem to have no larger purpose, in which heroic quests are undertaken for ridiculous reasons and then the fruits of the quest wasted, and in which the overwhelming consequence is the destruction and devastation of nature, human homes, human lives, and even animals, "A Mystery of Heroism" emphasizes the senseless waste and destruction of war. The story studiously avoids offering any meaning or purpose to the battle taking place or the war at large. The protagonist Collins's regiment has no identifiable goal. It is not attempting to advance or take ground, it is not fighting for any ideal or country or reason. The enemy, meanwhile, is both nameless and faceless, appearing only as shells and bullets. To Collins, it seems that the enemy is the shells themselves, capable of "red hate" and targeting their own victims. Even in Collins's company, the artillery is hard at work firing from afar during the battle, while the infantry, which fights up close, stands around watching with nothing to do. Because of the shells, the deaths on the battlefield are sudden and senseless—war has become impersonal, mechanized, and disconnected from a human enemy. The battle could be occurring everywhere or anywhere, and story becomes not the portrayal of a single battle but rather a statement about the very nature of war. The lack of any purpose to the battle, along with the aimlessness of the troops and the officers, makes it seem as if the primary purpose of the battle is the destruction it causes. Through vivid imagery, the story emphasizes how war destroys everything: lives, landscapes, and civilization itself. The story describes in detail the "convulsive" movements and "torn" bodies of dying men and horses. Descriptions of brutal violence are frequent and plainly offered as a simple fact of battle. The landscape of the battlefield is often personified to emphasize the pain inflicted by war on the land itself. In the meadow, which begins the story green and beautiful, there is a "massacre of the young blades of grass." The very ground beneath the grass is then torn up and displaced, flung into the air by exploding shells. The meadow is not only burning; it is "suffering." War's destruction of not just nature but also human civilization is evident in the repeated bombing of the structures on the other side of the battlefield. The well-house and barn have been struck by a shell; only fragments, embers, and smoke remain. To emphasize the destruction, the well-house is struck again as the infantry watches, sending the fragments flying. These structures, the product of human effort, are completely obliterated. They are not strategic or intended demolitions, but rather the needless collateral damage of a purposeless war that breeds only devastation. The story, then, invites the essential question that none of the characters have an answer to: if all the destruction has no purpose and the deaths are simply senseless waste, why wage war at all? - Theme: Absurdity and Futility in War. Description: Stephen Crane's "A Mystery of Heroism" follows Fred Collins, a soldier who gets goaded by his fellow infantrymen into crossing a dangerous battlefield to get water from a well, even though no one actually needs the water. Collins, then, leaves the safety of his regiment's shelter and takes an absurd risk for a trivial goal. Collins eventually does succeed in retrieving a full bucket of water from the well and runs back across the battlefield with it. When an officer dying and unable to move in the middle of the field calls out to him for water, Collins initially shouts that he can't stop and runs by, then turns around anyway. Hands shaking, he splashes the water all over the dying man who gets essentially none of it to drink, making the action of turning back ironically pointless. When he finally reaches his regiment again, Collins is met with laughter at his ridiculous but miraculous success. Then, in a joking scuffle over the bucket by two silly lieutenants, the water gets spilled and wasted. Ultimately, no one gets even a drink. Meanwhile, the story is also filled with petty and ridiculous moments, with officers calling out instructions no one follows, soldiers milling around to no effect, and a commanding officer ignoring the good advice of an underling out of pride and spite. The squabbling dysfunction of the regiment along with the very concept of Collins's unnecessary quest, his failure to successfully give the dying officer a drink, and the story's ironic twist—the spilling of the hard-won bucket of water—indicate the futility of individual effort among the chaos and absurdity of war. The absurdity of war is initially established in the story through the incompetence of the regiment and officers. The infantry aimlessly observes the battle, but does not take part in it, and becomes more interested in Collins's endeavor to cross the battlefield than the conflict raging upon it. Soldiers calmly remark on the brutal deaths of their comrades—"There goes th' bugler!"—as though watching a sporting event. When, occasionally, rational orders or advice are given, they are ignored by officers who seem to seem to see such competence as a threat to their position. The joviality of the spectating regiment in the face of the brutal violence and chaos of the battlefield emphasizes the ridiculousness of the procedure of war. Collins's quest—to risk his life to fetch water when none is needed—is itself absurd, and as the primary goal of the story, reflects that absurdity also onto this specific battle and onto war as a whole. Just as Collins's foolhardy quest for water has no great impact on himself or others, his role as an infantryman carries no weight. His individual efforts as a man who is thirsty are no more and no less useless than his individual efforts as a soldier, should he be given an opportunity to fight. His role, then, like the many men the infantry has watched die on the battlefield under the onslaught of falling explosives, would be to die randomly, caught by an exploding shell. When he requests permission to risk his life for water, his superiors allow him to go, implying his uselessness on the battlefield and suggesting that his death on a silly mission and his death in battle amount to the same. His life is not worth more to his superiors than a pointless trip for water, and his individual efforts mean nothing against the great chaotic machine of war. Though Collins's journey to the well is unnecessary in concept, it becomes even more ironically futile when the water he endangered himself to retrieve is spilled twice over. Returning across the battlefield with his bucket of water, Collins impulsively turns back to give a dying officer a drink. In his terror for his life, Collins's hands shake; the water spills onto the dying officer and Collins runs away again before the officer gets a proper drink. Collins actions in returning to the officer can be considered heroic; but his heroism is thwarted by his terror. Further, there is no saving the dying officer. Drink of water or not, he will die. So even the heroic act of Collins offering the water is futile, and one can argue that the heroism in the act is defined by its futility—by showing kindness that will have no impact on the outcome for this dying man. The final moment of ironic pointlessness in the story is the ultimate fate of Collin's retrieved bucket of water, which is immediately spilled by careless officers jokingly roughhousing about who gets to drink it. Collins's ridiculous and pointless quest which, with the kind act to the dying officer, might have meant something, is rendered ultimately futile. Collins accomplishes an impressive—though ridiculous—feat in surviving the battlefield twice over to bring water back from the well. However, the war, the chaos of the battlefield, and the carelessness of the officers contrive to reverse his success. In his quest and in his snap decision to return to comfort the dying officer, Collins attempts to make meaningful choices as an individual, unlike the rest of his regiment who stand gawking at the battle because their superiors refuse to provide or accept rational orders. Yet every effort Collins makes at taking action as an individual, even towards such a pointless comfort as getting a drink of water, is ironically reversed by the circumstances of war. There is a common belief that, irrespective of everything else, war at minimum gives soldiers the chance to define themselves, to become heroes, to gain glory. In the way that each of Collins's choices and actions are rendered futile, "A Mystery of Heroism" argues the opposite: that amid the chaos or war it is absurdity that reigns, and any meaning is just the product of luck or accident. - Climax: Collins returns across the battlefield with the bucket of water and stops to give the dying officer a drink. - Summary: "A Mystery of Heroism" takes place during an unnamed battle. The artillery for one regiment is stationed on the hill above the meadow that has become a battlefield, and the infantry shelters behind the hill. Shells explode, killing men on the field and the hilltop. The battle is loud and chaotic. A lieutenant of the battery rides towards the battle, holding his injured right arm in his left hand. Fred Collins, safe beneath the hill with the infantry, wishes aloud that he had a drink of water. Collins's companions mock him, asking why he doesn't go and get his drink from the well across the battlefield. Collins indignantly tells them that he will get his drink. His companions don't believe him. A soldier points out the lieutenant with the injured arm to his companions; he has been struck by a shell and lies face-down on the battlefield mangled and trapped under his horse. Collins's resentment towards his friends leads him to ask his superiors for permission to cross the battlefield and get water from the well. They are bemused by the request. When one of them asks if it isn't a big risk to take for a drink of water, Collins says that he doesn't know. His anger, which had driven his determination, is fading. Collins's superiors grant him permission but can't tell whether or not Collins actually wants to go. Collins's companions, stunned at his bravery, give him their canteens to fill and repeatedly ask if he's really going to get the water. Collins insists that he is, and his companions watch him go. As Collins approaches the battlefield, he realizes that it was emotion that led him to this moment and finds himself somewhat surprised to be in such a dangerous situation. He is strangely unafraid, and wonders if that makes him a hero. He finds this to be a disappointing thought. Collins concludes that he has too much shame, which disqualifies him from being a hero. A shell falls near Collins, startling him into a run. He runs across the meadow and reaches the ruins of a farmhouse, and he throws himself down beside the well. He lowers a canteen into the depths of the well, but it fills so slowly that Collins feels that the water is mocking him. Suddenly, he becomes afraid. He is desperate to fill the canteens quickly and return to safety. He sees the light of another exploding shell reflected on the wall of the well and jerks back. Abandoning the canteens, he picks up an old bucket and fills it. Collins then runs back onto the battlefield towards his regiment, carrying the sloshing bucket and certain that he will be struck by a shell at any moment. The lieutenant of the battery with the injured arm lies dying on the ground, one leg trapped beneath his horse. He pushes himself up when Collins runs by, and rather than crying out to him in pain, politely requests a drink of water. Collins, terrified, screams that he cannot stop. Still, as the lieutenant's head lowers again, Collins turns around and runs back to him. Collins frantically turns the lieutenant over; the lieutenant sighs, wearing a small smile. Collins's hands are shaking, and he splashes the water in the lieutenant's face. Collins then turns and runs on towards his regiment. When he arrives at the safety of the hill, his companions laugh and cheer. His superiors order him to pass the bucket around to the men. In a joking scuffle, however, the first two officers to take the bucket spills all the water on the ground.

- Genre: Short Story, Feminist Writing - Title: A New England Nun - Point of view: Omniscient - Setting: Rural New England - Character: Louisa Ellis. Description: Louisa Ellis, the protagonist of "A New England Nun," is a woman who lives alone. She is engaged to Joe Dagget, and has been for fifteen years, although he was away in Australia until recently. Louisa has no immediate family—her mother and brother have passed away—which is why she lives on her own. In her years by herself, Louisa has developed an enjoyable daily routine of needlework, meditation, tending her garden, serving herself tea (with a china tea set), and even distilling fragrances. Louisa is a discriminating and organized woman—she even has a different apron, color-coded, for each activity around the house. Louisa's relationship to Joe is awkward and strained—he was gone for fourteen years, and the two seem like strangers now: they're uncomfortable around each other when Joe comes to Louisa's to visit, which he does two nights a week. One evening, when out on a walk, Louisa overhears Joe and Lily Dyer talking, and they confess to having strong feelings for each other. This gives Louisa the courage to end her engagement to Joe. She does so diplomatically, without mentioning Lily, simply saying that it would be impossible for her to change her ways after so many years of being on her own. At the end of the story, Louisa is completely at peace, looking forward to her future in sweet solitude. - Character: Joe Dagget. Description: Joe Dagget is a working man who lives in New England and is engaged to Louisa Ellis. The couple got engaged fifteen years ago, but Joe left for Australia to earn money, and he was gone for the first fourteen years of their engagement. Though he loved Louisa, things have been awkward between them since he returned: he visits her twice a week, but, with his heavy gait and large size, he seems ill-suited to her delicate lifestyle of needlework and drinking tea from china cups. Since he's returned, Joe has fallen for a woman named Lily Dyer, his mother's caretaker. Joe and Lily meet in secret one night, where they confess their feelings for each other, although Lily says she's leaving town and Joe says he'd never break his vow to Louisa. Unbeknownst to the pair, Louisa overhears the conversation and breaks up with Joe the next day. Joe swears that he never would have left Louisa, that he would have stuck with her if she'd wanted him, but he does admit that he thinks they are both better off this way. Joe and Louisa part ways on good, tender terms, with both of their honor intact. Because of this, Joe is free to pursue Lily Dyer. - Character: Lily Dyer. Description: Lily Dyer is Joe Dagget's mother's caretaker. Lily is strong and proud, and well-liked around town. She and Joe have fallen for each other since Joe has returned from Australia, although neither is willing to break up Joe and Louisa's engagement. A week before the wedding is meant to take place, she and Joe meet at night along the same path where Louisa is taking a walk. Without knowing that Louisa can hear them speaking, Lily informs Joe that she is leaving town, that she won't "fret" after a married man, and that even if Joe were to leave Louisa for her, she wouldn't accept it. She says all this firmly, however she softens a little when she admits that she'll never marry, because she'll never feel about another man the way she feels about Joe. Lit in the moonlight, Louisa thinks Lily looks almost like a princess. The two women never disrespect each other over the issue of Joe's affection. Though the story does not follow Lily's fate, a reader can presume that she and Joe are free to marry after Louisa breaks off her engagement. - Theme: Gender Roles for Women. Description: Louisa Ellis has an unusual life for a woman of her time: she lives alone. She treasures this solitary life, delighting in nature, needlepoint, cleaning her apartment, and making herself tea in fancy china cups. But when her fiancé, Joe Dagget, returns from working for 14 years in Australia, this life comes under threat: everyone expects that Louisa will give up her home to move in with Joe once she marries him, but she is afraid of losing her solitary pleasures when this happens. The major conflict of the story, then, is Louisa's struggle to find a way to fit into expected gender roles: she'd like to simply be a woman living alone, but there's not an acceptable category for her, since she's neither a widow nor a nun. The story goes to great pains to associate Louisa with femininity, showing that even though she doesn't fit neatly into any societal role, she's still a woman. For instance, her habits and manners are coded as "feminine"—either directly (as when the story describes Louisa's tools for needlepoint as feminine) or indirectly, by association, with words such as "dainty" (Louisa's way of eating) or "graceful" (her way of serving herself tea). By contrast, Joe Dagget has a "heavy" and "masculine" way of carrying himself. Louisa is forever concerned that Joe's masculine presence will interrupt her calm, feminine lifestyle. The story doesn't cast Joe in a cruel light, but it does suggest that masculinity and femininity are at odds in a patriarchal society, since Joe's masculinity threatens to overwhelm Louisa's life at all times. Louisa is quite aware of the expectation that she will subordinate her life and personality to her husband, so her decision to break up with him is tied up with her instinct for self-preservation: she cannot be both a wife and herself, so she chooses to be herself. Louisa is both a typically feminine character (in that all of her hobbies are gendered female) and an atypical female character, in that she has financial autonomy and ultimately succeeds in maintaining control over her life. Yet, as the story's title says, Louisa is branded as a nun, presumably because there is no other legible way for a woman to choose to spend her life alone. Louisa even brands herself this way, showing how deeply ingrained these societal roles for women are: Louisa knows she isn't a nun, but that category seems to fit better than wife, widow, or spinster, particularly since she finds such spiritual delight in her simple life. - Theme: Honor, Decorum, and Restraint. Description: "A New England Nun" depicts people struggling with a conflict between happiness and virtue. Louisa Ellis, the story's protagonist, is engaged to be married to Joe Dagget—but neither one of them really wants to be married to each other. They've been living apart for 14 years while Joe worked in Australia, and during that time, Louisa became accustomed to living alone and Joe fell in love with another woman. Nonetheless, Joe and Louisa initially remain loyal to their engagement, not because they want to be married, but because they feel that keeping their word is the honorable thing to do. This creates an odd tension: they can honor a promise that will make them both miserable or break a promise and be happy, but they insist on choosing virtue over happiness, so they stay together.  Virtue and happiness are also in tension in Joe's relationship with the woman he loves, Lily Dyer. While Joe and Lily have explicitly discussed their feelings for each other, they are both steadfast in their insistence that they cannot be together because they cannot disrupt Joe's engagement to Louisa. Joe says that, morally speaking, he could never abandon the woman who waited for him for 15 years, and Lily says she could never love Joe if he broke his promise to Louisa. Because of this, they choose to forsake their love and happiness in order to behave virtuously. Importantly, none of the characters are portrayed as silly or wrongheaded for putting virtue first, even as they're pushing onward towards misery. Louisa is moral for putting Joe's need for a wife before her own desire for independence, Joe is moral for putting loyalty to Louisa before his own desire for love, and Lily is moral for respecting Joe and Louisa's commitment, even if it means forsaking her own happiness. Everyone is behaving honorably, which results in a surprise happy ending: Louisa overhears Lily and Joe talking about their situation, and she realizes that the kindest thing she can do for Joe and Lily is break up with Joe. This means that each character gets what they want in the end, but they do so without anyone behaving dishonorably or prioritizing their own needs over the needs of others. So in this way, the story suggests that virtuous behavior leads to happiness, even if it comes by a circuitous route. - Theme: Restriction, Freedom, and Art. Description: Louisa Ellis, the story's protagonist, relishes her solitude, which she's gotten by happenstance after her brother and mother died and her fiancé, Joe Dagget, moved to Australia to seek his fortune. When Joe returns, now prepared to marry Louisa, she is disturbed by the idea of changing her everyday habits and coexisting with a husband and his family. Louisa becomes increasingly worried about the changes that marrying will bring to her life, such as giving up her home, her possessions, and her peaceful way of living. By the end of the story, Louisa breaks off the engagement with Joe, which allows her to revel in her solitude and independence. From this angle, because Louisa is filled with a sense of peace after ending the engagement, the story clearly aligns marriage with restriction and remaining unmarried with cherished freedom. However, "A New England Nun" also plays with the Romantic idea that someone in a restricted environment can actually find artistic freedom in constraints, because it helps them look inward and/or be more in touch with nature. Surely, this is true of Louisa, for whom the confines of her home and garden contain infinite artistic satisfaction. She is fully happy to spend the day needleworking, tending to her garden, making herself a well-prepared cup of tea, and even just keeping the house in order—practices she takes an artistic pride in. Most pointedly, Louisa finds great pleasure in the distillation of fragrances, an activity that is without immediate or obvious worth and, should she move into Joe's homestead, she would certainly have to give up, since Joe and his mother consider it "foolish" and "senseless." In this way, the pleasure that Louisa takes in distilling (which is akin to her artistic practice) is gravely threatened by the possibility of leaving the confines of her home. The story makes this idea of contented isolation clear with the parallel between Louisa and her dog, Caesar, who lives a life that an onlooker might suggest is restrictive, but for Louisa is the ideal: he has his own hut in the backyard, is fed regularly, and by all accounts is a content hermit—a situation that Louisa sees as the most fruitful of existences. Louisa feels intense fear about Caesar being let out of his hut if she were to marry Joe, which mirrors the dread she feels about having to move out of her own home. In this story, marriage corresponds to unwanted restriction, but self-imposed seclusion (the type that a nun chooses) can generate artistic satisfaction. Thus, the story shows the constraint of marriage as a clear obstacle to freedom, yet suggests that certain constraints or restrictions can be artistically freeing. - Climax: When Louisa overhears Joe and Lily confess their feelings for each other. - Summary: "A New England Nun" tells the story of Louisa Ellis, a woman engaged to be married to Joe Dagget but who feels ambivalent because she has loved living alone for the last fifteen years. The story opens on a peaceful afternoon, where Louisa, having just finished working at her needlepoint, goes outside to pick some currants, and then happily steeps herself tea. She fixes herself dinner, which she eats contentedly, and she goes outside to feed her dog, Caesar, who lives in the backyard. As evening sets in and she washes her dishes, she takes pleasure in listening to the frogs and toads croak outside her window. Later that night, Joe Dagget comes to visit Louisa. Joe has been coming to see Louisa twice a week—she and Joe got engaged fifteen years ago, but Joe was across the world, in Australia, seeking his fortune for fourteen of those years. Joe's presence inside Louisa's house is instantly alarming—he has a heavy gait, a large, "masculine" manner, and he upsets Louisa's little canary who begins to beat its wings against its cage. Louisa and Joe sit across from each other and have an awkward conversation, talking about the weather. When Louisa asks after Joe's mother, he mentions his mother's caretaker Lily Dyer, and blushes. At one point, Joe picks up a stack of books and sets them down in the opposite order than he'd found them. Louisa gets up and sets the books back as they were, baffling Joe. On his way out of the door, he trips on a rug, knocks over the basket where Louisa keeps her needlework, and its contents spill everywhere. Louisa ushers Joe out of the house, assuring him that she'll clean it up. Once outside, Joe is extremely relieved to no longer be in Louisa's home—Louisa, inside, is similarly relieved to finally be alone again. Louisa is dreading marrying Joe, terrified at the idea of giving up her home, her belongings, and her way of life. She is also very worried that Joe will let Caesar loose—the dog has spent the last fourteen years chained inside a hut in the backyard because, as a puppy, he bit a neighbor, and she worries about him roaming the town if he isn't kept in the yard. However, despite her concerns, Louisa does not want to break the vow of engagement she made to Joe. One night, as Louisa is enjoying a stroll under a full moon, she notices two other people just on the other side of the path. Unable to leave without disturbing them, she decides to wait in the shadows until they are gone. When they begin to speak, she realizes that it is Joe Dagget and Lily Dyer. Thinking they are alone, Joe and Lily confess their feelings for each other. But Lily says that she'll be leaving town, because she would never expect Joe to break his promise to Louisa—in fact, if he did, she would no longer care for him. Lily at first appears curt, but she eventually softens, telling Joe that she'll never marry because she could never feel this strongly for another man. Joe is devastated that Lily is leaving but he, too, agrees that the engagement vow is the most important thing and says that he would never abandon Louisa. The pair likely kisses (Louisa hears a "soft commotion") before Lily says that she must go. Louisa is stunned by what she's just heard. The next day, after doing her housework and meditating by her window, Louisa welcomes Joe into her home. Diplomatically, without ever mentioning Lily Dyer, Louisa manages to break off their engagement, saying she simply can't envision changing her life. Joe insists that if Louisa hadn't broken the engagement, he would have married her, but he admits that he does think it's better this way. They share a tender goodbye—with a warmth that they'd not shown each other in some time. That night, Louisa weeps a little. However, the next morning, she does her needlework with an air of perfect contentedness. Louisa feels like she is at once a "queen," with total control over her domain, and a "nun," allowed to live the rest of days out in peaceful solitude.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: A Painful Case - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Dublin, Ireland - Character: Mr. James Duffy. Description: Mr. James Duffy is the story's protagonist, a harsh and somewhat pessimistic middle-aged man. Duffy lives alone on the outskirts of Dublin, and he lives a very regimented life: he follows the same schedule every day, eats at the same restaurants, and avoids socializing and family obligations. Occasionally attending concerts is the only time he ever changes this routine. Joyce suggests from the outset that Duffy is symbolically connected to Dublin itself, by describing Duffy's face as the same color as the city streets. Like many characters in Dubliners, Duffy represents something more general about life in the city. Specifically, he represents the alienation and tragedy that can result from moral superiority and sexual shame. At first, Duffy is characterized as a misanthrope—someone who dislikes other people and avoids their company. He's not lonely, even though he rarely spends time with others. Duffy's placid life changes, however, when he meets a married woman named Mrs. Sinico at a concert. They develop a friendship that becomes quite close, spending evenings alone talking. Duffy fancies himself superior to others in Dublin, and in Mrs. Sinico's attention he finds the recognition he has been missing. One night, though, Mrs. Sinico makes physical contact with Duffy. This shocks him because he thinks she is making a sexual overture. Duffy is described as "living a little distance from his body," and his distaste for the physical combined with his strict moral code lead him to end his relationship with Mrs. Sinico and cut off all communication with her. When he learns of her death four years later, he is forced to reckon with this decision. Duffy shows a capacity for growth in his change of heart over Mrs. Sinico. Initially revolted by her fate, he reflects further and eventually empathizes with her sadness, blaming himself for her death. In the end, he experiences an epiphany, a sudden realization that his fear and moral rigidity have made him lose his chance at true companionship, and he is now condemned to live out his days alone. - Character: Mrs. Sinico. Description: Mrs. Emily Sinico is a middle-aged wife and mother. She is married to Captain Sinico and they have one child, Mary Sinico. She is initially characterized as warm, intelligent, and still possessing sexual vitality despite her husband's loss of interest in her. She meets Mr. Duffy while attending a concert with her daughter. She initiates conversation with him, showing her lack of regard for social conventions and desire for companionship. In their friendship, she seems to find the attention and connection that her marriage lacks. She gives Duffy the recognition he needs, listening to him talk and encouraging him to express his innermost thoughts. At one point, she reacts to a point Duffy is making by pressing her hand to his cheek, which he interprets as a sexual advance. However, the story leaves her true motivations unclear; it's possible that she might simply have been comforting him. She takes it very hard when Duffy breaks off their relationship. Four years later, Duffy reads a newspaper article about her death. The article reveals that she had taken to drinking, which possibly led to her death from being struck by a train. However, the doctor who examined her body said that her death came from "shock and sudden failure of the heart's action." This detail suggests that, symbolically, the shock of Duffy's rejection broke her heart and set her on a course toward actual death. - Character: Captain Sinico. Description: Married to Mrs. Sinico and the father of Mary Sinico, Captain Sinico is a ship's captain. He is often away from home as his boat travels between Dublin and Holland regularly. His frequent absences contribute to Mrs. Sinico's loneliness, and he has lost interest in her sexually. Captain Sinico's lack of attraction to his wife causes him to be blind to her relationship with Duffy; he cannot perceive that any man would be attracted to his wife. Ironically, he encourages Duffy to keep visiting because he thinks Duffy is courting Mary. - Character: Mary Sinico. Description: A young adult woman, Mary is the daughter of Mrs. Sinico and Captain Sinico. She attends concerts with her mother (including the one where Duffy first meets the two women) and teaches music lessons as well. In the newspaper article about Mrs. Sinico's death, Mary testifies that her mother had started drinking and going out at night to purchase alcohol. Mary had tried to help her mother and prevailed upon her to join a temperance league. - Theme: Alienation and Connection. Description: Modernist writers often explored the emotional lives of characters who are alienated in some way: estranged from others, society in general, and even cut off from themselves. In "A Painful Case," Mr. Duffy and Mrs. Sinico are both alienated, for different reasons. Duffy has chosen a solitary life and carefully arranged it to be as disconnected from other people as possible. His life is contented until meeting Mrs. Sinico. Though married with a daughter, Mrs. Sinico, like Duffy, is disconnected from true companionship—her husband, a ship's captain, is away often and undervalues her. Unlike Duffy, Mrs. Sinico yearns to escape her alienation. They strike up an unusual friendship that deepens into a genuine connection between two souls. The story shows that even in the alienating world of the modern city, a chance encounter can lead to an authentic connection between people who may not have realized how much they needed it. Duffy has arranged his life so that he is isolated from the other citizens of Dublin, living in a suburb of the city with minimal social interaction and no friendships. He chooses his residence "because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen," suggesting that he desires a formal connection to Dublin but doesn't want to participate in its civic life. Duffy's habits reinforce his self-imposed alienation. He works as a bank cashier, a job requiring only scripted, formal business interactions with the public. He dines in the same restaurant every day "where he fe[els] himself safe from the society of Dublin's gilded youth," showing that he perceives fashionable society with scorn and as a threat. He spends his evenings in solitary activities: playing his landlady's piano or "roaming about the outskirts of the city." His only amusement comes from occasionally attending operas or concerts where social interaction is not expected. Duffy's habits have produced the desired result of a disconnected life: "He ha[s] neither companions nor friends, church nor creed." In Ireland at the time, people placed high value on observing the services of the Catholic Church, but Duffy merely visits relatives at Christmas and attends their funerals.  He does the minimum required to fulfill "social duties for old dignity's sake," going through the motions, "but conced[ing] nothing further to the conventions which regulate the civic life." Thus, Duffy fulfills the norms of social life, but gives nothing of himself to it. Duffy does show an interest in political reform and a desire to connect with others pursuing it, but his snobbish attitude alienates him from other political activists. Duffy tells Mrs. Sinico that he had attended some meetings of the Irish Socialist Party. However, he stopped because he felt the other members, lower class "workmen," were too focused on their wages and therefore "timorous"—timid and fearful of working toward greater change. Duffy was unable to empathize with their concerns and felt that they resented his higher class and intellect, "the produce of a leisure not within their reach." Consequently, he has grown cynical, telling Mrs. Sinico, "No social revolution […] would be likely to strike Dublin for some centuries." This experience led Duffy to become alienated from political discourse more generally. When Mrs. Sinico inquires if he has written about his politics, Duffy denigrates other writers as "phrasemongers, incapable of thinking consecutively for sixty seconds" and explains that he could not bear to be criticized by "an obtuse middle class," lacking morality and taste. Again, Duffy alienates himself with a superior, judgmental attitude. Like Duffy, Mrs. Sinico is isolated and alienated from human connection. However, in her case, she did not choose this way of life, but yearns for companionship. It is implied that Mrs. Sinico's advancing age has caused her husband to lose interest in her. Though married, they have no real connection. She mentions her husband to Duffy in a way that suggests he is not jealous and would permit their budding friendship: "She alluded once or twice to her husband but her tone was not such as to make the allusion a warning." As a ship's captain, Captain Sinico is "often away," giving the Duffy and Mrs. Sinico opportunity for many private meetings. Moreover, Captain Sinico has lost interest in his wife sexually and this is why he is not jealous of Duffy's visits to their home: "He had dismissed his wife so sincerely from his gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect that anyone else would take an interest in her." Duffy and Mrs. Sinico's chance encounter deepens into a genuine connection that enriches them both. To Duffy, "[Mrs. Sinico's] companionship [is] like a warm soil about an exotic." Like an exotic plant that can only thrive in certain conditions, Duffy's personality blooms in the "soil" of Mrs. Sinico's undivided attention and care, highlighting how nourishing human connection can be. Mrs. Sinico is also likened to his "confessor." As in a Catholic confessional, Duffy can say anything to her and, in the process, become spiritually cleansed. Indeed, Duffy's feels spiritually elevated during their conversations: "their union exalted him" as he feels "in her eyes he would ascend to an angelical stature." Her rapt attention feeds into Duffy's egotism and sense of superiority, letting him feel his intelligence is recognized. Mrs. Sinico, in turn, benefits from being able to embody her prescribed female role of nurturing and supporting a man. She listens to Duffy "with almost maternal solicitude." She has on Duffy the softening effect women were expected to exert on men according to the gender norms of the time. Her influence "w[ears] away the rough edges of his character, emotionalise[s] his mental life." Duffy and Mrs. Sinico fit together according to the era's gender norms, with Duffy's intellect balanced by Mrs. Sinico's emotion. This unlikely pair come together in a deep connection that gives the other what they most need: Duffy gets to feel heard, and Mrs. Sinico gets to feel needed. - Theme: Sexual Repression. Description: Modernist writers like Joyce often pushed the envelope in their portrayals of sexuality. In deliberate criticism of what he saw as Victorian prudishness, Joyce's writing often features frank discussion of sexuality and criticism of sexual repression. "A Painful Case" shows that strict adherence to sexual moral standards leads to sexual repression, with tragic consequences. Both Duffy and Mrs. Sinico are celibate and pursue a platonic friendship. Then, their relationship is destroyed when Duffy panics over a perceived sexual overture from Mrs. Sinico. In this plot trajectory, the story shows that conformity to strict sexuality morality and fear of sexual expression can be destructive of authentic human connection. Duffy is initially portrayed as lacking passion and sexual desire. He is out of touch with physicality, either by choice or by nature.  The imagery used in the opening paragraph to describe Duffy's home suggests his lack of passion. His home is "sombre," unadorned, all black and white, with only "a black and scarlet rug" at the foot of the bed. The color red connotes passion and sexuality, and the rug with its hint of red near Duffy's bed suggests that Duffy's sexuality is also only a hint, almost an afterthought. Duffy's disinterest in sexuality is further symbolized by the description of the contents of his desk. Lifting its lid causes a faint fragrance to escape, giving a sensual connotation. However, one smell from the desk is of "an overripe apple which might have been left there and forgotten." Hearkening back to the Garden of Eden and "forbidden fruit" as associated with sexual knowledge, this apple represents Duffy's sexuality, which has withered away through disinterest and lack of use. Building on these symbolic references, the story states more directly that Duffy is out of touch with his physicality. He is said to live "at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances." He does not fully inhabit his body. Instead, he is detached and alienated from himself: "He ha[s] an odd autobiographical habit which le[ads] him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense." By contrast with Duffy, Mrs. Sinico is portrayed as more sexually alive and aware. Despite lack of interest from her husband and her advancing years, she has stayed connected to sexual passion. Mrs. Sinico's sexuality is portrayed subtly in her first physical description. Her pupils sometimes blend in with her dark blue irises, described as a "deliberate swoon of the pupil into the iris." The word "swoon" gives Mrs. Sinico's appearance a subtle connotation of sexuality, since to swoon means to faint or grow dizzy as a result of intense emotion or romantic interest.  Her eyes also reveal "a temperament of great sensibility" or capacity for deep feeling that is only visible sometimes. This expression of feeling will fall quickly fall back "under the reign of prudence," suggesting that Mrs. Sinico keeps her passion in check in order to conform to social norms of prudent, respectable behavior. Her clothing and body further suggest her sexual potential: "her astrakhan jacket, moulding a bosom of a certain fullness, struck the note of defiance more definitely." Referring directly to Mrs. Sinico's full bosom and specifying that her jacket is made of astrakhan—soft, textured fleece—further gives her appearance sensual connotations. Her physical description suggests that she is sexually awakened and therefore has the potential to defy the norms of the time. Duffy ends their relationship completely in a moment of sexual panic, thinking that Mrs. Sinico wishes to defy social norms and have an adulterous sexual relationship with him. As Duffy holds forth one night, lecturing Mrs. Sinico on "the soul's incurable loneliness," she establishes physical contact with him: "Mrs. Sinico caught up his hand passionately and pressed it to her cheek." This gesture leaves Duffy "very much surprised." He then breaks off contact with her, not seeing her for a week. He is left "disillusioned" by Mrs. Sinico's "interpretation" of his speech, thinking that she is expressing sexual interest in him. The word choice "disillusioned" is significant, showing that Duffy had placed Mrs. Sinico on a moral pedestal and imagining that she would commit adultery causes her to fall from it. Moreover, he has seen her as an intellectual companion, not as a sexual partner. Duffy's action is based on his belief that Mrs. Sinico's gesture of placing his hand on her cheek was a sexual overture. In fact, she might have merely been expressing care and concern for him in her "maternal" way, letting him know that he was not really alone. Alternatively, if she were expressing sexual interest in him, it is possible that he could have rejected her advance without panicking, judging her harshly and completely ending the relationship. Duffy's sexual prudery, repression, and insistence on conventionally correct moral standards leads to the end of what has been a meaningful, authentic connection, and Mrs. Sinico dies a few years later. Ultimately, the story suggests that a sexual affair between the two, though forbidden by moral and social conventions, would have been preferable to the life of isolation, tragedy, and death that results from Duffy's sexual repression, prudery, and conformity to social scruples. - Theme: Questioning Conventional Morality. Description: Modernist narratives tend to unsettle moral frameworks. For example, at the end of most of the stories in Dubliners, readers are faced with either a moral problem that defies judgment or shown a character having a sudden epiphany, but it is not clear what they have learned. "A Painful Case" fits both of these patterns. In its portrayal of Mr. Duffy and Mrs. Sinico's relationship, the story questions moral conventions regarding love, marriage, and sexuality. Additionally, the story muddies the waters with respect to Mrs. Sinico's death, leaving its cause ambiguous and questioning Duffy's responsibility. Finally, the story refuses to say if Duffy has had a profound realization of his lost opportunity with Mrs. Sinico or if he will simply revert back to his contented alienation. In raising these moral questions but deliberately leaving them unanswered, Joyce forces his readership to question conventional morality and grapple with their assumptions surrounding it. Duffy and Mrs. Sinico's unusually intimate friendship defies moral standards of the time. Duffy first meets Mrs. Sinico at a concert. Polite society required that strangers be introduced through a mutual acquaintance. When Mrs. Sinico breaks with this convention, Duffy is "surprised that she seemed so little awkward," characterizing her behavior as unusual. When they meet again, Duffy "seize[s] the moments when her daughter's attention [i]s diverted to become intimate." Duffy's hiding his attention suggests that he knows he is crossing a line. By contrast, Mrs. Sinico seems unfazed. In referring to her husband, Captain Sinico, Mrs. Sinico does not seem to be "warning" Mr. Duffy that her husband will be jealous. They continue to meet in private at "her little cottage outside Dublin," showing that they are avoiding scrutiny but also getting away from the city's social norms. Mrs. Sinico often neglects turning on the lamp as their evenings wear on, heightening their intimate connection: "The dark discreet room, their isolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them." Four years after breaking off his friendship with Mrs. Sinico, Duffy by chance reads a newspaper article about her death in a train accident. The details of her death given in the article leave it unclear if she committed suicide or not. Some evidence suggests accidental death: she was hit by a slow train while crossing the lines, and the medical examiner found that her injuries were not sufficient to cause death, which probably came from shock. Moreover, it is revealed that Mrs. Sinico had taken to drinking, so it is probable that in her drunkenness, she stumbled or did not see the train coming. Other evidence hints at suicide, however. Mrs. Sinico could have avoided a slowly moving train. The doctor's finding the death due to "sudden failure of the heart's action" suggests that symbolically, Mrs. Sinico had given up on life. The story has shown Mrs. Sinico distress and alienation, so a four-year progression into alcoholism and suicide seems plausible. Moreover, it is possible that she exhibits the reckless behavior sometimes shown by people suffering from depression: not actively suicidal, yet welcoming death. Mrs. Sinico's fate is tragic, but the story refuses to specify its cause, making her fate difficult to place in a moral framework. The newspaper article describing her death ends saying, "No blame attached to anyone." Ironically, the rest of the story narrates Duffy's coming to blame himself. He then experiences an epiphany regarding his alienation, but the nature of his realization is unclear. Duffy initially reacts to the news story with moral condemnation. The story of her death "revolt[s] him." He feels justified in casting her aside: "He had no difficulty now in approving of the course he had taken." Next, Duffy remembers his relationship with Mrs. Sinico. He questions his behavior: "He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him best. How was he to blame?" He begins to develop some empathy for Mrs. Sinico, imagining her loneliness. His empathy with Mrs. Sinico grows so strong that he imagines hearing her voice and feeling her touch. He takes on blame: "Why had he withheld life from her? Why had he sentenced her to death?" This self-blame causes him great distress: "He felt his moral nature falling to pieces." Duffy thinks to himself twice that "he was outcast from life's feast," suggesting that he has realized his chance for love is lost. The last line of the story, "he felt that he was alone," shows that Duffy realizes his isolation is now involuntary and permanent. On the other hand, it is possible that Duffy at the end of the story has reverted back to his contented, voluntary alienation. He sees a train and hears Mrs. Sinico's name in the sounds of its engine. However, then "he began to doubt the reality of what memory told him." He loses his imaginative connection to Mrs. Sinico: "He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear." The train moves away, and the night become "perfectly silent." This imagery suggests that it is possible Duffy has simply erased his feelings of guilt and loss and will revert back to his black-and-white life of self-imposed alienation. The ending of "A Painful Case" is bleak and evocative, raising many questions but providing no answers. Did Mrs. Sinico die accidentally, or did she kill herself? Did Duffy's rejection of her prompt her slow decline? Is he responsible for her fate, or is he wallowing in guilt? Does Duffy now feel lonely, having finally understood what he threw away? Or has this passionless man experienced a few hours of emotion and now gone back to his typical disconnection? In raising moral questions but not clearly answering them, the story forces readers to engage with the plot directly, questioning their own assumptions and standards for judgment. - Climax: Mr. Duffy learns of Mrs. Sinico's death and realizes that he is utterly alone. - Summary: Mr. Duffy is a middle-aged man who lives a quiet, ordered, and isolated life in a suburb of Dublin, as far from the city as possible. His home is austere and unadorned. Duffy appears somewhat unfriendly and unforgiving, and he always seems to be disappointed in other people. His habits are orderly, regular, and repetitive: he works as a bank cashier, eats in the same restaurant every day, spends his free time alone or attending concerts, and only sees family on special occasions. Duffy prefers this life of distance from other people and social obligations. His life changes, though, when one night at a concert he meets Mrs. Emily Sinico, a middle-aged, married woman with one daughter. Defying conventions, she strikes up a conversation with Duffy, and after meeting again at another event, they get to know each other better. Though she is married, Mrs. Sinico does not warn Duffy away, and they begin to meet regularly at Mrs. Sinico's house. Mrs. Sinico is somewhat starved for companionship, since her husband, Captain Sinico, is often away at sea. Moreover, he has lost interest in his wife romantically, so he does not perceive Duffy as a rival. He actually thinks Duffy visits in order to court their daughter, Mary Sinico. Duffy and Mrs. Sinico become very close, giving each other the companionship they both need and engaging in intellectual conversations that they both value. One night, however, the relationship changes forever. As Duffy describes his belief that human souls must always be lonely, Mrs. Sinico takes his hand and presses it to her cheek. Shocked, Duffy interprets this gesture as a sexual overture. He cuts off contact with her for a week, later meeting and breaking off the relationship completely. Mrs. Sinico is visibly disturbed, trembling and almost collapsing. Four years go by, and Duffy's life returns to order and isolation. He avoids going to concerts for fear of meeting Mrs. Sinico. One night while eating dinner, he chances to read an article in the newspaper called "Death of a Lady at Sydney Parade: A Painful Case." It describes Mrs. Sinico's death in a train accident. She had been trying to cross the tracks when she was struck and killed by a slow-moving train. It is unclear if she was hit by accident or if she committed suicide. The article gives some background on what led to the accident. Captain Sinico says that two years prior, Mrs. Sinico's habits had begun to change. Mary Sinico specifies that her mother had begun to go out at night to purchase alcohol, a habit Mary had tried to curb by advising her mother to join a temperance league. After examining the evidence around the accident, the article ends by reporting that no blame for it was assigned to anyone. After reading the article, Duffy wanders through the city, processing the news of his former companion's tragic death. At first, he reacts with moral condemnation, thinking that her death is revolting. Her descent into alcoholism makes him feel justified in having cast her away. He questions how he could have ever felt such a degraded to person to be "his soul's companion." Then, Duffy's mind begins to wander. He goes to a pub and orders a drink, then another, and sits for a while reflecting on his time with Mrs. Sinico. The reality of her death hits him, and he asks himself if he could have done something to prevent it. He thinks that she was probably very lonely after they stopped seeing each other, and realizes that he's going to spend the rest of his life in the same kind of loneliness. Duffy leaves the pub and wanders the city, his feelings intensifying. He begins to believe that he is to blame for Mrs. Sinico's death, thinking that his abrupt ending of their relationship prompted her alcoholism, depression, and possible suicide. Continuing to wander the city, he comes to a park and sees some people having a furtive sexual encounter. This sight drives home the point that he is completely separate from life's greatest joys. He had a real connection with Mrs. Sinico and threw it away for the sake of propriety. More than that, he feels guilty for his actions and responsible for her death, which he now thinks that he "sentenced her to." Then, as a train passes by, Duffy imagines hearing Mrs. Sinico's voice in the sounds of its engine. As it fades into the distance and the night grows quiet, Duffy seems to lose his feelings of grief and connection to her memory and feels that he is, once again, alone.

- Genre: Short story, realism, modern feminist literature - Title: A Pair of Silk Stockings - Point of view: Third person - Setting: An unnamed town or city (one big enough to contain a large department store and a theater), probably somewhere in Louisiana, where Chopin set many of her stories. - Character: Mrs. Sommers. Description: Mrs. Sommers, the protagonist and only major character in the story, is an impoverished, industrious young woman. Although her poor neighbors dwell on the fact that Mrs. Sommers was once richer and more fortunate (before her marriage to Mr. Sommers), she is no snob and is not afraid of hard work. In fact, she is so busy completing her daily household duties that she has no time at all "to devote to the past." In the story's opening, dutiful Mrs. Sommers is characterized solely by her identity as a mother and wife, but after gaining a small windfall of fifteen dollars, she begins to make decisions for herself. Escaping from her familial obligations for one afternoon, Chopin's heroine is able to prioritize her own desires and to pursue her quest for personal fulfillment. Succumbing to the tempting delights of consumerism, Mrs. Sommers indulges in new clothing (including the eponymous pair of silk stockings), an extravagant lunch, and a trip to the theater, activities that give her a feeling of importance and belonging. While Mrs. Sommers's shopping spree symbolizes a personal triumph over the patriarchal expectations that require her to exhaust herself in order to embody the characteristics of an ideal nineteenth-century woman, it also seems to reveal the futile nature of her rebellion. Mrs. Sommers has experienced a taste of freedom, happiness, and pleasure, but having spent the entirety of the fifteen dollars on herself, she must return home to the drudgery of her mundane domestic routine. - Character: Mr. Sommers. Description: Mr. Sommers is an invisible force throughout the story. The reader never meets Mrs. Sommers's husband, and it is unclear whether he is dead or alive, but he is a strong patriarchal symbol in Mrs. Sommers's story. It is clear that Mr. Sommers is of a lower class ranking to Mrs. Sommers because she has experienced a social and financial demotion since her marriage to him, a situation that their neighbors gossip about ceaselessly. Although Mrs. Sommers doesn't like to dwell on her past, it is apparent that this has brought her some unhappiness. Mrs. Sommers's life is unmistakably and materially bound up in her (inferior) position as wife to Mr. Sommers. This is exemplified through the recurrent use of "Mrs. Sommers"; her first name is never revealed and so, even in her own story, her identity and subjectivity continue to be subsumed by her relation to a man. - Character: Janie, Mag, and the Boys. Description: Janie, Mag and the boys are Mr. Sommers and Mrs. Sommers's children. They are mentioned only at the beginning of the story when Mrs. Sommers lies awake at night, meticulously planning how to spend her fifteen dollars. Initially, she is set on using her small windfall to buy much-needed clothing for her children. Notably, it's unclear whether her desire to purchase new items for the children is motivated by devotion for them, or by the prospect of saving herself time from darning and mending their old clothes. Either way, the story begins by placing the children at the center of Mrs. Sommers's world. As the story unfolds, however, Mrs. Sommers's commitment to her children seems to be forgotten as she spends the money allotted to them on expensive items for herself. At the end of the story, Mrs. Sommers longs for her journey to continue forever, presumably even if this means that she never returns home to her children. - Character: The Clerk. Description: The clerkin the shoe department meets Mrs. Sommers shortly after she has bought and put on her new stockings. He is bewildered by the juxtaposition between the luxurious silk stockings and the rest of Mrs. Sommers's shabby clothes. The clerk symbolizes a sort of puritanical judgment; although he is probably working class too, he is surprised to see a poor woman like Mrs. Sommers making seemingly imprudent and frivolous purchases. Mrs. Sommers, however, is not dissuaded by the clerk, and continues browsing in a demanding and fussy manner, explaining that she doesn't mind paying extra for the perfect pair of boots. Mrs. Sommers enjoys the buying power afforded to her by the dollars in her purse and the authority that it gives her over the clerk. - Character: The Man on the Cable Car. Description: The stranger on the cable car appears right at the story's close, as Mrs. Sommers is traveling home from her shopping day. The man has "keen eyes" as he watches Mrs. Sommers carefully. The narrator describes how he observers her, trying to work out who she is, and presumably, why a working class woman like Mrs. Sommers has so many expensive things about her person. Ultimately, he is unable to make sense of what he sees. Through this, Chopin challenges the notion that women are all predictable, fickle, and one-dimensional creatures, instead endowing her complex female characters with rich inner psyches impervious to the scrutiny of men. - Character: The Shop Assistant. Description: The shop assistant, described as a "young girl," helps Mrs. Sommers find a pair of black silk stockings in the right size. Mrs. Sommers feels like a princess when the assistant asks if she would like to inspect the silk stockings, just as she feels like royalty when she tips the waiter later that day. - Character: The Waiter. Description: The waiter in the upscale restaurant is attentive to Mrs. Sommers, making her feel welcome and comfortable in a space that was previously barred to her because of her poverty. When Mrs. Sommers leaves the waiter a cash tip at the end of her meal, his bow makes her feel exceptionally special, like a "princess of royal blood." - Theme: Women and Gender Roles. Description: Kate Chopin's "A Pair of Silk Stockings" tells the story of Mrs. Sommers, a poor woman charged as the sole caretaker of her four children who experiences a sensuous awakening when shopping for her family. Published in 1897—a time when ideal womanhood was often synonymous with motherhood, resulting in the widespread belief that women must take full responsibility for childcare and housework—Chopin's story explores the boundaries of traditional gender roles. While nineteenth-century social norms dictated that women embody purity and piousness, serving their husbands faithfully but harboring no ambitions or desires of their own, Mrs. Sommers gives in to temptation with almost reckless abandon—indulging in her femininity, succumbing to her desires, and escaping the arduous confines of her household for the day. Through the excitement, pleasure and satisfaction that Mrs. Sommers enjoys in the story, Chopin illustrates the pleasure and fulfilment women can experience when freed from the confines of marriage and motherhood. Upon finding herself the "unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars," Mrs. Sommers's thoughts immediately turn toward how she can use this windfall to support her family—quickly establishing the primacy of the role of motherhood in her life. She methodically lays out a plan for the distribution of the funds between her children. Paying an extra "dollar or two" for Janie's shoes "would ensure their lasting an appreciable time longer than they usually did," while buying new "shirt waists" means she won't have to patch up the old ones. She adds two pairs of stockings a piece to her mental list—enthusiastically noting "what darning that would save for a while!"—as well as a pretty gown for Mag and caps for all four children. Mrs. Sommers is "excited" by "the vision of her little brood looking fresh and dainty and new for once in their lives," at once implying the family's relative poverty and her desire to come across as a capable caretaker. Her focus on how these purchases will ease her workload, meanwhile, implies that Mrs. Sommers does not exactly revel in having her days devoted to menial tasks like darning stockings and patching shirts. Such domestic labor has clearly taken its toll on Mrs. Sommers. Having forgotten to eat lunch in the chaos of "getting the children fed and the place righted," she is weak, faint, and fatigued when seating herself at an empty counter in a clothing store "to gather her strength and courage" before beginning her shopping. Mrs. Sommers is a depleted woman, but she finds strength when seduced by a pair of silk stockings. While sitting at the counter, Mrs. Sommers absent-mindedly encounters "something very soothing and pleasant to touch." As if rousing her from sleep or numbness, the silk stockings appeal to her senses and seduce her into an imprudent purchase. As the stockings "glisten" and "glide serpent-like through her fingers," the unmistakable allusion to the Bible's creation story positions the stockings as a sinful temptation. However, the question of buying the silk stockings is not a consequential moral dilemma, but rather a pitiful reminder of the constraints placed upon poor women like Mrs. Sommers, who are obliged to devote their ever-depleting resources—both financial and emotional—to others. Presented with this temptation, "two hectic blotches" appear immediately upon Mrs. Sommers' previously pale cheeks. This redness might represent sin, whereby Mrs. Sommers's now sullied paleness symbolises the corruption of her pure and pious womanhood. On the other hand, her blush might signify a rush of desire—a new and exciting sensation that Mrs. Sommers eventually embraces. The implicit suggestions of female sexuality throughout descriptions of the shopping spree present it as a moment of sensual awakening for Mrs. Sommers. Ultimately, Mrs. Sommers's dwindling energy is almost immediately replenished through this experience, bringing color to her cheeks and a spring to her step—underscoring the story's insistence that women are capable of more, and indeed require more, than traditional feminine domesticity. One might expect Mrs. Sommers to be punished for her greed—for her to become an allegory warning against the dangers of sinful and selfish women—but no such twist ensues. Chopin describes the scenes that follow with an abundance of sensuous language, undermining nineteenth-century expectations of womanly piousness by presenting Mrs. Sommers's shopping as an act of self-fulfilment, rather than as a fall from grace. Mrs. Sommers remains loyal to her newly awakened desires and hungrily continues her search for "satisfaction." Taking "a rest" from all that is "laborious and fatiguing," Mrs. Sommers "abandoned herself" to an "impulse that directed her actions and freed her of responsibility." The pleasure-seeking continues when Mrs. Sommers ventures out of the shop, where, rather than met with the ridicule she had expected, she blends in seamlessly with the "well-dressed multitude." In the restaurant, no one suspects her of belonging to an inferior social class, and in the theater, she is warmly accepted by a group of "brilliantly dressed women," who share their candy with her. The theater scene becomes a metaphor for Mrs. Sommers's self-fulfilment. Her experiences have awakened long-buried feelings of desire, freeing her from normal subservience to domestic duties, if just for an afternoon, and placing her center-stage in her own narrative. Mrs. Sommers seems to be rewarded (she is granted a small fortune, after all) for being dutiful and loyal to her family. What she discovers, however, is far more thrilling than motherhood. Through the excitement and satisfaction that Mrs. Sommers enjoys in the story, Chopin explores feminine pleasure at a time when women's desires were not widely acknowledged, never mind encouraged. At the story's close, Mrs. Sommers—fed, replenished, and freshly clothed—begins her return home in the cable car. After her day's adventures, she longs for her journey to "go on and on with her forever," revealing her desire to remain free from the confines of domesticity, and to live a more independent, sensuous life. - Theme: Consumerism and Escapism. Description: The 1890s brought with them the rise of modern American consumer culture; the Industrial Revolution had caused substantial growth in production and commerce, and it continued to transform the economy in the United States. Chopin's 1897 short story is fittingly littered with references to this modern consumerism; the reader learns early on that Mrs. Sommers is a veritable shopper, adept at finding bargains and one "who could stand for hours" in order to buy a "desired object that was selling below cost." As the concept of shopping shifted from a functional necessity to a leisure activity, consumer identity was also increasingly tied to notions of femininity—a notion reflected in everything from the glossy magazines Mrs. Sommers buys to the "gaudy" outfits worn by superficial women in the theater. The story can be read as a direct response to the birth of a capitalist America that promised women an escape from their mundane domestic lives through the thrill of shopping. Chopin reveals, however, the trivial and deceptive nature of consumerism, which is ultimately an inadequate form of escape, and a misplaced endeavor for Mrs. Sommers. Throughout the story, Mrs. Sommers uses consumerism to avoid the mundanity of everyday life. From the moment she gains the fifteen dollars, she is "absorbed" by the opportunity of spending it. The very prospect of shopping sends her into "a dreamy state," which occupies her for "a day or two." Chopin then uses the department store—where Mrs. Sommers's shopping adventure begins—as a symbol of American consumer culture, and its promise that fashion and consumption can buy happiness, respect, and social esteem. At the glove stand, both Mrs. Sommers and the shop assistant "los[e] themselves" while admiring the gloves, squarely positioning consumerism as a brand of escapism. Similarly, Mrs. Sommers breaks into smile when imagining herself as a princess, "asked to inspect a tiara of diamonds." The store represents a sort of dreamland, not only for Mrs. Sommers, but for all the women there, to indulge in a very capitalist construction of femininity, allowing them to assume new fantasy identities, far removed from the reality of their lives. Chopin uses the department store to expose the manipulative allure of a consumer culture that renders practical women like Mrs. Sommers trivial, infantile, and almost ridiculous. Indeed, consumerism is ultimately an inadequate and unfulfilling form of escapism. For Mrs. Sommers, each purchase is followed by disappointment, and the brief amnesia bought with every purchase becomes more and more fleeting. After buying the silk stockings, for example, Mrs. Sommers worries that the little package "seemed lost in the depths of her shabby old shopping-bag." Then, after her moment of contemplation at the glove stand, she realizes that "there were other places where money might be spent." Similarly, after buying the magazines, Mrs. Sommers becomes aware that "she was very hungry," and continues her spending spree in pursuit of lunch. With each purchase, the sentences pertaining to her dissatisfaction become shorter and shorter, reflecting how Mrs. Sommers moves more and more frantically from each purchase to the next, desperate to keep her fantasy alive. After her shopping trip, Mrs Sommers is "very hungry." Her "cravings" here are both literal and figurative, as she cannot resist the urge to continue spending and indulging. The reader is aware that Mrs. Sommers's rate of spending is totally unsustainable, and that the lifestyle she yearns for will always be out of reach. Chopin reveals the transitory nature of the joy that consumerism can buy. Despite her brief but happy sojourn, Mrs. Sommers's life is not materially changed or improved by the story's close—consumerism has only offered the illusion of freedom. After Mrs. Sommers has enjoyed shopping, luncheon, and a trip to the theater, the narrator describes how "the play was over, the music ceased, the crowd filed out. It was like a dream ended." No matter how much she wishes for the contrary, Mrs. Sommers must return home to her normal life, accepting the empty feeling that marks the end to her adventure. The end of the story represents the superficiality of consumerism, as Mrs. Sommers leaves with a "powerful longing" for more. Paradoxically, despite her indulgent exercise in escapism, she is less satisfied than ever before. The fifteen dollars in Mrs. Sommers's purse were not substantial enough to free her from the drudgery of everyday life, or lessen her hardships in any lasting way. The story implies that she will continue to be poor, exhausted, and busy providing for her children. While Mrs. Sommers is delighted, seduced, and manipulated by the consumption of mass-produced goods, her escapism is short lived, her future is devoid of any real improvements, and she is left dreading the inevitable return to her normal life. She is certainly an example of rebellion against the selflessness expected of nineteenth-century women and mothers, but Chopin ensures that Mrs Sommers's small rebellion is ultimately futile, as she remains unable to escape the drudgery of her everyday life or the limitations of her social class. Consumerism, then, acts merely as a distraction, perhaps to prevent women like Mrs. Sommers engaging in more vigorous forms of rebellion against the multiple social structures that serve to oppress them. - Theme: Social Class and Belonging. Description: In Kate Chopin's "A Pair of Silk Stockings," Mrs. Sommers is given the almost impossible task of navigating America's nineteenth-century Puritanism—and the moral judgement it cast over poor, lower class women like her—as well as the increasing social pressures placed on women to succumb to the demands of a booming consumer culture. Chopin uses her protagonist to explore the superficial elitism of an American class structure that asserted double moral standards—on the one hand encouraging extravagant spending (for the sake of a strong economy), and on the other expecting working-class women to live pure, selfless, and modest lives. Mrs. Sommers embodies America's moral and social paradoxes through her position as an outsider; she neither belongs with her working-class neighbors, who sense and discuss her difference from them, nor to the luxurious middle- and upper-class world she longs for. In this context, Mrs. Sommers's self-worth is inextricably tied to outward appearances, which Chopin seems to reject as shallow and reductive. To some extent, Mrs. Sommers is empowered by the fifteen dollars in her possession; the money boosts her confidence and transforms her from a state of passivity—"found herself the unexpected possessor"—to a woman in active pursuit of her own desires. In the story's opening, Mrs. Sommers derives pleasure from the way the money "stuffed and bulged" in her purse. Readers learn that the possession of the fifteen dollars "gave her a feeling of importance such as she had not enjoyed for years," suggesting that Mrs. Sommers's self-worth is linked closely to her financial status. Mrs. Sommers delights in the promise of exercising her new spending power, an experience that is not wholly unfamiliar to her, but one she has not had the luxury of enjoying in recent years. When the shop assistant in the store invites Mrs. Sommers to examine a pair of silk stockings, "[Mrs. Sommers] smiled, just as if she had been asked to inspect a tiara of diamonds with the ultimate view of purchasing it." The regal connotations illustrate how pleased and proud she feels to have been perceived as someone who could afford such "luxurious things." Indeed, after her rash shopping spree, Mrs. Sommers "lifted her skirts at the crossings" in order to show off her new shoes and stockings. Her purchases "had given her a feeling of assurance, a sense of belonging to the well-dressed multitude." Mrs. Sommers's indulgences have given the previously exhausted woman a new lease of life, transformed her posture and improved her "bearing." Perhaps her indulgences have been shallow and materialistic, but after her stoicism in the face of poverty, the implication is that Mrs. Sommers deserves her afternoon of luxury, certainly more than the other women in the story, who engage in such leisure activities just to show off their wealth. Dressed predominantly in her modest, shabby clothes, Mrs. Sommers still risks rejection from "the well-dressed multitude" she so desperately wants to be accepted by. As a working-class woman, Mrs. Sommers is expected to behave selflessly and modestly, entirely devoted to her household duties and to her family obligations. In the context of American Puritanism, her indulgent purchases could be construed not only as irresponsible, but also as highly immoral. This moral judgement—or at least the fear of it—manifests itself in the dread Mrs. Sommers harbors of others noticing that she doesn't belong in their social set. In the restaurant, for example, "she feared" that her "appearance" might create "surprise," presumably one that might result in her being rejected or outcast by her social superiors, who are positioned as the arbiters of style, class, and belonging. By highlighting the double moral standard that allows wealthy women to indulge in fashion, pampering, and excess, while judging a poor woman's character for the very same behavior, Chopin exposes the class inequality and social disenfranchisement experienced by working-class women. Through the fact that the purchase of just a few elegant and luxurious items can buy Mrs. Sommers social acceptance, Chopin highlights the superficial and shallow elitism of the middle class. Through her new purchases, Mrs. Sommers gains a social capital that allows her to enter spaces previously restricted to her. Initially she worries that people will dismiss her, laugh at her, or prevent her from entering their upscale restaurants and theaters. Mrs. Sommers is pleasantly surprised, then, when her presence in these middle-class establishments causes no alarm. Her new stockings, shoes, gloves, and magazines make her feel more confident, but they also change people's perceptions of her. However, when Mrs. Sommers encounters the "gaudy" women in the theater, it becomes clear that Chopin condemns this superficiality. Visiting the theater solely to show off, the women are shallow, trivial, and one-dimensional. They share their candy with Mrs. Sommers, not because they actually care for her, but because they perceive her as belonging to their social set. Without her new clothes, Mrs. Sommers would have likely been rejected by these very same women. The comfort of acceptance that she finds among the "quiet ladies and gentlemen" has been misguided; money has given Mrs. Sommers a particular kind of self-worth—one tied to the approval of others—but it is devoid of any real value or meaning. Ultimately Chopin renders nineteenth-century class distinctions completely ridiculous, as it is obvious that Mrs. Sommers was once both wealthier and more socially important than she is now, and despite her changing outward appearance, is the same person she always has been. "A Pair of Silk Stockings" is a damning indictment on the state of social class in America. The more fortunate echelons of society will continue to participate in mass consumption, buying things they do not need, simply to "display" their wealth, while poor, hard-working women like Mrs. Sommers remain marginalized, positioned firmly on the outside, looking in. - Theme: Subverting the Male Gaze in the Public Sphere. Description: The male gaze refers to the act of presenting women from a masculine perspective, a patriarchal form of representation that has dominated literary and artistic works throughout history. Due to the hostile public reception of women writers throughout the early nineteenth-century, it was not uncommon for them to publish their works under male pseudonyms. By the end of the century, however, writers like Kate Chopin were being openly published (although not without some outrage), and they were able to challenge traditional portrayals of women through their writing. While "A Pair of Silk Stockings" might appear to be a silly little tale about a silly little woman doing her shopping, Chopin's story—about one woman's pursuit of freedom and fulfilment—is a bold assertion about women's need for agency, free from the scrutiny of men. Despite the curious presence of male characters in "A Pair of Silk Stockings," who watch, observe, and monitor Mrs. Sommers and her behavior, the story is unmistakably dedicated to her and her subjectivity alone. The only named male character is Mr. Sommers, whom the reader never actually meets, and the three other men in the story—the clerk, the waiter, and the man on the cable car—remain unnamed. While placed firmly in the center of her own narrative, through small acts of self-assurance, Mrs. Sommers is able to avert the male gaze and subvert the expectations of the men around her. Mrs. Sommers challenges men's initial perceptions of her and refuses to succumb to their judgement. Men act as voyeurs in the story, present only to judge Mrs. Sommers and act as a reminder that she is only a visitor in the male-dominated public sphere, passing through to complete her errands, but ultimately doomed to return home, where she belongs. Mrs. Sommers's first encounter with a man is with that of the clerk in the shoe department. He is unable to "make her out" when he sees her shabby shoes with her elegant pair of silk stockings. While this confrontation is brief, it is clearly distinct from that of the female assistant, who shares a moment of admiration with Mrs. Sommers. Here, the clerk stands in as a symbol of patriarchal control as his judgement threatens to ruin Mrs. Sommers's outing. However, refusing to be discouraged, Mrs. Sommers continues her shop in a "fastidious" manner. Mrs. Sommers instructs the "young fellow who served her," thus undermining the gendered power dynamic and taking control of the situation for herself. Similarly, while traveling home on the cable car, "a man with keen eyes" literally surveils her. This instance of the male gaze risks rendering Mrs. Sommers an object under his watch, but in fact, he is unable to "decipher what he saw." Again, Mrs. Sommers wields the power here because her true identity remains unclear to the voyeur. Even while inhabiting the public sphere, Mrs. Sommers maintains a degree of privacy and of agency. Mrs. Sommers is not motivated by male approval, and she rejects society's expectations of her. Although it is not clear if Mr. Sommers is still alive or not, given the social position of lower-class women at the time, it is certainly Mrs. Sommers's responsibility to take care of her children's clothes, before adorning herself in fashionable items. That she fails to accomplish this task illustrates that she has, at least to some degree, rejected her marital obligations. While occupying the private realm, her thoughts are wholly wedded to her familial responsibilities, but once she passes into the public sphere, she gains the confidence and self-assurance needed to dedicate the afternoon to herself. Indeed, while she does choose items that are traditionally beautiful and feminine, it is unlikely that any of her purchases are carried out in search of male approval, since her husband is not mentioned once during the shopping spree. Rather, Mrs. Sommers's purchases are for herself and for the feeling of confidence she gains through them. Mrs. Sommers undermines the patriarchal Victorian doctrine of "separate spheres" when she neglects her womanly duties and instead moves through a male-dominated public space wholly undeterred by men's disapproval. However, despite her small rebellions and subversions, the male gaze— and indeed male dominance—remains omnipresent in Mrs. Sommers's world. Mrs. Sommers's name—inherited from her husband—dictates her class position in society. The reader learns early on in the text that Mrs. Sommers had enjoyed a higher social standing before "she had ever thought of being Mrs. Sommers." Despite dedicating the day to herself and her own needs and wants, Mrs. Sommers's first name is never revealed, reminding the reader that she remains defined by her husband's class position, her marital status, and, in turn, her marital obligations. Mrs. Sommers's sojourn into the "male sphere" might represent the growing freedoms women experienced in the late nineteenth-century, but the fact that she has to return home at the story's close, with no material improvement to her life, serves as a reminder that women were still largely restricted by traditional gender roles. The omnipresence of the male gaze—evident in the story through the men who literally watch Mrs. Sommers as she goes about her business—reveals the pervasiveness of patriarchal control within women's lives. Although Mrs. Sommers is described as "little" three times throughout the text—an adjective used to depict her as weak, feminine, and timid—through small acts of defiance, she is able to challenge others' perceptions of her. By commanding the male clerk, bewildering the cable car voyeur, and ignoring her familial duties, Mrs. Sommers tries to avert the male gaze and reject society's expectations of her.  In a way, the actions of Mrs. Sommers, who ventures out into the public sphere and takes control of her own story for perhaps the first time in her life, mirrors that of Chopin herself, who had to endure the harsh ridicule of public life, in an unequivocally male dominated industry, in order to pursue her own ambitions. The fact that Mrs. Sommers has to eschew men's judgment and suspicion in the first place, however, illustrates the extent to which nineteenth-century women were restricted in society. - Climax: After a chance encounter with a luxurious pair of silk stockings, Mrs. Sommers begins to make rash purchases for herself, spending almost her entire fifteen dollars on clothes, magazines, and an indulgent lunch. - Summary: Mrs. Sommers is surprised and excited by the small windfall in her possession. The question of how to spend the money—a whopping fifteen dollars—absorbs her entirely. In the early hours of the morning, Mrs. Sommers decides that the money should be allocated towards much-needed clothes for her children, Janie, Mag, and the boys, and she meticulously and methodically draws up a mental shopping list. The very idea of seeing her children in fresh and fashionable clothing makes Mrs. Sommers so eager for her shopping trip the next day, that she lies awake all night in restless anticipation. However, when she arrives at the department store the next day, Mrs. Sommers is unable to begin her "shopping bout" because she is too fatigued. Completely devoted to the needs of her children and household, Mrs. Sommers had spent the morning catering to everybody else, forgetting to "eat any luncheon" at all. As she gathers her strength at an empty counter in the shop, Mrs. Sommers finds herself admiring a discounted "line of silk hosiery." Mrs. Sommers loves a bargain, and although the silk stockings are still far too expensive and extravagant for a poor, ordinary woman like her, she is quite tempted by their elegant and delicate texture. After inspecting them a little while longer, Mrs. Sommers declares to the shop assistant that she will buy a black pair. This first purchase is a catalyst to the spending spree that follows. Disappointed by how "lost" her stockings seemed in "the depths of her shabby old-shopping bag," Mrs. Sommers is drawn away from the bargain counter and instead towards the elevator. Once upstairs, unable to wait until she gets home to enjoy her new lavish purchase, Mrs. Sommers removes her old cotton stockings and puts on her silk ones. Able for the first time, perhaps in years, to renounce her domestic responsibilities and forget her familial errands, Mrs. Sommers is overcome by an unfamiliar yet pleasing sensation. Mrs. Sommers continues in her pursuit of satisfaction and moves towards the shoe department. Here she delights in the authority she is able to exert over the judgmental clerk, bossing him around until she finds the perfect pair of new boots. Shortly after, Mrs. Sommers makes a stop at the glove counter, where she is fitted with a beautiful pair of "kids." Subsequently, she pauses at a stall to buy two expensive magazines, which remind her of the "pleasant things" she had been accustomed to before her marriage. The new purchases empower Mrs. Sommers with a feeling of importance and "a sense of belonging," which she is desperate for. As she walks down the street, she carries her magazines proudly and lifts her skirt in order to reveal the fashionable shoes beneath. Mrs. Sommers does not seem to feel any remorse for spending the money, which had been previously dedicated to her children, on indulgent purchases for herself. In fact, the children do not seem to cross her mind once throughout the course of the afternoon. Having worked up a real hunger during her shopping extravaganza, Mrs. Sommers approaches a restaurant hesitantly, worried that her inferior class position will prevent her from entering such an upscale establishment. Once inside, Mrs. Sommers is able to relax as orders a rich and lavish lunch of oysters, lamb chop, wine, dessert, and coffee. Finally, with just a few coins left, Mrs. Sommers visits the theater. She watches a magnificent play alongside the "brilliantly dressed women" who attend such events solely to show off and be seen in the latest fashions. The "gaudy" women accept Mrs. Sommers as one of their own, presumably because her new clothes conceal her true identity and class status, and she enjoys her time with them. At the play's close, Mrs. Sommers feels as if her "dream" has ended. Traveling home in a cable car, Mrs. Sommers silently harbors a "poignant wish" for her journey to go on forever and ever.

- Genre: Historical Fiction, Psychological Fiction, Realism - Title: A Passage to India - Point of view: Third person omniscient - Setting: Chandrapore, India and Mau, India - Character: Dr. Aziz. Description: A young Muslim doctor in Chandrapore who is a widower with three children. Aziz is skilled at his job but his real passion is for poetry. He is emotional and effusive, and befriends Fielding, Mrs. Moore, and Adela, growing especially close with Fielding and admiring Mrs. Moore. Later he is accused of assaulting Adela, but is ultimately cleared. After the incident Aziz grows hardened against the British and declares that India should become a united nation. Even when he eventually reconciles with Fielding, he recognizes that there can be no true friendship between them until the British no longer control India and they can interact as equals. - Character: Cyril Fielding. Description: The English principal of the government college. Fielding is an independent, open-minded man who likes to "travel light." He believes in educating the Indians and treats them like his peers, which separates him from the other British expats who tend to be more condescending to the Indians. Fielding befriends Aziz and later, after Aziz has been accused of attacking Adela, joins his defense team. In doing so, Fielding renounces his English compatriots. Fielding goes on to marry Stella Moore. - Character: Adela Quested. Description: A young, honest Englishwoman who comes to India to decide whether or not to marry Ronny. Adela is intrigued by India and desires to see the "real" India and befriend the locals. Later she has a horrifying experience at the Marabar Caves and accuses Aziz of assaulting her. However, at the trial she goes against her peers' influence and admits that she was mistaken. She returns to England soon afterward. - Character: Mrs. Moore. Description: An elderly Englishwoman who is Ronny, Ralph, and Stella's mother. She travels to India with Adela and is intrigued by the country. Mrs. Moore meets Aziz and feels an instant connection, and they become friends. Mrs. Moore is almost a mystical figure, associated with Hinduism and spirituality. She is disturbed by the echoes in the Marabar Caves, and later grows irritable, depressed, and apathetic about all life. She goes back to England early but dies on the journey. Her memory is so beloved that she is turned into a sort of Hindu demi-god, "Esmiss Esmoor," by some of the Indians in Chandrapore. - Character: Ronny Heaslop. Description: Mrs. Moore's son and the magistrate at Chandrapore. Though likable and sympathetic at first, Ronny is influenced by his Anglo-Indian peers and becomes more prejudiced and unkind to Indians over the course of the novel. He believes in "toeing the line" and following his compatriots. Ronny is briefly engaged to Adela, but he breaks it off after Aziz's trial. - Character: Miss Derek. Description: A young Englishwoman who works for an Indian Maharani. She is outgoing and carefree, regularly "borrows" her employer's car, and is considered unseemly by many of the English in Chandrapore. Miss Derek is the person who consoles and drives Adela home after the events at the Marabar Caves. She is also carrying on a clandestine affair with the chief of police. - Character: Mr. McBryde. Description: The superintendent of police, who has his own theory that India's climate makes Indians behave criminally. He is generally more tolerant than most of the English at Chandrapore, but still generally assumes the superiority of the English and isn't much inclined to investigate the case against Aziz, instead assuming there isn't any way that Aziz won't be found guilty. Later, McBryde is caught having an affair with Miss Derek. - Theme: Colonialism. Description: On one level, A Passage to India is an in-depth description of daily life in India under British rule. The British "Raj" (its colonial empire in India) lasted from 1858 to 1947. The prevailing attitude behind colonialism was that of the "white man's burden" (in Rudyard Kipling's phrase)—that it was the moral duty of Europeans to "civilize" other nations. Thus the British saw their colonial rule over India as being for the Indians' own good. Forster himself was British, but in the novel he is very critical of colonialism. He never goes so far as to advocate outright Indian rebellion, but he does show how the colonial system is inherently flawed. Forster portrays most of the British men working in India as at least well-meaning, although condescending and unoriginal, but their positions in the colonial system almost always push them towards becoming racist and harmful figures. This is played out most explicitly in the development of Ronny's character. The British women, apart from Mrs. Moore and Adela, often seem less sympathetic than the men, to the point that even Turton blames their presence for the tensions with the Indians. The women don't have the daily labor and interactions with Indians that the men do, but they are generally more racially hateful and condescending (and perhaps this is because they are usually so isolated from actual Indian society).Forster also shows how the colonial system makes the Indians hate and sometimes condescend to the British. The colonialists are by necessity in the role of "oppressor," no matter how individually kind or open-minded they might be. This is best shown in the changes to Aziz's character throughout the novel, as he goes from laughing at and befriending the English to actively hating them. Although Forster ultimately offers no concrete alternative to British colonialism, his overall message is that colonialism in India is a harmful system for both the British and the Indians. Friendships like that between Aziz and Fielding are a rare exception, not the rule, and even such friendships are all but destroyed or thwarted by the problems and tensions of colonialism. - Theme: "Muddles" and Mysteries. Description: Throughout the novel Forster uses the words "muddle" and "mystery" as distinctive terms to describe India. A "muddle" implies chaos and meaningless mess, while a "mystery" suggests something confusing but with an underlying purpose or mystical plan. On the English side, Fielding sees India as a muddle, though a sympathetic one, while Mrs. Moore and Adela approach the country with a sense of mystery. Forster himself often uses "orientalizing" terms to describe India, portraying it as a muddle that is unable to be understood or properly described by Westerners. For example, he describes India's architecture and natural landscape as formless and primitive, while he sees European architecture and landscape as aesthetically pleasing and comforting. In this way Forster and his British characters, as outsiders, cannot help but view India as a muddle they can never comprehend, and one that—despite Forster's critiques of colonialism—might benefit from Western "civilization" and reasoning.But Forster also shows that even the Indians themselves are unable to describe India's essence, and they too are divided in their ideas of muddles and mysteries. The Muslim Aziz regards Hindu India as a primitive muddle of chaos, while he is comforted by the elegant mysteries of his own religion. Professor Godbole, on the other hand, is a Hindu, and the main figure standing for the view of India as mystery. Hinduism is portrayed as a muddle of many gods and strange ceremonies, but there is also a mystery and plan behind it all—the meaning is in the chaos of life itself, and the unity of all things.These muddles and mysteries ultimately become externalized and symbolized in the scene at the Marabar Caves. Forster never clearly explains what happened to Adela, and so the whole incident is a kind of horrible muddle. Also in the caves, Adela and Mrs. Moore's "mysterious" India is reduced to terrifying chaos in the echoing "boum" of the caves. A similar effect, though a more positive one, is achieved in the final scene, where Aziz and Fielding's boats crash into each other near the Hindu festival. Ultimately Forster finds both muddles and mysteries necessary to properly encompass and comprehend India, as well as the universe itself. - Theme: Friendship. Description: Despite its strong political overtones, A Passage to India is also a deep psychological portrayal of different individuals. As Forster describes his characters' inner lives and their interactions with each other, the subject of friendship becomes very important, as it is shown as the most powerful connection between two individuals apart from romantic love. This subject relates to Forster's humanistic philosophy—which says that friendship, interpersonal kindness, and respect can be the greatest forces for good in the world—but in the novel, friendship must always struggle with cultural divides and the imbalance in power enforced by the colonial system. The book begins and ends with the subject of friendship between an Englishman and an Indian, and in both cases it concludes that such a friendship is almost impossible. Forster shows all the obstacles—race, culture, class, religion, and language—that stand in the way of meaningful friendships between Indians and the English, no matter an individual's best intentions. The English view the Indians as inferior, while the Indians (including Aziz) view the English as both cruel oppressors and foolish foreigners.Towards the middle of the novel, however, Aziz's growing friendships with both Mrs. Moore and Fielding seem to be an example of successful humanism, implying that if both parties can treat each other with respect, kindness, and openmindedness, then even Englishmen and Indians can be friends, and British colonialism could become a beneficial system. After the experience in the Marabar Caves, however, Mrs. Moore ends up going mad and dying, and Fielding and Aziz's friendship starts to fall apart. After Aziz's trial, each man ends up returning to his own cultural circle. Fielding feels sympathetic to Adela, while Aziz lets his suspicions harden into a hatred of all the English. In the novel's final scene the two men become reconciled just as they are about to part forever. They embrace while riding together, but then their horses separate and they are divided by the landscape itself, which seems to say "not yet." Such friendship might be possible once India is free, but not yet in the colonial system. Thus Forster doesn't let go of his humanistic ideals, but he does show how such ideals can be hindered by social systems and cultural divides. - Theme: Division vs. Unity. Description: Ideas of division and unity are important in A Passage to India in both a social and spiritual sense. The social and cultural divisions between English and Indians are clear, but India itself is also internally divided. The phrase "a hundred Indias" is used several times to describe the "muddle" of the country, where Hindus and Muslims are divided against each other and even among themselves. The best hope Forster proposes for this chaotic division lies in the idea of unity, particularly of the spiritual kind. Most of the novel's main characters are Muslims or Christians, but the book's final section focuses on the Hindu side of India, as introduced by the character of Professor Godbole.Hinduism has many gods and rituals, but certain aspects of it incline towards pantheism, which is the belief that all things are essentially one, and of a divine nature. Forster shows this sense of spiritual unity in several places, like the "liberal" Christians willing to accept monkeys into heaven, and Hindus like Godbole who try to accept even a wasp as divine. Mrs. Moore starts to feel dissatisfied with the "small-mindedness" of Christianity when she reaches India, and her character leans towards a Hindu kind of unity as she too feels connected to a wasp in her room. This kind of empathy and unity between living things is a positive force for Forster, and he implies that it may be the best hope for both friendship between individuals and peace between cultures. But he also shows how this oneness can be terrifying. This is best represented by the "boum" of the Marabar Caves. All sounds, whether spoken language or not, are reduced to "boum" in the caves' echo. This lack of distinction between things terrifies Adela and ultimately drives Mrs. Moore mad, and even Godbole is unable to accept non-living things (like a stone) into his vision of universal oneness. The perfect realization of unity may be the chaos and void of the Marabar Caves, or it may be the love of God as in Hinduism—but either way Forster advocates for the constant striving for greater unity and empathy. - Theme: Race and Culture. Description: Many observations about race and culture in colonial India are threaded throughout the novel. A Passage to India is in some ways a sort of ethnography, or an examination of the customs of different cultures. On the English side, many cultural forces affect the characters. Ronny is naturally goodhearted and sympathetic, but his "public school mindset" and the influence of his English peers compel him to become hardened and unkind to Indians. The other English expatriates view Adela as naïve for sympathizing with the Indians, and they even admit that they too felt the same at first before realizing the "truth." Overall the pervading culture of the English in India is that one must adopt a racist, patronizing attitude to survive and thrive, and that one's very Englishness makes one superior to the Indians. Forster also examines the English tendency to be rational without emotion, and what is perceived as the English lack of imagination.Forster gives equal time to analyzing Indian culture. On one level he portrays the many religions and cultures of the country, which are part of the reason India remains so internally divided. On the individual level, Aziz is the best-developed Indian character, and he too (like the English) is subject to cultural norms. Forster portrays the Indians as generally more emotional and imaginative than the English, with a tendency to let stray notions harden into solid beliefs without evidence. This "ethnography" then informs the novel's other themes of division, friendship, and colonialism. Overall Forster shows that race and culture are forces that cannot be altogether avoided, no matter a person's individual intentions. Forster gives the greatest importance to interpersonal human interaction and friendship, but he also recognizes the pervasive influence of larger social forces. - Climax: Aziz's trial - Summary: It is the early 1900s in colonial India. Aziz, a young Muslim doctor in the town of Chandrapore, discusses with his friends whether it is possible for an Englishman and an Indian to be friends. Aziz finds the English amusing but often condescending and rude. Meanwhile Adela Quested and the elderly Mrs. Moore arrive from England. Adela plans to marry Ronny Heaslop, Mrs. Moore's son and an official in Chandrapore. The two women arrive at the English-only club and express a desire to see the "real" India. That night Mrs. Moore and Aziz meet in a local mosque and feel an instant connection. Mr. Turton, the English collector, hosts a party at the club and invites some Indians to meet Mrs. Moore and Adela. Cyril Fielding, the principal of the government college, is impressed by Adela's friendliness to the Indians, and he invites her and Mrs. Moore to tea. Adela requests that Aziz be invited as well. Aziz and Fielding meet before the tea party and get along very well. The Hindu Professor Godbole, Adela, and Mrs. Moore join them. The party goes well until Ronny arrives and is rude to the Indians. That evening Adela thinks more about her feelings and decides not to marry Ronny. The two break up amicably. Later their car crashes into a mysterious animal, and during the incident Adela changes her mind. Aziz arranges a day trip to the Marabar Caves for Fielding's tea party group. Fielding and Professor Godbole miss the train, so Aziz goes on alone with Adela and Mrs. Moore. They ride an elephant, have a picnic, and visit some of the caves, which are ancient and seemingly unfriendly. Mrs. Moore is smothered by people and disturbed by the caves' echo, which reduces every noise to "boum." Depressed, she stays behind while Aziz, Adela, and a guide go to visit more caves. As they walk Adela realizes that she doesn't love Ronny. She discusses marriage with Aziz, and asks if he has more than one wife. He is offended and ducks into a nearby cave to recover. When he emerges, Adela is gone. He finds Adela's broken field-glasses and then sees her at the bottom of the hill. Aziz heads back down to the picnic site, where Fielding has arrived. Adela has hurried back to Chandrapore by car. The others take the train back, but when they arrive Aziz is arrested and charged with assaulting Adela in a cave. The English draw together, feeling patriotic and anti-Indian. Fielding believes Aziz to be innocent, and he angers the English by joining Aziz's defense. Mrs. Moore continues to be haunted by the cave's echo, and she grows irritable and apathetic. Adela also hears the echo. Ronny is angered by Mrs. Moore's attitude, and he arranges for her to return to England early. Mrs. Moore dies on the journey. Aziz's trial is tense and chaotic. When Adela is questioned, she declares that she was mistaken—Aziz did not attack her in the cave. Aziz is released, the Indians celebrate wildly, and Fielding escorts Adela to the college. Adela stays there for weeks, and Fielding comes to respect her bravery. Ronny breaks off the engagement, and Adela returns to England. Aziz feels betrayed, and his friendship with Fielding cools. Fielding sails to England, and Aziz suspects that he will marry Adela there. Two years later, Aziz lives in Mau, a Hindu area. He has grown more anti-British and patriotic about a united and independent India. He assumes that Fielding married Adela. Fielding visits Mau with his wife and brother-in-law. Aziz encounters them and is surprised to learn that Fielding actually married Stella Moore, Mrs. Moore's daughter. Meanwhile an important Hindu festival takes place in town. Aziz finds himself drawn to Stella's brother (Fielding's brother-in-law), Ralph Moore, and takes him on the lake to see the festival. Aziz's boat crashes into Fielding's at the height of the ceremonies, and after the incident Aziz and Fielding are reconciled. The two men go for a final ride together. Aziz declares that once the English leave India then he and Fielding can be friends. They want to be friends now, but the sky and earth seem to separate them and say "Not yet."

- Genre: Short Story - Title: A Perfect Day for Bananafish - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: A resort on the coast of Florida in 1948 - Character: Seymour Glass. Description: The protagonist of the story, Seymour Glass is Muriel's husband who has recently returned from fighting in World War II and has been struggling psychologically ever since. The story alludes to several incidents in which Seymour has behaved erratically or violently: crashing Muriel's father's car into a tree, for instance, or bluntly asking Muriel's elderly grandmother about her plans to die. Indeed, Muriel's mother and father are both extremely concerned with Seymour's behavior (going so far as to consult a doctor, Dr. Sivetski) and even more concerned for Muriel's well-being. Muriel, on the other hand, is flippant about Seymour's struggles and goes out of her way to avoid discussing them with her mother when she calls. Muriel and Seymour's marriage doesn't appear to be a happy one. Instead, it's one of profound isolation—they don't speak once throughout the entire story, and they spend much of their vacation apart (usually with Muriel having drinks or lounging in the hotel room while Seymour lays on the beach alone or plays piano). Muriel's inability to empathize with her husband and the pair's inability to communicate or spend time with one another point to the theme of communication and isolation that runs throughout the story. And while Muriel fails to understand her husband, he seems unable to understand her either. Muriel is the very picture of American consumerism: she's shallow and obsessed with fashion, and she'd rather gossip about people than have a deep or productive conversation. Having just returned from the war, Seymour likely can't find value in the materialism that his wife—and American society more broadly—subscribes to. This is perhaps in part why Seymour is so drawn to befriending children like Sybil, as kids are (in theory) not yet corrupted by things like war and blind consumerism. However, Seymour's draw to innocence throughout the story is also violent and destructive. Most notably, his playful rapport with Sybil carries uncomfortably sexual undertones, while his constant pull towards innocence and away from corrupt adult society leads him to take his own life at the end of the story. - Character: Muriel Glass. Description: Seymour's wife, Muriel, is a materialistic young woman who is indifferent toward her husband's clear psychological suffering. While Seymour has a poetic sensibility—he loves poetry, literature, and playing piano, for instance—Muriel is the complete opposite and caters more to the state of her physical appearance than to the state of her marriage. Throughout the story, she and Seymour don't speak once to each other, and she's flippant about his mental state when her mother brings it up on the phone. It seems that Muriel and Seymour suffer from a clash of values: Muriel is deeply entrenched in the materialistic mindset that defines American culture, while Seymour, a WWII veteran, struggles to find meaning or happiness in consumer goods. - Character: Sybil Carpenter. Description: Sybil Carpenter is a young girl whom Seymour befriends at the resort in Florida. The narrative implies that she's older than three-and-a-half-year-old Sharon Lipschutz (a fellow resort-goer) but young enough that she won't go through puberty for at least nine years, suggesting that she's probably around age four or five. Because Sybil is so young, she and Seymour have silly conversations about all things strange (Sybil's penchant for eating candles) and silly (Seymour's story about made-up creatures called bananafish). For Seymour, these topics seem to be a welcome reprieve from the psychological trauma he's struggling with as a WWII vet—and from his wife, Muriel's, vapid materialism. Sybil's innocence and playful spirit draw Seymour to her, but their relationship isn't entirely squeaky clean—Seymour behaves in borderline sexual ways around her, giving her flirtatious compliments and touching her feet and ankles (and even once kissing the arch of her foot). Because Sybil so young, though, she doesn't grasp the sexual undertones of Seymour's behavior or feel creeped out by him—when Seymour suddenly kisses her foot in the ocean, she yells "Hey!" in surprise but expresses that she wants to continue playing with him. While Seymour is drawn to Sybil for her innocence, it seems that Sybil is simply delighted to have someone who will listen to her and play along with her—her mother, Mrs. Carpenter, is uninterested in her and finds her annoying. Near the middle of the story, Sybil repeats, "See more glass" to her mother, presumably trying to tell her about her new friend, Seymour Glass. But rather than understand what her daughter is trying to communicate, Mrs. Carpenter essentially tells Sybil to be quiet and leave her alone—one of many instances of failed communication in the story. - Character: Muriel's Mother. Description: Like Muriel's father, Muriel's mother is deeply worried about Seymour's strange and erratic behavior lately, and how it might endanger Muriel. The first several pages of the story are dedicated to Muriel's phone conversation with her mother, in which her mother attempts to air these concerns and convince Muriel to spend some time apart from Seymour. But though so much air time is devoted to this conversation, the pair fail to communicate very much at all—they cut each other off mid-sentence, change the subject abruptly on each other, and only really engage in mutual back-and-forth conversation when discussing frivolous things like fashion or gossip. Both mother and daughter are extremely materialistic and don't understand Seymour's poetic sensibilities—for instance, they laugh and scoff at the time he sent Muriel a book of German poems while at war and actually expected her to read them. But Muriel's mother does seem to have a little more emotional intelligence and empathy for others than her daughter does, given her clear concern for Muriel's well-being. - Character: Muriel's Father. Description: Muriel's father, like Muriel's mother, is concerned about Seymour's mental state. During their phone call, Muriel's mother implies that Muriel's father has been speaking with a doctor (likely a psychiatrist) about some of Seymour's recent concerning behaviors, such as crashing Muriel's father's car into a tree and asking Muriel's aging grandmother about her plans for dying. Throughout this phone conversation, Muriel's mother expresses some irritation with her husband—when explaining how Muriel's father sought Dr. Sivetski's advice, Muriel's mother says, "He told him everything. At least, he said he did—you know your father." And when Muriel explains that she tried to call twice the previous night, her mother says, "I told your father you'd probably call last night. But, no, he had to—[…]". Both of these comments suggests that the parents' marriage may have some level of animosity to it, or perhaps that Muriel's father isn't exactly dependable. - Character: Dr. Sivetski. Description: Dr. Sivetski is a psychiatrist whom Muriel's father consults about Seymour's increasingly strange and unsettling behaviors after coming home from World War II. The doctor declares that the army shouldn't have released Seymour from the hospital, and that Seymour is bound to lose control of himself soon. Muriel's mother relays this information to Muriel, believing her daughter to be in danger, but Muriel is flippant and unconcerned. - Character: The Psychiatrist. Description: The psychiatrist is a resort guest who asks Muriel if Seymour is sick. The story heavily implies that this is because of Seymour's strange behavior, but Muriel assumes that the psychiatrist is referring to Seymour's pale complexion. When recounting this conversation to her mother on the phone, Muriel can't remember much of what the psychiatrist said about Seymour's condition because she was distracted by the psychiatrist's wife's ugly dress. - Character: The Psychiatrist's Wife. Description: The psychiatrist's wife is also vacationing at the resort in Florida where Muriel and Seymour are staying. When discussing her interactions with the psychiatrist to her mother, Muriel is far more interested in talking about the psychiatrist's horrible wife and her unfashionable dress than discussing what the psychiatrist thought about Seymour's behavior. - Character: Sharon Lipschutz. Description: Sharon Lipschutz is a three-year-old girl who's staying at the resort. Sybil is jealous that Seymour gives Sharon attention, accusing him of letting her sit on the piano bench with him while he was playing piano. Seymour says that he couldn't have just pushed her off, and he assures Sybil that he was just pretending that Sharon was Sybil. The way Seymour frames this conversation makes it seem like he cheated on Sybil with Sharon—even though the girls are essentially toddlers—which is one of many instances in which he makes an innocent interaction or conversation inappropriately sexual. - Character: Mrs. Carpenter. Description: Mrs. Carpenter is Sybil's mother. She is far more interested in talking about fashion with her friend than listening to her daughter talk—though, in her defense, she doesn't seem to understand that the phrase Sybil keeps repeating, "See more glass," refers to fellow resort-goer Seymour Glass. Like Muriel and her mother's relationship, Mrs. Carpenter and Sybil's mother-daughter relationship is also one marked by failed communication. - Theme: Sanity and Social Norms. Description: Throughout "A Perfect Day For Bananafish," young World War II veteran Seymour Glass is implied to be insane. While he and his wife, Muriel, are on vacation at a Florida resort, his behavior is erratic and possibly dangerous: Seymour is paranoid that others are looking at him, he behaves inappropriately with a young girl on the beach, and he ultimately shoots himself in the head in his hotel room. While this seems to affirm Seymour's insanity, Salinger leaves open the possibility that the man's suicide is a rational response to his circumstances; perhaps, after the horrors he saw during wartime, it's simply too jarring for Seymour to exist amid the vapidity and selfishness of upper-class postwar life. By leaving the motivation for Seymour's suicide ambiguous, Salinger raises the possibility that Seymour's insanity is a rational rejection of American cultural norms. Throughout the story, Salinger cultivates the perception that Seymour is insane. This is first apparent in the story's opening phone conversation between Muriel and her mother, who is wild with panic about whether Muriel is okay. She seems to believe that Seymour is so dangerous that Muriel took a catastrophic risk simply by driving to Florida with him. To account for her exaggerated fear, Muriel's mother references ominous incidents: "what [Seymour] tried to do with Granny's chair," for instance, and "that funny business with the trees." The clear implication is that Seymour's past behavior has been erratic and physically destructive. It's not only Muriel's mother who thinks Seymour might be dangerous; there are doctors with similar concerns. Muriel says that a psychiatrist at the resort saw Seymour playing piano and asked her if Seymour had been "sick or something," implying that Seymour's public behavior is alarming enough to require intervention. Likewise, Muriel's mother spoke with a different doctor who called it a "crime" that Seymour was released from an army psychiatric hospital. He told her there was a "great chance […] that Seymour may completely lose control of himself," implying that Seymour is a danger to himself and others. Seymour's own behavior seems to affirm that he might be dangerous. This is clearest when he plays on the beach with Sybil, a stranger's young daughter. While Sybil enjoys their playful and imaginative rapport—discussing her home in "Whirly Wood, Connecticut," and hunting for imaginary bananafish in the waves—the whole interaction has a sinister undertone. Seymour excessively touches Sybil's ankles, and when she criticizes him for playing with a different little girl at the resort, he remarks (cryptically quoting T.S. Eliot) about "mixing memory and desire" and tells Sybil that he "pretended she was you." Affirming the sense that he is being inappropriately sexual, he kisses the arch of Sybil's foot while they're in the water, which seems to alarm both of them, making him take her back to shore. Adding a final sense of danger to this interaction, Seymour's playful and happy mood shifts dramatically as soon as he leaves Sybil. On the elevator ride back to his hotel room, he accuses a woman of staring at his feet in such a frighteningly aggressive way that she flees at the first opportunity. It seems that every adult Seymour meets finds him menacing, which is powerful evidence that he might be insane. Despite this, Salinger indicates that at least some of Seymour's erratic behavior is a rational response to his circumstances. For example, when Muriel's mother suggests that Seymour was crazy to talk "to Granny about her plans for passing away," she's describing behavior that (while perhaps insensitive) is not insane. After all, Seymour recently returned from war, so confronting the reality of death likely seems normal to him. Furthermore, Muriel and her mother seem disturbed that Seymour isn't enjoying vacation, but this, too, seems rational. A luxury resort probably feels profane to Seymour after experiencing the horrors of World War II. In this light, Seymour's "insanity" seems more like evidence of the dissonance between his traumatic experiences and the vapidity of his current social life. In further defense of Seymour, Salinger suggests that the norms Seymour is rejecting truly are contemptible. With the exception of Sybil, everyone around Seymour is materialistic, status-obsessed, and conspicuously lacking in empathy. When Muriel and her mother talk on the phone, for instance, they shift between a fussy and judgmental discussion of Seymour's behavior and a petty conversation about social life at the resort. At no point does either of them express any empathy or understanding of Seymour's point of view, even though he is clearly suffering. Furthermore, Muriel reveals while talking to her mother that she didn't even read the book of poetry Seymour mailed her from war, despite its importance to him. Muriel is clearly too caught up in her own wealth and status to try to understand her husband's feelings and experiences, which suggests that she—and the culture that shaped her—bear significant blame for Seymour's difficulty with re-adjusting to civilian life. In this light, Seymour's inability to assimilate himself to the callous materialism of the world around him seems less like a symptom of insanity than a rational and inevitable response to experiencing a devastating war. Ultimately, when Seymour returns to his hotel room from the beach, he sees his wife sleeping and smells her nail polish and new calf-skin luggage (emblems of the cruel and shallow culture he hates). He then kills himself with a pistol. It's not clear whether this is simply an act of insanity, or whether his suicide is a rational choice to reject the callous materialism around him—it's probably a bit of both. But by leaving ambiguous which of Seymour's behaviors are dangerously insane and which might be moral rejections of social norms, Salinger suggests that Seymour alone is not responsible for his fate: the horrors of both war and civilian life have driven him there. - Theme: Wealth and Materialism. Description: "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" is set at a dazzling resort along the Florida coast where upper-class guests luxuriate and indulge. Everyone is surrounded by decadent things like calfskin leather, designer clothes, silks, and fashion magazines, suggesting that the resort and its patrons are the very embodiment of upper-class refinement. But for Seymour, who has recently returned from fighting in World War II, the resort is a hellish place, brimming with shallow people who are obsessed with accruing, discussing, and showing off their wealth—people much like his own materialistic wife, Muriel. In exploring the resort-goers' materialism and how this pushes Seymour towards suicide, Salinger stresses that greed can destroy people on both a spiritual and physical level. The story that Seymour makes up for Sybil about the bananafish speaks to the idea that consumerism can have a corrupting effect on person, drawing a clear parallel between the resort guests' greed and the bananafish's insatiable appetites. According to Seymour, the bananafish seem at first like normal fish, but then they swim into holes that are full of bananas. The resort is like the holes full of bananas—just as the holes separate the fish from the rest of the ocean, the resort is cloistered from the outside world, and it's full of bananas in the sense that it's brimming with luxury and wealth. When the fish enter the holes, they become totally beholden to their gluttony; they eat so many bananas that they can no longer physically leave the hole, and they eventually die. This implies that once someone tastes luxury, they transform into beings propelled by greed. This makes them unable to leave the world of wealth and exist in normal society, which kills them. The bananafish die of "banana fever." Seymour doesn't clarify what that is, but a fever is often a reference to a psychological state—just as a fever addles the brain, when someone talks about "fevered" behavior, they usually mean fanatic and delusional. So Seymour seems to be saying that banana fever is akin to the psychological fever of materialism, which is what kills wealthy people. It's not that they overeat and their stomachs explode, or that they exhaust their supply of bananas and starve—the bananas make them psychologically addled, and that is what kills them. Just as Seymour's bananafish story predicts, other characters in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" seem spiritually corrupted by their materialism. Muriel, for instance, seemingly only cares about wealth. While Seymour has a poetic sensibility (he references T.S. Eliot and once mailed Muriel a book of German poems that he loves), Muriel is completely indifferent to anything that isn't superficial. This is reflected in Seymour's nickname for her, "Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948," which implies that even though Muriel has plenty of money, she is—spiritually speaking—a vagrant or a beggar. Indeed, while Muriel has plenty of indications that her husband is in grave distress, she's so blinded by materialism that she doesn't recognize what's going on. For instance, the psychiatrist at the resort seems to be trying to alert her to the danger Seymour is in, but when Muriel describes the interaction to her mother, she can't remember anything the psychiatrist said—all she remembers is that his wife was wearing an ugly, unfashionable dress. With this, Salinger explicitly associates wealthy people's concern with materialism with their inability to empathize, show kindness (rather than judgement), or have any spiritual sensibility. Beyond being spiritually and emotionally destructive, materialism can literally kill. In Seymour's story about the bananafish, the fish gluttonously consume so many bananas that they swell up and trap themselves in underwater holes, where they eventually die. The indication here is that greed kills—and the title of the story, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," makes clear that Salinger is implicating the whole resort, meaning that it's a perfect day for all the greedy people luxuriating. Greed also kills Seymour literally. His sensibility is opposed to the materialism that surrounds him (he loves poetry, he's playful and imaginative, he doesn't care about luxury or wealth), and he feels that he cannot keep living in a world so shallow—it's spiritual death or literal death, and he chooses literal death by shooting himself in the head. Of course, the story doesn't explicitly reveal that Seymour's suicide is a reaction against the consumerism surrounding him, but there are a few key moments that make this connection clear. Most notably, right before he kills himself, Seymour is acutely aware of the scent of new calf-skin luggage that Muriel just bought—a symbol of her wealth and also an encapsulation of how consumerism is tied to violence, as the luggage is made from the flesh of a baby animal that was killed so that Muriel could have a status symbol. Furthermore, Seymour looks at his sleeping wife both right before he retrieves his gun and right before he shoots himself. Throughout the story, Muriel is emblematic of their greedy, consumeristic culture: shallow, materialistic, and self-absorbed. She's unable to empathize with others and would rather gossip than hold a meaningful conversation. So when Seymour looks at his wife—especially with the smell of calfskin luggage and nail polish in the air—it's likely that he sees her as this symbol of materialism, which is what leads him to pull the trigger and end his own life. Materialism, the story shows, is deeply rooted in American culture—and it's deeply destructive to the human psyche. For a brief moment in the final lines of the story, it's unclear if Seymour is going to kill himself or kill his wife. He frequently glances at his sleeping wife as he retrieves and loads his gun, leading readers to wonder if she will be on the receiving end of his bullet. And while the story never makes it clear whether Seymour indeed contemplates killing his wife, his ultimate decision to kill himself rather than kill her seems to suggest that the materialism she represents is too far-reaching and too embedded in American culture for it to make any difference whether she lives or dies. So, instead, Seymour decides that the only way to escape from this lifestyle is to permanently remove himself altogether. Consumerism, the story bleakly implies, isn't going anywhere. - Theme: Communication and Isolation. Description: In "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," everyone seems isolated from one another—especially Seymour, who appears to deliberately isolate himself by playing the piano at night and going to the beach alone. For other characters, conversations and even intimate interactions are marked by a sense of alienation and disconnect, sometimes because people refuse to empathize with one another and other times because they simply can't understand someone else's experiences (particularly Seymour's traumatic experience of war). While Salinger certainly makes the case that it's difficult to communicate with people who have such different experiences, he also makes the broader point that American culture doesn't value empathy and understanding, which leaves people lethally isolated. In every instance of characters trying to connect, they miss each other somehow. For instance, Muriel and her mother can't even get in touch with each other for two days, and then when they do, they talk at each other during their whole phone call instead of mutually participating in a conversation. Muriel doesn't take her mom's concerns seriously (even though she should), and likewise Muriel's mom doesn't seem to hear Muriel's assurances that she's okay—essentially, they communicate nothing to each other. Even more strikingly, Muriel and Seymour never once speak throughout the whole story, showing how isolating and uncommunicative their marriage is. While on the phone with her mother, Muriel recalls how Seymour sent her a book of poetry while he was away at war, but she didn't read it—nor does she even know where she put it. With this, Muriel gestures to the idea that their entire marriage is one of failed communication and profound disconnect. Seymour particularly struggles with effective communication and feelings of isolation. Throughout the story, Seymour is always roaming around the resort alone, set apart from others playing piano or lying on the beach by himself, and he's rarely seen talking to anyone. Seymour's interaction with a little girl named Sybil is the only time in the story when he has a productive conversation, but they're talking at a child's level. Sybil understands Seymour's imaginative poetic side, which is an immense pleasure to him, but she can't relate to the other parts of him, leaving him still profoundly isolated. In contrast, Seymour's interactions with adults are marked with odd misunderstanding and even paranoia. For instance, he's paranoid that people are looking at his nonexistent tattoo, which might be a sort of twisted way of expressing that he thinks everyone can see that he has been changed by his experiences in the army. Additionally, his interaction in the elevator (where he thinks that a woman is staring at his feet) comes just after his inappropriate fixation on Sybil's feet and ankles, so it seems that he assumes the woman aware of this. In both of those cases, Seymour wrongly assumes that he's less isolated than he is—that people can know something important about him when they really can't. In actuality, nobody understands what is tormenting Seymour, which is painful for him—and his paranoia just alienates him further. There's so much misunderstanding, miscommunication, and isolation throughout the story that it's hard not to read Seymour's ultimate suicide as a final attempt to communicate something to Muriel—but it's actually not clear what that something is. Seymour doesn't leave a note, and Salinger is fairly ambiguous about Seymour's motivations besides making it clear that the man is socially isolated and in mental agony. Salinger published "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" just two years after World War II came to a close, so it's easy to see how his consortium of characters might be reflective of post-WWII American society. Through his unempathetic, uncommunicative characters, Salinger suggests that people outside the story's pages are similarly disconnected from one another—which, as Seymour's fate shows, can come at a great cost. Indeed, Seymour's suffering speaks to the disconnect that soldiers often feel when coming back from war, since few civilians understand—or even try to understand—the harrowing scenes veterans have witnessed and the trauma they've endured. That Seymour's death is left vague and unexplained reads like a call to action for readers to connect deeply, communicate openly, and genuinely try to understand one another's experiences. - Theme: Innocence and Violence. Description: In "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," innocence and violence often go hand and hand. Having just returned from the trauma and violence of World War II, Seymour seems to want to access his prewar innocence through playing with children, reveling in their playfulness, imagination, and naivety. However, no matter how much Seymour plays with children, he cannot return to his prewar state. For one, the story's children are not entirely innocent (they themselves can be violent and manipulative), and—more importantly—Seymour's desire to connect with them is somewhat predatory, so his quest for innocence itself corrupts the children. By refusing to depict an innocence unmarred by violence, Salinger suggests that violence is an integral part of human nature, even for the very young. Seymour is horrified by the callousness and materialism among adults at the beach resort where the story takes place, so his only happiness comes from his childlike rapport with a young girl named Sybil. Implied to be around four or five years old, Sybil is curious and whimsical, and she brings out an equally playful and talkative side to Seymour. For instance, when Sybil declares that she loves eating candles, without missing a beat, Seymour responds, "Who doesn't?" And when Sybil adds olives to the list of things she loves, he responds, "Olives and wax. I never go anyplace without them," matching her enthusiasm. While Sybil's mother, Mrs. Carpenter, seems annoyed by Sybil and is constantly shushing her or shooing her away, Seymour appears to get genuine joy out of their interactions, which is why he actually engages with and responds to everything she says—even when it's as silly and bizarre as eating candle wax. Seymour's story about the made-up bananafish also shows him mirroring Sybil's own childlike imagination and curiosity. His story sounds like it was made up by a child: bananafish are like regular fish, he explains, only they swim into holes that are full of bananas, and they gorge themselves on those bananas until they're so fat that they can't swim back out of the hole. At this point, the bananafish die of "banana fever." Seymour's story is both simplistic (in that it's easy to follow) and entirely outlandish. That he makes it up on the spot to entertain and delight Sybil reveals how much joy he gets from his childlike connection with her. Seymour seems to have an easy time befriending children in general—besides Sybil, he's also friends with a three-year-old named Sharon, who is staying at the resort with her family. This furthers the depiction of him as a man who is drawn towards innocence. In contrast, the adults around Seymour are either wary of him or deeply dislike him (a feeling that appears to be mutual), such the woman in the elevator who flees when Seymour inexplicably accuses her of stealing glances at his feet. This dynamic is reflected through the symbol of Seymour's bathrobe. Throughout the story, Seymour's bathrobe is a sort of security blanket for him and symbolizes his refusal to open up to others, so it's significant that he sheds it entirely when Sybil comes by to go swimming. That Seymour is more comfortable with children, and Sybil in particular, is more evidence that he is drawn towards childlike naivete, playfulness, and simplicity. But throughout, Salinger links innocence and violence in ways that suggest that innocence really isn't innocent at all. For instance, even though Sybil is a child and is the pinnacle of innocence in Seymour's eyes, he implies that he saw her abusing someone else's dog. She also goes out of her way to stomp on the remnants of a sandcastle (apparently to have the satisfaction of destroying it fully), and she kicks sand in Seymour's face—two relatively mild incidents that nevertheless point to underlying violent impulses. So although Sybil is certainly childlike, her behavior shows that even children aren't perfectly innocent. Instead, they are morally nuanced people with inherent impulses towards destruction. Seymour's own desire to connect with innocence through Sybil is violent, too. For one, he physically endangers her when they're playing together in the water; she implies that she's not a strong swimmer and she's on a half-deflated float, but Seymour refuses to allow her to go back to shore. More ominously, Seymour is also somewhat sexually inappropriate with Sybil through flirtatious-seeming compliments and excessively touching her feet. He even kisses the arch of her foot—something that startles Sybil enough that she promptly leaves. This affirms that, while their bond initially seemed innocent, it's laced with violence and vulgarity. Seymour's character more generally speaks to the idea that innocence isn't really innocence. Although he can be playful and childlike and he's far more comfortable around children than adults, it's implied that he witnessed a great deal of violence as a solider in WWII. Ultimately, at the end of the story, he violently commits suicide by shooting himself through the temple next to his sleeping wife. Seymour's violent suicide reads like a reaction to his failed attempt to access innocence through Sybil. It seems that his behavior with her startled him so much that he realized that innocence is inaccessible to him, and that the only way out is violence. In other words, it seems that Seymour is drawn to innocence, but his very attraction threatens to destroy that innocence—a grim reflection of Salinger's overarching point that humankind is inherently violent. Completely pure, genuine innocence simply can't exist in such a world. - Climax: Seymour shoots himself in the temple. - Summary: The long-distance phone lines at the hotel are busy, so Muriel Glass has to wait two and a half hours for her call to go through—time that she spends reading a magazine article about sex; grooming herself; cleaning her clothes; and painting her nails. When the operator finally rings her room, Muriel is unhurried in getting to the phone and leisurely puts the finishing touches on her manicure. Careful to keep her freshly painted nails away from the fabric of her silk dressing goal, Muriel picks up the receiver, and the operator connects Muriel's call to New York. On the other line is Muriel's mother, who is beside herself with worry and berates Muriel for not calling sooner. Muriel begins to explain that she's called a few times, but her mother cuts her off, frantically asking Muriel if she's alright. She demands to know who drove; Muriel admits that her husband, Seymour, did—but she assures her mother that he drove appropriately and didn't run into any trees. After alluding to an incident in which Seymour crashed Muriel's father's car, Muriel asks her mother if she's seen a book of German poems that Seymour sent her while he was away at war. Muriel and her mother laugh about how Seymour expected Muriel to read poems in a different language. Muriel's mother gravely explains that Muriel's father consulted Dr. Sivetski about Seymour's recent behavior—like when he brazenly asked Muriel's grandmother about her plans for dying. According to Dr. Sivetski, the army made a big mistake in releasing Seymour from the hospital, and Seymour is bound to lose control of himself soon. Muriel's mother again frets about Muriel's well-being and begs her to come home. Muriel balks; she hasn't had a vacation in years, so she's not going to leave now. Muriel shares that she met a psychiatrist at the hotel while Seymour was off playing piano elsewhere; the psychiatrist had asked if Seymour was sick, and Muriel assumed he was referring to Seymour's pale complexion. Muriel begins talking about the man's horrible, unfashionable wife, but her mother wants to know more about what the psychiatrist said about Seymour. Muriel doesn't remember much of what the psychiatrist said and explains that it was so noisy in the bar they were in, she couldn't really hear him well to begin with. Muriel's mother again implores Muriel to spend some time away from Seymour, perhaps on a cruise. Exasperated, Muriel says that Seymour has been behaving himself—though he refuses to take his bathrobe off because he doesn't want people looking at his tattoo, even though he doesn't actually have one. Meanwhile, Mrs. Carpenter is slathering her young daughter, Sybil, in sun-tan oil. Sybil keeps repeating the phrase "See more glass," while Mrs. Carpenter's friend chatters on about a silk scarf. Annoyed with her daughter, Mrs. Carpenter tells Sybil to run off and play, so Sybil bounds down the beach until she reaches a young man lying in the sand in a bathrobe. The man is startled but, realizing that his unexpected visitor is just Sybil, he quickly relaxes. The pair fall into an easy conversation about Seymour's wife and Sybil's bathing suit (which is yellow, but which Seymour mistakes for blue). As they talk, Seymour frequently touches Sybil's feet and ankles. Sybil accuses Seymour of letting Sharon Lipschutz, a different young girl visiting the resort, sit on the piano bench with him—Seymour admits that this happened but that he felt like he couldn't just push Sharon off, so he pretended she was Sybil. Sybil demands that they get in the water. Shedding his robe, Seymour agrees, saying that they can catch bananafish. He asks Sybil where she lives, but when she claims to not know, he says that Sharon Lipschutz knows where she lives—and she's only three and a half years old. Sybil answers that she lives in Whirly Wood, Connecticut but then demands to know if Seymour likes Sharon. Seymour says he does, especially because she doesn't abuse dogs in the hotel lobby—like the one that belongs to the hotel resident from Canada. He explains that, shocking as it may sound, there are some little girls who meanly poke the dog with balloon sticks. Sybil goes quiet. Once in the water, Seymour declares that it is a "perfect day for bananafish." He explains that bananafish are like regular fish, but they swim into holes full of bananas. They then gorge themselves on said bananas until they're so fat that they can't swim back out of the holes and then they die of "banana fever." When a wave comes, Sybil screams in delight and claims that she saw six bananafish underwater. Seymour picks up one of Sybil's ankles and kisses the arch of her foot. Sybil yells in surprise, and Seymour says that it's time to go back to shore, even though Sybil doesn't want to. After they part, Seymour dons his robe and makes his way back to the resort. In the elevator, he aggressively accuses a woman of secretly staring at his feet, and the woman nervously asks the elevator operator to let her out. When Seymour arrives to his hotel room, he's greeted by the strong smells of his wife's nail polish remover and calfskin luggage. He looks at Muriel sleeping on one of the beds and then digs through his own luggage, pulling out a gun, which he promptly loads. He settles himself on the twin bed next to Muriel's, looks over at her again, and then shoots himself in the temple.

- Genre: Kunstlerroman, a narrative of an artist's youth and maturation. - Title: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Point of view: Third-person limited omniscient. - Setting: Dublin, Ireland, in the late 19th century. - Character: Stephen Dedalus. Description: An intelligent, sensitive, anxious, and ill-tempered boy growing up in an increasingly impoverished Catholic household in Dublin. In his long student years, Stephen passes through many discrete stages. He matures from a shy, frail child with a magically keen eye (and ear and nose) for sensory detail to a studious, moody teenager filled with vague longing for love, fame, and worldly beauty. When he comes physically of age, he is anguished to discover that he cannot reconcile his austere Catholic upbringing with his intense erotic desire. His shame becomes so great that he turns wholeheartedly to religion in search of spiritual peace. But despite his many years of religious observance, he comes to find the religious life and worldview profoundly unsatisfying: shallow, illogical, and boring. Stephen seems to find peace, or something like it, only when he discovers his vocation and ambition as a writer. - Character: E____ C____ (Emma Clery). Description: A young woman about whom very little is revealed. Stephen becomes infatuated with her after a party sometime during his summer at Blackrock; he writes her a poem that night, and another poem ten years later. Throughout the book she is his beloved object, his feminine ideal. Stephen's feelings for Emma are tender and romantic, so the memory of her serves as a constant reproach to his lust. - Theme: Soul and Body. Description: The gap between soul and body means a great deal to Stephen during childhood and adolescence. As a child, Stephen notes countless particular sights, sounds, and smells, and interprets them with great tenderness and seriousness: they seem to lead him deep into his memories and his understanding of the world. In this way, body and soul are naturally connected for Stephen as a child. But Stephen also shies away from many social activities, preferring to keep to himself and attend to his thoughts and daydreams: he distinguishes between extroverted activity, in which his body interacts with others, and introverted activity, in which his soul communes with itself. Stephen's religious education reinforces the soul-body split. He has been taught since early childhood that premarital sex is a grave and shameful sin, so he perceives his adolescent sexual longing as a sort of insubordination of body against soul – an appalling perversion he must keep hidden at any cost. His secret lust, vague ambition, and keen poetic vision create a strange and weighty inner world that does not often correspond to the shrill, dirty, practical world of city, school, and family. Though he often feels burdened by this ghostly inner life, he seeks to protect it from dogmatic external influences: when he tries to control his body and elevate his soul through meticulous religious practice, the formulaic religious teaching ultimately fails to leave any permanent mark on his inner life. The culmination of his religious crisis seems to mark the reunion of soul and body: the senses, "the call of life to his soul," turn Stephen away from the priesthood, fuel his artistic ambitions, and restore his inner world – the senses of the body, the same senses that fuel his lust. But when Stephen arrives to university, he carries the split into his rather antiquated aesthetic theories. He brags that he will "try to fly by [the] nets" of nationality, language, religion; but before he can become truly free, before he can repair the antagonism between soul and body, Stephen must create an aesthetics of his own. This new aesthetics, embodied by Portrait itself, will be one that does not privilege unity over dispersion, thought over feeling, or purity over reality. - Theme: Innocence and Experience. Description: Ideas of innocence and experience, of change and maturation, are central to every Künstlerroman (a novel that narrates an artist's growth and development), of which Portrait is one. In Joyce's novel, the theme of innocence and experience structures the remaining four themes, because in each case the novel traces the child-to-adult arc of Stephen's shifting perspective. That is to say, when we talk about Portrait we are always talking about the evolution from innocence to experience. Stephen's own idea of innocence is deeply influenced by Christian notions of purity and sin. Throughout the book, he identifies innocence as a sexless, lustless existence – the life of a child or a celibate; experience, on the other hand, is a fallen condition, filled with doubt and shame. For example, he imagines that Emma was innocent as a young girl, but after her sexual awakening she is "humbled and saddened by the dark shame of womanhood." Innocence, for Stephen, also denotes a kind of simple, hearty, direct relationship to the surrounding world. Stephen's adolescence is marked by growing isolation, a spiritual alienation from friends and family. When he recalls the sensory vividness and immediacy of his childhood, and when he listens to stories of easy companionship from his father's youth, he feels that his innocence has disappeared – that the child Stephen has died. The two notions of innocence are closely connected, because to a large extent it is Stephen's sexual shame that drives him away from others: to hide his shame, he retreats into a secretive inner world. Shame of the body also complicates and disturbs Stephen's relationship to sensory experience. By the end of the novel, though, Stephen's religious anxieties start to diminish, and his sensory life seems to grow brighter once again. Innocence usually gives way to experience; in Stephen's case, experience also gives way to innocence: "his soul had arisen from the grave of boyhood." - Theme: Literature and Life. Description: Since earliest childhood, novels and poems help Stephen make sense of the world around him. From the very first scene of the novel, in which infant Stephen creates a little rhyme from Dante's threat that "eagles will come and pull out his eyes," words shape and brighten Stephen's experience. The sounds of words puzzle and enlighten him, and novels like The Count of Monte Christo help him shape his adolescent identity. At times, beautiful phrases from poems thrill him as much as real romantic experiences. Yet, though Stephen's inner experience melds art and life, Stephen the young poet and aesthete believes there must exist a great distance between them: he imagines art as the vapory spirit soaring high over the city of the real. Drawing on the philosophy of Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas, Stephen decides that art must inspire only philosophical abstractions about emotions, "ideal pity or terror," but not real emotions themselves – he thinks passions like love and anger are too lowly for art. In his own poetry, he omits random or unsavory detail in favor of high romantic abstraction. "Excrement or a child or a louse" finds no place in his art. Joyce's novel itself, of course, includes everything Stephen omits: passion, crudeness, dirt, randomness, contradiction. The novel itself gently mocks and refutes Stephen's youthful theories – theories that once belonged, perhaps, to the young Joyce himself. - Theme: Order and the Senses. Description: During his childhood, Stephen lives by his senses: he understands the people and things around him only by the way they look, sound, smell, or feel. The novel suggests that to child Stephen, his mother is her good smell, and nighttime is the chill of the sheets. His attention always veers toward detail: when he learns that Simon Moonan did something forbidden and homosexual with some other boys, he can only understand the news by thinking of Simon's nice clothes and fancy candy. He has trouble with abstractions and categories; he does not clearly understand the meaning of the York-Lancaster competition in his math class, but he thinks intently of the colors of the handkerchiefs and award cards. When he tries to think of the idea of god or the organization of the planet during study hall, "it made him feel tired," and he focuses instead on the colors of the map. In his adolescence, Stephen remains preoccupied with sensory detail, but his relationship to it becomes much more troubled. As he develops abstract thinking, he begins to ask himself large questions like: Are priests always good? What is sin? What is greatness? What is Ireland? The questions force him to try to order and interpret his experience, which reveals puzzling contradiction and unintelligible variety. At this point in his maturation, his talent for observation surpasses his interpretative abilities. In other words, he sees and hears and smells a great deal but he can't quite make sense of it. For relief, he first turns to old novels and poetry, which present a somewhat simplified and romantic picture of love and honor; then he turns to religion, with its rigid and reliable rules; and finally to academia and aesthetics, which also provide frameworks for understanding. None of these is quite faithful to Stephen's actual experience, which always exceeds the frameworks with intense, mysterious sensory and emotional detail. By the end of the novel, Stephen is ready to leave behind the mistakes of his adolescence and to create a new framework, "to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience." - Theme: Religion, Nationality, and Freedom. Description: Stephen grows up in an atmosphere of political and religious controversy. The late 19th century was a turbulent time in Ireland. The beloved separatist leader Parnell, exposed as an adulterer and condemned by the Catholic Church in 1891, divided the nation just as he divided the Dedalus Christmas dinner in the novel. Throughout his childhood and adolescence Stephen feels the pull of worldly causes, hears a chorus of voices instructing him to join this group or that. But as he becomes more and more absorbed into his elaborate inner life, he determines to ignore the voices and pursue his own thoughts. Though religious piety briefly gives him respite from shame and confusion, he finds it impossible to confine himself to the narrow religious perspective. When he turns away from religion, he feels a soaring sense of freedom. Similarly, he turns away from conventional Irish nationalism and other popular political causes, intuiting that they will constrict his intellectual and emotional life. Yet, though the 'fenianism' of his compatriots does not appeal to him, he aspires to express with his writing another, subtler sort of Irishness, "to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." - Climax: Stephen looks ecstatically at a bird-like girl wading in the river, and feels clearly that he is destined to become a writer. - Summary: The novel's first scene shows an infant Stephen listening to his father's nonsense fairy tale. Stephen's thoughts and memories careen wildly – from a woman that sells candy on the street, to his mother's warm smell, to his governess Dante's brushes, to his neighbor Eileen. In the next scene, an older Stephen is in his first year of school at Clongowes; he is playing outside with the other boys and longing for the warmth and peace of study hall. He wakes up with a cold the next day and spends some time in the infirmary, where he hears that the Irish nationalist Parnell has died. A few months later, Stephen comes home for the winter holidays. He listens to his family having a bitter argument about Parnell and the Catholic Church. When he returns to school, he finds out to his bewilderment that two of his classmates were caught doing something sexual with upperclassmen. A boy had broken his glasses, and a teacher beats him unjustly during one of his classes for sitting out. Stephen complains to the rector, who takes Stephen's side, and Stephen is cheered by his schoolmates. We rejoin Stephen some years later. He spends a summer in Blackrock, exploring the neighborhood with his friend Aubrey, reading The Count of Monte Christo, and restlessly wandering the streets. Soon, due to financial troubles, Stephen's family moves to Dublin, where Stephen becomes infatuated with a girl named Emma Clery. They take the tram home together after a birthday party, and Stephen writes her a love poem. The book leaps over a few years once again; now, Stephen is a high-achieving student at Belvedere, where he is known for his seriousness and studiousness. He has been getting into a bit of trouble with teachers and friends for his faintly heretical essays. He quibbles with his friends and plays the role of a pedantic teacher in a school play. Some time later, Stephen takes a melancholy trip to his father's hometown of Cork, during which he worries about his sexual longings, his cold indifference to others, and the end of his innocence. At the end of the year he is awarded a large sum of money for excellent academic performance, which brings him brief contentment. After he spends the money on friends and family, he becomes restless and unhappy once again. He becomes more and more sexually frustrated; despite great fear and shame, he begins to have sex with prostitutes. Stephen's class participates in a three-day religious retreat, composed mainly of fire-and-brimstone lectures about sin, hell, and suffering. The vivid lectures render Stephen's guilt unbearable, and he decides to confess his sins and live purely and piously from now on. Soon, though, Stephen's resolve begins to weaken, and he is beset by doubts. Just then, the director of Belvedere tells Stephen in a private meeting that he might be well-suited for the priesthood. The director's flattering suggestion forces Stephen to make a decision: Stephen realizes suddenly that he finds a priest's life repulsive and boring, and turns joyfully away from the religious life. Instead, he applies for admission to the University of Dublin. One day, as he walks on the shore, he realizes that his true calling is that of a writer; he looks at a lovely girl standing in the water and feels overcome with joy. In the next scene, Stephen is a confident, well-respected student at the university. He skips many of his classes and spends most of his time walking around with his friends and holding forth about aesthetics. Only his friend Cranly can out-talk him, and only Cranly seems immune to the musty charm of Stephen's strident theories. Stephen writes another poem for Emma, who still consumes his thoughts. In the book's final pages, which take the form of diary entries, Stephen writes joyfully about leaving Ireland to find his destiny as a writer.

- Genre: Short story - Title: A Real Durwan - Point of view: Third person - Setting: Bengal, India - Character: Boori Ma. Description: Boori Ma, the story's protagonist, is a 64-year-old Bengali woman who has been a refugee since Partition in 1947. As a durwan, or "doorkeeper," it is her job to clean the apartment building where she lives and watch the front door in exchange for a place to sleep and eat. She is an outsider in comparison to the people who live in the building, since she is a solitary woman, in a lower class, and from a different region (Bengal). Each day, as she cleans, Boori Ma recounts the ease of her former life prior to Partition and the difficulty she has encountered since then. She claims that she once had a husband and four daughters, a comfortable two-story house, and a yard spilling over with guavas, dates, and hibiscus flowers. The details of her tales change often, entertaining the residents but leaving the truth hazy. Although Boori Ma is a laborer in the building, working for a roof over her head, the residents seem to genuinely respect her, especially Mrs. Dalal. When Mr. Dalal receives a promotion at work and installs a communal wash basin in the building, the other residents decide to make further updates to the building; however, the flurry of construction displaces Boori Ma from her daily routine. She goes for walks in the marketplace, where the skeleton keys to the building and her meager life savings are stolen. She returns to the apartment building to find the wash basin missing and the residents angry with her. Although Boori Ma is adamant that she's telling the truth and had no role in the theft—her pleas of "Believe me, believe me" feel genuine and urgent compared to the flippant way she would end her tall tales with "Believe me, don't believe me"—but the residents won't listen. They decide that she has lied about her involvement with the crime (implying that she gave her keys to the thief) and throw her and her belongings out onto the street. She leaves, penniless, carrying only her broom. - Character: Mr. Dalal. Description: The husband of Mrs. Dalal and a lower-level toilet part salesman. He lives the same apartment building where Boori Ma lives and works. When he is suddenly promoted to a management position at his company, his newfound moderate wealth prompts him to buy a communal wash basin for the building and a private one for his home. This influences other residents to make changes themselves, from painting the building to hiring an exterminator. After this promotion, he and Mrs. Dalal go on vacation and are not around to fend for Boori Ma when the other residents accuse her of stealing the basin and dismiss her from the building. - Character: Mrs. Dalal. Description: The wife of Mr. Dalal. She lives in the same apartment building where Boori Ma lives and works and is the main protector Boori Ma. She insists on providing Boori Ma with additional materials, including new quilts, as hers are tattered and worn. However, she never follows through on this promise. When Mrs. Dalal's husband receives a promotion, the two of them leave for a vacation and are not present when the other residents accuse Boori Ma of stealing the basin and dismiss her from the building. - Character: Mr. Chatterjee. Description: Mr. Chatterjee is known as the resident intellectual of the apartment building where Boori Ma, Mr. Dalal, Mrs. Dalal, and Mrs. Misra live, even though the narrator shares that he has not opened a newspaper since 1947. When the communal wash basin in the building is stolen and the other residents want to condemn Boori Ma for the crime, it is Mr. Chatterjee who is given the final word and decides to dismiss her from the building. His opinion is the most respected in the building. - Theme: Truth and Memory. Description: Jhumpa Lahiri's "A Real Durwan" captures a snapshot of life in a small Bengali apartment building. Boori Ma, a 64-year-old woman with no other options, works and lives in the building as a housekeeper and unofficial durwan, or "doorkeeper." She never officially applied for the position, but rather assumed the role years prior. Throughout the story, Boori Ma's past gradually emerges as she recounts her past life to the building's residents, detailing the wealth she left behind as a refugee following the partition of India in 1947. Despite Boori Ma's insistence that she once lived a life of luxury—the details of which seem to change daily—the truth remains vague. Having no faith in Boori Ma's embellished memories, the residents challenge her, correct her, and try to catch her in a lie, though they are nonetheless fond of her. However, this takes a turn at the end of the story when the building's skeleton keys disappear from Boori Ma's sari, and the building's new community wash basin—a point of pride for the residents—is stolen. At this point, the residents move from mistrusting Boori Ma's memory to mistrusting her truth, believing her responsible for the theft. With this, Lahiri asks the reader to question where memory and truth intersect, and how people can convolute both for their own purposes. As the story unfolds, Lahiri argues that memories, whether they're factual or not, can contain a kind of emotional truth, and that on the flip side, truth can be just as flimsy and subjective as memory. While the building's residents take Boori Ma's memories as nothing more than entertaining fictions, to Boori Ma these memories are underpinned with real emotional truth, regardless of the veracity of the details. Every day as she goes about her chores, Boori Ma recites "the details of her plight and losses suffered since her deportation to Calcutta after Partition." Boori Ma laments being "separated from a husband, four daughters, a two-story brick house, a rosewood almari, and a number of coffer boxes." While the more granular details of Boori Ma's past life seem to change from day to day—the narrator notes that "every day, the perimeters of her former estate seemed to double, as did the contents of her almari and coffer boxes"—the details aren't what Boori Ma is concerned with. When the local children press her to confirm the details of her stories, Boori Ma responds in exasperation, "Why demand specifics?" She also frequently ends her tales with the phrase, "Believe me, don't believe me, such comforts you cannot even dream them." With this, Boori Ma suggests that she doesn't care if anyone believes her stories; instead, what she wants her listeners to glean from her so-called memories is that she lived a better life before Partition. With this in mind, it seems that Boori Ma's ever-changing list of what she's lost since Partition does not necessarily mean that she is intentionally lying or changing her story. Rather, it demonstrates the underlying emotional truth of her experiences: she has shouldered deep and painful losses in her life, and with each day passing it seems like she's lost twice as much as the day before. However, the story nonetheless suggests that memory is a flimsy thing and can't always be trusted. As they argue about dismissing Boori Ma from her unofficial post as doorkeeper, Mr. Chatterjee chimes in, "Boori Ma's mouth is full of ashes. But that is nothing new." Even the narrator admits early on that "she garbled facts. She contradicted herself." Yet, "her rants were so persuasive, her fretting so vivid, that it was not easy to dismiss her." Plus, her "throaty impostures hurt no one. All agreed that she was a superb entertainer." With this, the narrator emphasizes that Boori Ma's eccentric cataloging of her past never hindered her work, nor did it make her unacceptable as a fellow resident. However, in aiming to provide "truth" for her dismissal—wanting to take some sort of action after the theft—the residents collectively remember her as something different, something sinister and morally bankrupt. "For years we put up with your lies," the residents exclaim, reshaping their own memories to provide justification for firing her. Ultimately, the residents' decision to kick Boori Ma out of the building and dismiss her from her post illustrates how truth, like memory, can be subjective and twisted for convenience. In the end, the reality of the situation—whether Boori Ma played no role in the theft or whether she gave her keys to a thief to steal the basin—is as unclear as the veracity of Boori Ma's memories. Boori Ma remains adamant that someone stole her keys: in the market, she feels a tug on the end of her sari and suddenly her keys and lifesavings are gone. Her final words are, "Believe me. Believe me." This is quite the departure from the beginning of the narrative, when Boori Ma shakes off the residents' doubt about the veracity of her memories, flippantly saying, "Believe me, don't believe me." Boori Ma's abrupt change in language suggests that this time she is telling the truth—the real truth. However, reeling from the loss of their beloved basin, the residents use the theft as a reason to send Boori Ma away and find a real durwan for the building. Significantly, the theft happens in the midst of the residents' growing obsession with making their building appear better and fancier, so it seems that they already were wanting an official doorkeeper—and that it is merely convenient for them to twist Boori Ma into a criminal in order to fire her. The narrator also points out that "none of [the residents] spoke directly to Boori Ma" as they argued about her fate. They never seek the truth and instead come up with their own version of the truth—that Boori Ma "informed the robbers" of the basin and gave them her keys—for their own convenience. Truth, then, proves to be just as unreliable as memory, and the harsh condemnation of Boori Ma suggests that people will use their version of the truth to benefit themselves, even at the expense of others. In the end, it seems that neither truth nor memory can be fully trusted. - Theme: Materialism, Status, and Contentment. Description: Overwhelmed by the deep and all-consuming losses that she's experienced throughout her life, Boori Ma lives squarely in the past, before the Partition of India and Pakistan left her destitute as a refugee. In contrast, the building's residents, armed with a little more money and marginally better social standing than the poor doorkeeper, live in the present and the future. Instead of lamenting over their pasts, the residents focus on how they can better their present and work toward an even better future. While this may seem admirable at first, the story makes it clear that the residents are trying to advance themselves for the wrong reasons: to seem better or more impressive in the eyes of others. With this, Lahiri provides a sharp social criticism, suggesting that placing too much emphasis material possessions can create a perpetual sense of dissatisfaction for people. Additionally, it can blind people to the inherent worth of their fellow human beings, ultimately causing them to become judgmental and cruel in the pursuit of status. Prior to the news of Mr. Dalal's promotion at his job, the buildings' residents are not overly preoccupied with matters of materialism. The building itself is "a very old building, the kind with bathwater that still had to be stored in drums, windows without glass, and privy scaffolds made of bricks." In fact, the residents appear more concerned about personal worth and respect of each other—materialism has not yet blinded them. The narrator informs the reader that "no one in the building has anything worth stealing," and that Mrs. Misra's personal telephone is really the only exception. The narrator conveys how "the residents liked that Boori Ma […] stood guard between them and the outside world. Only one paragraph later, the narrator returns to this, emphasizing that "the residents were thankful that Boori Ma patrolled activities in the alley." Boori Ma, in return, served her position well, "she honored that responsibility" and gave it all of her effort. In a moment of socialization, the residents assure Boori Ma that she is "always welcome" in their homes. As it rains, she drifts "in and out of various households," as if part of the extended family. Clearly, at this point in the story, the residents are content just enjoying each other's company. Mr. Dalal's promotion—which inspires him to bring home two new wash basins, one for his family and one for the rest of the residents to share—is the catalyst for the entire building to transform. His good fortune, initially looked upon with jealousy, inspires the other residents to make their own materialistic changes. Mr. Chatterjee, the resident intellectual, dubs the community basin "A sure sign of the changing times." By "changing times," he may be talking about modern technology more broadly, but it's implied that he may be referencing the materialistic changes that result in the building. The new wash basin is not just a step toward convenience but rather signals that more is on the horizon. With change comes competition, as the other resentful residents quickly ask, "Are the Dalals the only ones who can improve the conditions of the building?" The wives of the building exchange precious keepsakes to contribute. One barters wedding bracelets for a fresh coat of paint, one sells a sewing machine to pay for an exterminator, and another pawns silver bowls to paint the shutters. Rather than a communal feeling of improvement, the building changes actually emerge from competitiveness. Instead of using the funds for individual assets (such as a private telephone), they contribute to communal property to gain status in the eyes of their neighbors while simultaneously losing touch with one another. Although the building does begin to look nicer, the residents' growing obsession with materialism and outward appearances has a steep human cost: the residents begin to abandon their own personal values and see less value in other people, sacrificing worth for status. As the residents increasingly value the outward appearance of their building, they value Boori Ma less and less. They see more sense in improving their building, and thereby improving their own social status, than in continuing to house a vulnerable older woman. When the basin gets stolen and the residents blame Boori Ma, one resident exclaims: "Boori Ma has endangered the security of this building. We have valuables. The widow Mrs. Misra lives alone with her phone. What should we do?" In the aftermath of the basin being stolen, it seems that the residents are now solely concerned with the safety of their material possessions, and are quick to devalue condemn Boori Ma if it means maintaining their elevated status. Moments later, as Mr. Chatterjee mulls over what to do, he glances significantly at "the bamboo scaffolding that now surrounded his balcony. The shutters behind him, colorless for as long as he could remember, had been painted yellow." After taking in the building's improved appearance, Mr. Chatterjee announces the final verdict: "Boori Ma's mouth is full of ashes. But that is nothing new. What is new is the face of this building. What a building like this needs is a real durwan." Before the flurry of consumerism began, Mr. Chatterjee had said that "Boori Ma's mouth is full of ashes, but she is the victim of changing times"—even though he didn't believe her tall tales, he had empathy for the woman. Now that Mr. Chatterjee is swept up by materialism, though, he abandons his empathetic outlook, supporting Boori Ma's dismissal and therefore showing that he has come to value things over people. As the story closes, the reader's last impression is Boori Ma walking slowly away from the house, broom in her hand, muttering, "Believe me. Believe me." As an outsider, an older woman alone in the world, her options are few if any. She will most likely end up living on the streets, as the residents would likely be aware. The last image raises the question of whether or not social advancement is really more important than a human life. Boori Ma has been cast out over something as trivial as a wash basin, and it is implied that the residents may never reach the point at which they are satisfied with what they have. - Theme: Social Division and Alienation. Description: "A Real Durwan" focuses on the simple life and tragic turn of events for Boori Ma, a poor durwan, or "doorkeeper," in a Bengali apartment building. She is introduced from the first sentence living out her days by cleaning the building for the other residents and reciting details about the life of luxury she used to live. From the first line, in fact, she is identified as "Boori Ma, sweeper of the stairwell." By focusing on such a character, the narrator calls attention to Boori Ma's "Otherness," or the ways in which she is unlike her fellow residents. In doing so, the story illustrates how difference plays a role in one's life, particularly in the story's setting of 1960s or 1970s Bengal. Given her position, both what she was born into and what happened to her along the way, Boori Ma has few options in the world and even fewer than she had years ago. Regardless of whether or not the reader should believe Boori Ma's stories of her past, she remains female, unmarried, unskilled, and foreign in her country. As Boori Ma's situation gets worse and worse throughout the story, Jhumpa Lahiri suggests that barriers surrounding gender, ethnicity, and class in post-Partition India are oppressive and limiting and create a harsh "us versus them" dynamic.  From the beginning of the story, Boori Ma is set apart from the building's other residents. The opening paragraphs describe Boori Ma's physical appearance, unlike the other characters. The narrator notes her age, frail figure, and swollen joints. Even her voice is "brittle with sorrow." While the reader does not enter her thoughts, Boori Ma's body and voice speak of a hard life. Her memories shed some light on her status: she claims to have had a husband and four daughters, and she mentions a daughter's grand wedding, yet she is all alone in Bengal. Without a husband or son at this time and place, her life and her income are quite limited. While the truth of Boori Ma's memories remain debatable, what is clear is that she is a refugee from the Partition of 1947. The story notes that "No one doubted she was a refugee; the accent in her Bengali made that clear." With a linguistic marker, she is never fully assimilated or accepted into a stringently divided society. Boori Ma is marked for that which she cannot change: her gender, her country of origin, and her solitude. However, her economic situation appears just as immovable. She is in an entirely separate class from the other residents of building. At one point, Mrs. Dalal notes that Boori Ma wears a cheap sari, "with a border the color of a dirty pond." The narrator adds that it is "cut in a style no longer sold in shops." With this detail, the story implies that Boori Ma has been wearing the same clothing for years with no disposable income to replace them, a visible marker that further alienates her from her neighbors. When Boori Ma has downtime to visit with the residents of the building, the narrator notes that she knows better than to go inside the apartment. Instead she "crouches" near the doorway. A similar verb is only used one other time in the story, to describe the manual laborers who work on the building. They too "squat" during their break around the perimeter of the building. Like these men, Boori Ma is positioned squarely as a laborer, not a resident deserving of a seat at the table. Boori Ma's crouching—halfway between a seated and standing position—also reflects her ethnic Otherness, as she is perched precariously between two cultures. Furthermore, Boori Ma owns very little. The news of Mr. Dalal's promotion—suddenly propelling his family into a life of relative abundance—takes place shortly after Boori Ma's quilts disintegrate while hanging outside in the rain. Not only is one of her few possessions destroyed, but now she must sleep on newspaper. And even though Mrs. Dalal promises to provide Boori Ma with new bedding, the woman gets swept up in her own newfound wealth and fails to provide for Boori Ma. That Boori Ma is thrust to the sidelines in this instance, descending deeper and deeper into poverty with the loss of her quilts, further ostracizes her from the other residents. Just as Boori Ma straddles two cultures as an immigrant, so too does her status as an unofficial durwan, or "doorkeeper"—not quite a full employee, nor a real resident—leave her with little stability or protection and emphasize her otherness. The narrator notes that "over the years, Boori Ma's services came to resemble those of a real durwan." However, "under normal circumstances this was no job for a woman," suggesting that Boori Ma's status as less than a "real durwan" centers on her gender, which also makes her "less than" in a patriarchal society. When things fall to pieces and the building's beloved new wash basin is stolen, the residents don't question Boori Ma in the hallway but force her to the roof, where they plant her "on one side of the clothesline and started screaming from the other." The position has no utility except to physically represent her inferiority—as a woman, an immigrant, a poor person, and a laborer, Boori Ma is set apart from the rest of society. The residents quickly decide that banishing Boori Ma will solve all of their problems: "What a building like this needs is a real durwan," says a resident named Mr. Chatterjee. With this, the residents "tossed out Boori Ma. All were eager to begin their search for a real durwan." The residents jump on the opportunity to dismiss Boori Ma from her post, emphasizing once again how she is clearly the other—dispelled from their fold, and made to feel like she is not a "real" member of the community despite living and working in the building for many years. Ultimately, all of Boori Ma's identifiers set her apart in a society governed by rigid class divisions and gender roles: as an immigrant, a woman, and a low-level worker, she is deeply limited and vulnerable in a way that her male, married, middle-class residents aren't. - Climax: The disappearance of the wash basin and the keys - Summary: Boori Ma is a 64-year-old woman, frail from many years of manual work. She lives and works in a residential building in Calcutta, India. Each day, like the one that begins the story, she sweeps the steps and cleans around the building. As she cleans, she talks about the luxuries of her former life, one that existed before Partition (the division of India and Pakistan into separate countries) when she still lived in Bengal. She claims that she had a husband and four daughters, a two-story house complete with marble floors, and a yard brimming with fruit trees and hibiscus blossoms. She often changes the details in her stories, doubling the size of her estate each time she talks about it and alternating between different versions of how she crossed the border into Calcutta. Boori Ma always ends her stories by saying some variation of "Believe me, don't believe me, such comforts you cannot even dream them." The residents find Boori Ma's outlandish memories unreliable but thoroughly entertaining, and they respect her work as an unofficial durwan, or "doorkeeper," for their building. One resident, Mr. Chatterjee, proclaims that Boori Ma spins nothing but lies, but that her stories are harmless and that she's simply "the victim of changing times." Mr. Chatterjee has not left his balcony or even opened a newspaper since Independence, but all of the residents greatly respect his opinions. After performing her morning duties, Boori Ma climbs to the roof to beat her quilts, which she thinks are infested with mites. She complains to a resident named Mrs. Dalal, claiming that the mites are "eating [her] alive" at night, but Mrs. Dalal examines Boori Ma's skin and finds that she is free of mite bites. Mrs. Dalal suggests that Boori Ma is suffering from a common case of prickly heat, but Boori Ma "prefer[s]" to think that it's mites rather than something as boring and common as prickly heat. Examining Boori Ma's worn-out bedding, Mrs. Dalal promises to get the woman new quilts soon. It begins to rain, and Boori Ma's quilts are ruined, but she is heartened by Mrs. Dalal's promise. Shortly after, Mr. Dalal, who works a low-level job for a wholesale manufacturer of toilet parts, returns home with news of a big promotion to management. In celebration, he has purchased two wash basins, one for his home and one for the apartment building to use communally. Though the residents profess some jealousy at the new acquisition, they all jump at the chance to use such a luxury. When the Dalals leave for vacation, still celebrating their windfall, the other residents find themselves inspired to also make changes to building out of a spirit of competition. They pawn precious heirlooms to paint the building, paint the shutters, and exterminate any pests. However, since the building is full of laborers running up and down the stairs, Boori Ma can't complete her usual tasks. With more free time on her hands than she knows what to do with—and aching limbs from sleeping on newspapers now that her quilts are ruined—Boori Ma finds that walks around the neighborhood are a balm for her sore body and a good way to pass the time. One day, as she walks through the market, Boori Ma begins to spend some of her life savings on small treats, like cashews and sugarcane juice. As she wanders deeper and deeper into the market, she feels a tug on the end of her sari and finds that her skeleton keys to the building and lifesavings are gone. When Boori Ma returns home, the residents are gathered, angry that the community basin has been ripped out of the wall and stolen. They turn on Boori Ma, accusing her of being in cahoots with the thief. Mr. Chatterjee delivers the final verdict, deciding that the building needs a "real durwan." Despite her protests of innocence—"Believe me, believe me"—they dismiss her from employment and the building, tossing Boori Ma and her belongings out onto the street. She leaves the building, carrying only a broom in her hand.

- Genre: Short story, local color literature - Title: A Retrieved Reformation - Point of view: Third-person omniscient - Setting: Arkansas - Character: Jimmy Valentine/Ralph D. Spencer. Description: The protagonist of "A Retrieved Reformation," Jimmy is a safecracker and thief living in the American Midwest in the early 1900s. When first introduced, the well-connected Jimmy is being released from prison after serving just ten months of a four-year sentence for robbery. Jimmy initially responds to his freedom with disregard, quickly resuming his life of crime. It is clear that Jimmy has not been rehabilitated; his punishment was a sham and he has no intention of working an honest job. Yet despite Jimmy's criminal lifestyle, he remains a kind and likeable character. Indeed, Jimmy is witty and compassionate, and he is undeniably a dedicated and skilled safecracker. After a succession of burglaries, Jimmy attracts the attention of Ben Price—the very police detective who had arrested him in Springfield, resulting in his incarceration in the first place. After then traveling to the town of Elmore in search of fresh safes to crack, he falls in love with Annabel Adams, the daughter of a local bank owner. His love for Annabel changes Jimmy, and he adopts the identity of Ralph D. Spencer, an honest shoe salesman. As Ralph, Jimmy finally lives the straight life, wins the heart of Annabel, and gains the respect of her family and the entire town. He even decides to gift his suitcase of burglar's tools to an old friend in Little Rock, convinced that he "wouldn't do another crooked thing for the whole world." On the surface, Jimmy has been rehabilitated by Annabel; however, since Jimmy is not who he pretends to be, their relationship is based on a lie and therefore on shaky ground. It is not until he sacrifices his identity as Ralph, by saving Agatha, Annabel's niece, when she becomes accidentally locked in Mr. Adams's safe, that Jimmy is fully redeemed for his past sins. Through cracking the safe, Jimmy, in part, betrays his true identity—risking his relationship with Annabel in the process. He sacrifices Ralph D. Spencer so that Agatha may live, thereby using his criminal trade for good. In that moment, Jimmy is wholly reformed. - Character: Ben Price. Description: An "eminent" police detective and the antagonist of "A Retrieved Reformation." Price is portrayed as the epitome of morality and hard work, and he serves as a foil to Jimmy Valentine's criminal lifestyle. Jimmy and Ben Price have a long and established history; Jimmy was sent to prison after Price arrested him for an obscure crime in Springfield, and Jimmy again lands on Price's radar not long after he is released. His dedication to detective work and his familiarity with Jimmy's handiwork makes "other people with burglar-proof safes to feel more at ease," and he vows to make Jimmy pay for his crimes. Price is so determined to bring Jimmy to justice that he pursues him for an entire year, finally finding him living in the town of Elmore under the guise of Ralph D. Spencer. However, Price's traditional ethics and dedication to the law are put into question when he pretends not to know Jimmy after witnessing his redemption. Price watches quietly from the back of The Elmore Bank as Jimmy saves Agatha, the niece of his fiancé, Annabel Adams, when she inadvertently becomes locked in a safe. Jimmy's hidden skillset means that he can easily free Agatha, but doing so is an admission that he isn't who he pretends to be—an honest and law-abiding man—and Price appreciates this sacrifice. Jimmy saves Agatha even though it may very well end his relationship with Annabel, and Price considers this selfless act evidence of Jimmy's reformation. When Jimmy surrenders to Price after his display of heroism, Price responds, "Guess you're mistaken, Mr. Spencer. Don't believe I recognize you." Price lets Jimmy go, effectively breaking the law by letting him get away with his past crimes. O. Henry's portrayal of Detective Ben Price complicates traditional notions of ethics, morality, and hard work. - Character: Annabel Adams. Description: The fiancée of Ralph D. Spencer, the false identity of career safecracker, Jimmy Valentine, and the daughter of Mr. Adams, the owner of The Elmore Bank. Jimmy first sees Annabel outside her father's bank while he is casing potential safes, and he immediately falls in love with her and denounces his life of crime. While he disguised as Ralph, Annabel too falls in love with Jimmy, and she is the very reason he begins to live the straight life as a shoe salesman. Annabel is charming and described by Jimmy as "an angel," reflecting her savior-like influence on his criminal past. When Annabel's niece, Agatha, is locked in the safe at The Elmore Bank, Jimmy first asks Annabel for the rose pinned to her dress, a symbol of their love and a token of remembrance, before cracking the safe and exposing that his identity as Ralph is a farce. - Character: The Warden. Description: The man in charge of the prison where Jimmy Valentine serves time after his arrest in Springfield. As Jimmy is released from prison, the warden advises him to "brace up" and "make a man of himself," claiming that Jimmy is "not a bad fellow at heart." His advice to Jimmy implies that the ticket to the straight life is an honest profession, and through this O. Henry draws a direct parallel between morality and work. The warden is pleasant and jokes easily with Jimmy during his release; however, the crooked nature of Jimmy's pardon and his expected short stay in his prison makes the warden implicit in the obvious corruption that surrounds Jimmy's sham punishment. - Character: Mike Dolan. Description: A long-time friend of Jimmy Valentine and owner of the café where Jimmy rents a room. After Jimmy is released from prison, it is revealed that Mike was instrumental in orchestrating Jimmy's pardon from the governor. Mike is kind and accommodating, yet he is very clearly entrenched in organized crime and political corruption. - Character: Mr. Adams. Description: The owner of The Elmore Bank and father to Annabel. It is Mr. Adams's bank that Jimmy Valentine initially cases when arriving in town, and it is his safe that Agatha, his granddaughter and Annabel's niece, becomes locked in, prompting Ralph to crack the lock and expose his true identity as Jimmy Valentine. - Theme: Love and Redemption. Description: Despite being released from prison at the start of "A Retrieved Reformation," burglar Jimmy Valentine clearly hasn't learned his lesson. An expert at cracking safes, Jimmy quickly returns to a life of crime and continues to rob banks throughout the area. Only after seeing Annabel Adams outside one such bank does Jimmy abandon his criminal ways, and, upon falling in love with her, ultimately renounce them forever. Through Jimmy's development from delinquent to honest man, author O. Henry argues for the transformational power of love, through which even the slickest of criminals can find redemption. O. Henry presents Jimmy as totally unrepentant upon his initial release from prison. On the contrary, having been through this process many times before, Jimmy greets freedom "in a tired kind of way" and jokes with the warden about his own criminal history. Instead of emphasizing any sense of graciousness, O. Henry points out that Jimmy is surprised that his freedom—obtained via a pardon from the governor—has taken so long: "when someone with as many friends on the outside as Jimmy Valentine had is received in the 'stir' it is hardly worth while to cut his hair," the author writes. Once on the outside, Jimmy notably ignores the beauty of the natural world from which he has for ten months been separated—"disregarding the song of the birds, the green of the trees, the smell of the flowers"—and instead heads for a restaurant to indulge in a bottle of wine and a high-quality cigar. Almost immediately afterwards, he meets up with his old pals and begins a slew of increasingly-higher stakes robberies. These moments reveal Jimmy to be deeply-entrenched in the world of crime, sheltered from serious consequences for his actions, and desirous of the luxurious comforts such a lifestyle affords—details that, in turn, make his eventual transformation all the more powerful.  Falling in love with Annabel Adams spurs Jimmy to reject his easy life of crime. Jimmy first sees Annabel on the steps of her father's bank—the anchor of his new life directly confronting that of his old. Annabel changes Jimmy immediately: he "looked into her eyes, forgot what he was, and became another man." He takes on a new identity and abandons "the old business"—that is, robbing banks—for an honest job in a shoe shop. In addition to winning Annabel's hand, he finds both financial and social success and the "the respect of the community." Ralph D. Spencer, as he now calls himself, is "the phoenix that arose from Jimmy Valentine's ashes." Jimmy even plans to give away his burglary tools to a friend from his past, which suggests that he has no intention of ever returning to his former way of life. In the letter he writes to this friend, Jimmy refers to Annabel as an "angel"—an explicit admission that it is by her love that he feels redeemed. "She believes in me," he writes, "and I wouldn't do another crooked thing for the whole world." Yet however honest his new life, Jimmy's redemption is tempered by the fact that he has been lying to his fiancée since they met. Indeed, Jimmy plans to continue to evade the consequences of his past by moving "West, where there won't be so much danger of old scores brought up against me." As with O. Henry's reference to Ralph Spencer being born from the ashes of Jimmy Valentine, this moment reminds the reader that while love has begun to save Jimmy, his new start has been granted not simply by the renunciation but also the erasure of his former, criminal self. Notably, only upon being willing to accept the consequences of his past is Jimmy able to achieve lasting salvation. Before he's able to get rid of his tools or head West, Jimmy must go to the bank with Annabel and her family as Mr. Adams, Annabel's father, excitedly shows off a new vault. When Annabel's niece, Agatha, accidentally becomes trapped inside, Jimmy breaks open the safe to rescue her—effectively revealing his past, or at least suggesting he is not who he claims to be. This action is not done impulsively. Jimmy knows that he is not merely risking his new life, but sacrificing it, as "with that act, Ralph D. Spencer passed away and Jimmy Valentine took his place." The act of saving Agatha reflects Biblical notions of martyrdom; Ralph D. Spencer dies so that Agatha may live, but also so that Jimmy Valentine may be absolved of his sins and thus allowed to live as a free man. Indeed, afterwards, he appears to have accepted his fate and greets detective Ben Price—who has long been following Jimmy and is currently waiting outside to arrest him—almost like an old friend. "Well, let's go," Jimmy says. "I don't know that it makes much difference now." Ben, however, simply says, "I don't believe I recognize you," and strolls away. Having witnessed Jimmy's heroism—made genuine by the fact that he had been willing to risk his newfound happiness in the name of helping someone else—Ben decides to let Jimmy go. This final act of mercy implies that, in Ben's eyes, Jimmy is truly reformed. While Jimmy had worked to make an honest man of himself and no longer be the criminal he once was, more meaningful redemption has required owning up to his past sins. Whether Annabel will accept Jimmy is left unsaid, but O. Henry's story suggests that her love has already, irrevocably changed him for the better. - Theme: Work, Ethics, and Morality. Description: As Jimmy is released from prison the warden tells him, "You're not a bad fellow at heart. Stop cracking safes, and live straight." According to the warden, to live straight—and thereby be a good person—Jimmy must work an honest job. At the same time, however, the fact that Jimmy's so good at being a thief elicits a sort of begrudging respect. O. Henry presents the dedicated detective Ben Price meanwhile, as an embodiment of ethics that serves as a foil to Jimmy's life of crime. Yet despite being an expert crook, Jimmy is not a bad man. On the contrary, he proves to be quite decent, and this irony is only intensified by Price's own actions at the end of the story when he disregards the dictates of his profession and lets Jimmy go free. Jimmy and Ben Price cannot be viewed in simple terms of good or bad, criminal or cop; with these characters, then, O. Henry upends traditional notions of ethics and morality, forcing readers to judge these men based on more than just their profession. O. Henry portrays Ben Price as an extremely capable police detective, which is proof of his "good citizenship and prosperity." When Jimmy returns to his apartment after being released from prison, he finds it "just as he left it," including Price's collar-button on the floor. The button, torn from Price's shirt during the physical scuffle of Jimmy's arrest, is evidence of the detective's dedication to his job. Along with establishing their history, the fact that Jimmy immediately notices the button—such a tiny, insignificant object—suggests that Price's investigation and the subsequent arrest had a lasting effect on him. It also represents the extraordinary effort put forth by Price when he "overpowered Jimmy to arrest him." Price is obviously very good at his job and does not waste his time and skills with small or trivial cases. After Jimmy is released from prison and returns to a life of burglary, he has to steal a considerable amount of money before again attracting Price's attention. It is only after Jimmy relieves the Jefferson City bank of five thousand dollars that his crimes are considered "high enough to bring the matter up into Ben Price's class of work." And as soon as word gets out that Price suspects Jimmy and has resumed his prior pursuit, "people with burglar-proof safes felt more at ease." He vows to catch Jimmy and make him pay, claiming, "He'll do his bit next time without any short-time or clemency foolishness." Price is determined to do his job as a man of the law, and the public believes in his abilities. However, O. Henry portrays Jimmy as a hard worker who is likewise dedicated to his profession. Like Price, Jimmy is very good at his job. He makes quick work of burglar-proof safes and his adept skills leave "no clue to the author." In fact, it is only the level of difficulty of his jobs that gives Jimmy away. Price notes, "That's Dandy Jim Valentine's autograph. He's resumed business. Look at the combination knob—jerked out as easy as pulling up a radish in wet weather. He's got the only clamps that can do it."  Only a superior safecracker could have pulled of the robbery, and Jimmy is known for impressive work. Furthermore, as noted by Price, Jimmy is the only thief who has access to the proper tools for the job. Jimmy's safecracking tools, described as the "finest set of burglar's tools in the East," include "two or three novelties invented by Jimmy himself, in which he took pride." Jimmy is so dedicated to his work as a safecracker that he has even engineered his own tools in an effort to do his job better. When Agatha, the niece of Jimmy's fiancé, accidentally locks herself in her grandfather's safe, Jimmy quickly cracks the lock. As Jimmy works to free Agatha, he lays out his special tools "swiftly and orderly" while "whistling softly to himself as he always did when at work." After ten short minutes, Agatha is free and Jimmy has broken "his own burglarious record." Just like Ben Price, Jimmy is precise and proficient, and he clearly enjoys his work. Despite his criminal profession, O. Henry depicts Jimmy as a good man with redeemable qualities. When Jimmy is first introduced, he is hard at work in the prison shoe-shop "assiduously stitching uppers." Jimmy's time is prison is limited and his release is already fixed, yet he still approaches this assigned and mundane work with care and attention. Jimmy is also pleasant and displays an easy sense of humor when joking with the warden. Furthermore, the warden speculates that Jimmy was sent to prison in the first place because he "wouldn't prove an alibi for fear of compromising somebody in extremely high-toned society." While Jimmy is certainly not innocent, he displays integrity and loyalty when he refuses to give up a fellow thief. Additionally, after Jimmy is pardoned by the governor and released from prison, he makes his way to the train depot after first enjoying a good meal and a bottle of wine. Right before Jimmy boards his train, he "tosse[s] a quarter into the hat of a blind man sitting by the door." Upon his release from prison, Jimmy was given only a five-dollar bill, which must be nearly gone by this point, yet he is kind and generous—despite having very little to give. Even though Jimmy does not initially desire to live an honest life, he quickly gives up safecracking for the love of Annabel Adams. His devotion to her is obvious when he risks everything to save Agatha after she becomes locked in Mr. Adams's safe. By breaking into the safe, his true identity as a criminal is revealed. Jimmy selflessly sacrifices his identity as Ralph D. Spencer, the honest shoe-maker—jeopardizing his happiness and future marriage—in order to save Agatha and spare Annabel the death of her niece. To simply brand Jimmy a morally bankrupt criminal is to overlook his many admirable qualities. Henry's depiction of Jimmy muddles the line between good and bad, and Ben Price's unexpected reaction to Ralph D. Spencer further complicates this grey area. After witnessing Jimmy's reformation in the form of Agatha's rescue, Price pretends not to recognize Jimmy—effectively breaking the law and allowing Jimmy to get away with his crimes. Price's decision to let Jimmy go is not entirely ethical, but this does not define him as a whole, just as Jimmy cannot be defined solely by his criminality. His kindness and loyalty to others implies that he is an inherently a good person—just as the warden suggests. - Theme: Change and Identity. Description: O. Henry's story chronicles the rehabilitation of Jimmy Valentine, who transforms from a career safecracker and thief into an honest and productive member of society. When Jimmy is first introduced, it is as an incarcerated criminal, and his identity undergoes several more transformations before he is ultimately redeemed by his love for Annabel Adams. Though Jimmy's new life with Annabel as Ralph D. Spencer—shoe salesman and all-around good guy—bears very little resemblance to his prior life of crime, in the end of the story Jimmy must draw from his past to free Agatha from a safe. With the progression of Jimmy's character, O. Henry implies that while outward identity can be easily changed, it is impossible for people to escape who they really are. Upon his release from prison, Jimmy's identity transforms from inmate to free man. O. Henry writes, "The warden gave him a cigar, and shook hands. Valentine, 9762, was chronicled on the books 'Pardoned by the Governor,' and Mr. James Valentine walked out into the sunshine." Prison Jimmy is a different man entirely than the man he is on the outside. On the inside, Jimmy is received with indifference—it is "hardly worth while" to even cut his hair. Yet on the outside, Jimmy is received with cigars and sunshine. Prison Jimmy is reduced to a number, and he is easily left behind. The identity of Mr. James Valentine, however, is rather short lived. At his release, Jimmy dons "a suit of the villainously fitting, ready-made clothes and a pair of the stiff, squeaky shoes that the state furnishes to its discharged compulsory guests"—prison-issue clothing brands him an ex-convict, and which is little better than "Valentine, 9762" in the eyes of society. After returning to his apartment, Jimmy emerges in "tasteful and well-fitting clothes." With his "taste for good society" and his "impressive" manner, the real Jimmy Valentine makes his first appearance. With his tools in hand, Jimmy is ready to return to work cracking safes. Through Jimmy's transformation, O. Henry suggests the difficulty Jimmy would have had have maintaining his high-end lifestyle as "Mr. James Valentine." Honest employment is likely to be difficult for an ex-con, and since Jimmy was released from prison with only a bus ticket and five dollars, he has very few options outside of cracking safes. When Jimmy later falls in love with Annabel Adams, he assumes an entirely new identity. As Jimmy sees Annabel for the first time outside her father's bank, he "looked into her eyes, forgot what he was, and became another man." Jimmy's love-at-first-sight experience hasn't caused him to forget his name; it has caused him to forget that he is a thief. However, since Jimmy Valentine is a thief, he walks to the nearest hotel and signs in as Ralph D. Spencer, a prospective businessman. Jimmy needs a new name to designate his new identity and obtain a fresh start. Jimmy quickly morphs into "Mr. Ralph Spencer, the phoenix that arose from Jimmy Valentine's ashes." While living in Elmore, he builds a successful business selling shoes and wins Annabel's heart. Henry writes, "Socially he was also a success, and made many friends." Jimmy's life as Ralph Spencer is proof of his rehabilitation. He is finally living the straight life; he works a respectable job, is engaged to be married, and contributes positively to society. Jimmy's love for Annabel has, on the surface, completely transformed him. Yet though he has transformed into Ralph D. Spencer, traces of Jimmy Valentine remain. Jimmy's slick style is unmistakable, and the young hotel clerk, himself "something of a pattern of fashion," "perceived his shortcomings" in the presence of Ralph. Jimmy is widely known for his good taste and fashionable appearance, as is Ralph. Appearance is too important to Jimmy to abandon his tastes with his new identity. Additionally, when Annabel's father shows off his new safe, Ralph responds with "courteous but not too intelligent interest." With his advanced knowledge of safes, Ralph must make a concerted effort to appear ignorant. While Jimmy may have forgotten what he was, he certainly hasn't forgotten what he knows. Lastly, when Agatha, Annabel's niece, is inadvertently locked in her grandfather's safe, Jimmy again transforms. Before cracking the safe, Jimmy, under the guise of Ralph Spencer, asks Annabel for the rose she is wearing—as if to remember her by—and "with that act Ralph D. Spencer passed away and Jimmy Valentine took his place." Jimmy can't crack the safe as Ralph, and despite living in Elmore as Ralph Spencer for an entire year, Jimmy Valentine has never been far away.  With Jimmy's frequent transformations, O. Henry argues the complexity of identity. Jimmy's identity changes according to his needs and circumstances; however, a large part of him always remains Jimmy Valentine. Ralph D. Spencer doesn't completely "pass away" when Jimmy opens the safe either. Life as Ralph has made Jimmy a better man, and Ralph survives in the form of Jimmy's newfound selflessness. Opening the safe is an admission of Jimmy's true identity, and for the first time, Jimmy is honest about who he really is. O. Henry's story ultimately highlights both the changes and the consistencies of Jimmy's identity; while Jimmy can easily become Ralph D. Spencer, he will never be able to stop being Jimmy Valentine. - Theme: Justice and the Law. Description: O. Henry's "A Retrieved Reformation" is a harsh critique of justice and the law in America during the early twentieth century. When Jimmy Valentine is arrested for an obscure robbery in Springfield, his prison stay is short and sweet thanks to his outside connections, and he is ultimately pardoned by the governor of Arkansas. Despite obviously breaking the law, Jimmy is never held fully accountable for his actions, and he is easily able to continue his life of crime. Jimmy's punishment, while technically legal—that is, formally handed down by the law—is thus certainly not justice. Similarly, Jimmy's redemption, in the form of his love for Annabel Adams and his new life in Elmore, is more just than his sham prison stay, yet it is hardly legal. Through Jimmy's complicated circumstances, O. Henry argues that justice and the law are not necessarily synonymous. Jimmy's prison experience does very little to either punish or rehabilitate him. Despite being sentenced to four years, Jimmy and the prison staff know that his stay will be short-lived: Jimmy's friends and connections mean that he is sure to receive a quick pardon from the governor. Jimmy won't be an inmate long enough to even warrant a haircut, and as such, the prison does not attempt to rehabilitate him at all. Instead, he is exploited for labor and put to work in the prison shoe shop. The prison's disregard and neglect of Jimmy and his rehabilitation continues even as he is released into society. After his pardon, Jimmy is given a railroad ticket and five dollars "with which the law expected him to rehabilitate himself into good citizenship and prosperity." Clearly, Jimmy is on his own without any help from the government or the prison system. Jimmy's prison stay is ultimately more of a nuisance than a punishment. He knows from the outset that he will never serve a full sentence, and as a result, neither Jimmy nor the prison system take his incarceration seriously. He doesn't appreciate his freedom and he disregards the trees and birds upon his release. Jimmy's imprisonment, then, does not provide any reason or encouragement for him to change and live a straight and honest life. Through his portrayal of Jimmy, O. Henry thus underscores the ineffectiveness of prison as a form of punishment and as a means of rehabilitation. In addition to this neglect, O. Henry implies that the corruption of the justice system reaches far beyond the prison walls. Ultimately, Jimmy serves only ten months of his four-year sentence. O. Henry writes, "When a man with as many friends on the outside as Jimmy Valentine had is received in the 'stir' it is hardly worth while to cut his hair." Jimmy's connections are high reaching, and the fact that they result in a pardon from the governor is clear evidence of legal and political corruption. When Jimmy is released from prison, the warden speculates that Jimmy was arrested for the robbery in Springfield because he "wouldn't prove an alibi for fear of compromising somebody in extremely high-toned society." This implies that Jimmy's connections are so powerful, he would rather serve time in prison than risk exposing them. After Jimmy is released, he returns to his small apartment upstairs of Mike Dolan's café. After apologizing for leaving him in prison so long, Mike claims that he couldn't get to him sooner because he "had that protest from Springfield to buck against, and the governor nearly balked." Clearly, the job that sent Jimmy to prison was a serious crime—serious enough to prompt protests, implicate "high-toned society," and attract the attention of "eminent" police detective, Ben Price. This, in addition to the governor's hesitation, suggests that Jimmy deserved to serve his time, and his pardon, while legal, is certainly not justice.  On the other hand, O. Henry's portrayal of actual, meaningful justice is not exactly legal. When Jimmy begins his life with Annabel Adams in the town of Elmore, he is a fugitive of the law. Ben Price already suspects Jimmy of stealing the five thousand dollars from the bank in Jefferson City, and Jimmy's life as Ralph D. Spencer is the perfect disguise. Jimmy's love for Annabel is ultimately the source of his redemption, and he finally lives a straight life working an honest job. Yet while Jimmy seems genuinely rehabilitated, his life with Annabel is still against the law. After he witnesses Jimmy's rescue of Annabel's niece, Agatha, when she becomes locked in Mr. Adams's safe, Ben Price lets Jimmy go—despite having chased him all the way from Little Rock to Elmore. It is clear to Price that Jimmy has been fully rehabilitated, and as such, the detective turns a blind eye. However, in doing so, Price himself breaks the law; if Jimmy is free to live his life with Annabel, then he will never be held accountable for his past crimes. O. Henry's depiction of justice thus forces the reader to look critically at the legal system. Obviously, Jimmy has no intention of ever returning to his former life—this is clear when he gives away his tools and sacrifices his identity as Ralph Spencer—and he has been fully rehabilitated due to this love for Annabel. Reformation is, or at least should be, the ultimate goal of the justice system, and since Jimmy has already achieved this success, an additional ineffective prison stay at the hands of corrupt politicians is wholly unnecessary. With the illegal actions of Jimmy and Ben Price, O. Henry claims that the particular legalities of any given situation are not always a good indicator of justice. - Climax: Agatha becomes locked in her grandfather's safe, and Jimmy must turn to his safecracking skills to free her. - Summary: Jimmy Valentine is hard at work in a prison shoe-shop before being escorted to the warden's office. There, he is given his freedom in the form of a pardon by the governor of Arkansas. Jimmy has been in prison for nearly ten months, after being sentenced to four years, yet instead of celebrating his good fortune, he accepts the pardon "in a tired kind of way." As a well-connected criminal, Jimmy had expected his friends on the outside to get him out much sooner. The warden reminds Jimmy that he is "not a bad fellow at heart" before telling him to "stop cracking safes, and live straight." Jimmy jokingly denies having ever cracked a safe and the warden plays along, defending Jimmy's feigned innocence. Early the next morning, after being given a five-dollar bill and railroad ticket, Jimmy is released from prison and walks out into the sunshine a free man. Once on the outside, Jimmy quickly finds a restaurant to indulge in a luxurious meal before boarding a train and returning to his rented room. There, he notices detective Ben Price's shirt button on the floor, evidence of Price's arrest of Jimmy for a burglary in Springfield. Jimmy changes into his usual stylish clothing and removes his suitcase of burglar's tools from a hidden panel in the wall. A string of increasingly higher-stakes robberies occurs in the area, attracting the attention of law enforcement, and, eventually, Ben Price. Price is convinced that Jimmy is responsible; Jimmy is the only thief capable of such difficult jobs, and he is also the only one who possesses the tools to pull them off. Price is well-versed in Jimmy's crimes, and he is determined to catch him and hold him accountable. Meanwhile, Jimmy travels to the small town of Elmore to case the local bank and comes upon a beautiful young woman standing outside. He immediately falls in love with her, and soon learns that the young woman is Annabel Adams, the daughter of the local bank owner. He then checks into a local hotel under a false identity, Ralph D. Spencer, and pretends to be a prospective businessman looking to relocate to the area. Under the guise of Ralph, Jimmy lives and works in Elmore, builds a successful shoe business, and wins the heart of Annabel. After one year, Jimmy has the trust of Annabel's family, is popular and accepted within the community, and is set to marry her in two weeks' time. Reformed by his love for Annabel, Jimmy writes a letter to an old friend telling him of his transformation. Jimmy has no intention of returning to his life of crime and wants to gift his friend his suitcase of burglar's tools. Soon after, Ben Price arrives in Elmorel in pursuit of Jimmy, and finds him living as Ralph Spencer. The next day, Jimmy has breakfast with Annabel and her family before going to Little Rock to order his wedding suit and drop off his suitcase of tools to his old friend. With his tools in hand, Jimmy accompanies Annabel and her family to The Elmore Bank, where her father, Mr. Adams, shows off his new safe. Annabel's nieces, May and Agatha, play nearby as Ben Price walks unnoticed into the bank. Suddenly, May inadvertently locks Agatha in the new safe, engaging the bolts and combination before Mr. Adams has had the chance to set them. Agatha is stuck in the vault, frightened and running out of air. The family begins to panic, imploring Jimmy to find a way to get her out. Jimmy smiles and asks Annabel for the rose pinned to her dress before opening his suitcase and quickly cracking the safe, freeing Agatha and casting suspicion on his identity as a mere shoe salesman. As Jimmy leaves the bank, he notices Ben Price and resigns himself to his custody, facing his past robberies. Price responds, "Guess you're mistaken, Mr. Spencer. Don't believe I recognize you," before turning and walking away.

- Genre: Novella, Autobiographical Fiction - Title: A River Runs Through It - Point of view: First-person - Setting: Montana - Character: Norman Maclean. Description: The narrator of the novella, Norman lives in Wolf Creek, Montana with his wife, Jessie, and her family. Norman is fiercely loyal to, but also competitive with, his brother Paul, and with Paul remains close to his parents in Missoula. We don't learn anything about Norman's profession—instead, he is portrayed as a product of his father's lessons involving both Scripture and fly-fishing. More competent than Paul at life in general, Norman nevertheless seems to lack his brother's unique spark and charm. But he is an acute observer both of human character—even if he struggles to understand his brother—and of the natural world that surrounds him. Norman's guilt for not being able to help Paul colors much of the narration, as this feeling of responsibility mingles with a desire to honor Paul's memory by writing down his stories. - Character: Paul Maclean. Description: Norman's younger brother and a newspaper reporter in Helena, the capital city of Montana. Paul has always had a stubborn streak, from his boyhood refusal to eat oatmeal to his adult reluctance to accept anyone's help. Paul has an obvious drinking problem, which, coupled with a penchant for gambling and an eagerness to join in fights, has brought him in and out of jail a number of times. But in Norman's portrayal, Paul's most striking characteristic is his gift for fly-fishing. His love for the sport conquers his other weaknesses—Paul is never late for fishing even after spending entire nights on the town. Paul is described as an artist when fly-fishing. Yet as an artist, a kind of genius, Paul remains in many ways impenetrable for the rest of his family to comprehend, much less help. - Character: Norman's father. Description: A Presbyterian minister of Scottish background, who is fiercely proud of that past. "Father" educates Norman and Paul in both religion and fly-fishing—indeed, for him, the two are inseparable. He sees both as revealing God's grace and mysterious workings in the world. He loves both his sons, but may have a softer spot for Paul. Along with Norman, he worries about Paul and wonders how to help him. Norman often notes how his father is one of the few men he knows to use the word "beautiful" casually, and this description underlines his father's general attitude of wonder towards the world, even as that view is tempered by pain and confusion. - Character: Norman's mother. Description: The sole woman in the Maclean household, she also dotes on Paul, though she grows distraught and silent when he fails to give up his late nights out. Norman's mother is not permitted to enter what is still a "man's world" of fly-fishing—her role still conforms to traditional gender norms—but she has a quieter appreciation and understanding for the art of fly-fishing as seen from the homestead. - Character: Jessie. Description: Norman's wife, from Wolf Creek, Montana. Jessie worries over her brother Neal in much the same way that Norman worries about Paul. It's ironic, then, that this shared quality threatens to cause major problems in their marriage. Though we don't see much of Jessie in the novella, she seems to have a strong personality and high expectations for Norman's behavior in her family. Still, Jessie serves as a source of love and strength for Norman that he draws upon in his other struggles. - Character: Neal. Description: Jessie's brother and Norman's brother-in-law, who is originally from Wolf Creek but now lives on the West Coast. Neal has returned for a visit to Montana in the summer of 1937. Neal is very much out of place in Montana culture, wearing preppy sweaters, unable to control his liquor consumption, and only interested in fly-fishing insofar as it will help him prove popular among the women of the town. Jessie is clearly worried about Neal, and asks Norman to take him under his wing—but for various reasons, some within and some out of his control, Norman largely fails. Like Paul, Neal seems to be struggling to find his place, but in the context of Norman and Paul's relationship, Neal is more of a drag than a productive foil. - Theme: Familial and Brotherly Love. Description: Families are the main social structures in A River Runs Through It: apart from a few minor characters, all the people we meet belong to Norman's family or to Jessie's. Norman and Paul have even been taught to trust people less and less the further they get from their family home of Missoula, Montana. Steeped in the Biblical tradition, Norman's family treats Paul as a kind of "prodigal son," one who may stray far from correct morals, but who is always welcomed back joyfully into the family mode. Norman's love for Paul, while part of this framework, is also mixed with a competitive spirit, as is normal for brothers near in age. His love also coexists with his struggle to understand his brother—as Norman's father says, it is a tragic irony that those to whom we are closest, and love the most, are those that we understand the least. While Norman's book seems to be an attempt to reach that kind of understanding, what the book itself portrays is the painfulness of not being able to understand those one loves. In other cases, love proves a source of strength: after feeling beaten down by his inability to help Neal or Paul, Norman is rejuvenated by the love of Jessie and his female in-laws—a kind of love that is portrayed as purer but also less complex than the love between Norman and Paul. In general, the love of a family proves stronger than grief, envy, and even lack of understanding in the novel, though it doesn't prevent—and perhaps even exacerbates—the pain that comes from loss. - Theme: Help and Helplessness. Description: Norman Maclean, the novella's protagonist, emphasizes from the start the self-sufficiency of his ancestors, Scottish Presbyterians who dissented from official church doctrine and had, by the turn of the twentieth century, journeyed from Europe to America and Canada and all the way to the rugged small towns of Montana. While the book does idealize self-sufficiency, it also questions its possibility, suggesting that characters are always interrelated—even if they may refuse or shrug off any help that is offered. Norman's brother Paul, for instance, grows embarrassed when Norman tries to question his independence, asking if he needs money or another kind of "help." Paul seems to be ashamed of asking for help, even when it is sorely needed. It's also unclear to what extent Paul even wants to be helped. Indeed, Norman struggles to determine whether and how he can guide Paul out of his alcoholism and into a more stable lifestyle. Like Norman with Paul, Norman's wife Jessie seems to struggle in much the same way with her disastrous brother Neal. The couple's altruism actually begins to push them apart, as Jessie grows frustrated with Norman for not being able to help Neal, and Norman grows frustrated with himself for his inability to help Paul.While fly-fishing, however, it is Paul who seems to hold greater control over situations, and his role and Norman's are reversed. At these moments, Paul is able to guide his brother and allow him to relinquish his sense of worry and responsibility for a time. These moments even permit Norman to question whether Paul really needs his help at all. Nevertheless, after Paul's death, Norman and his father are both haunted for the rest of their lives by a sense that they could have helped Paul—even if their attempts, while he was alive, never really worked. Reliance on another is never simple in the novella. It may be unwanted, but Paul's death shows that it may well be necessary. And yet even so, the novella leaves us with the recognition that attempts to help may be doomed to failure, although this failure will perhaps inevitably be accompanied by regret. - Theme: Skill and Art. Description: A River Runs Through It is full of lushly described scenes of fly-fishing in Montana—in Maclean's hands, the effort to figure out which fish are biting and how to best angle oneself in relation to them becomes almost a minor epic. Some might distinguish between a technical skill that involves separate, learnable tasks, and a kind of artistic genius that simply cannot be learned, but the novella collapses this distinction—for Maclean, technical skill is not in opposition to sublime artistic genius, but rather a necessary aspect of art. Thanks to Maclean's descriptions, the reader gains an amateur knowledge of the vocabulary and technique of fly-fishing. The four-count rhythm is one well-tested skill revealed to us as essential to the task—a task that is alternately described as an art or as a skill. Sometimes, this craft is a matter of expertise developed over time, but in other cases it is a matter of individual creativity, even genius. Paul's "shadow casting," for instance, a wrist-based technique that makes the fish believe there are flies flitting over the water, is an idiosyncratic technique rather than a standard rule of fly-fishing. Paul's seemingly natural gift for fly-fishing is a source of admiration for Norman and their father. It almost compensates for Paul's weaknesses in other aspects of life, though the tragedy is that fly-fishing is the only way Paul can ever truly feel at home and in control. By describing fly-fishing as an art developed through skill, the book elevates the sport to the level of more classical arts like painting, sculpture, and poetry. In the novel, fly-fishing becomes an art particular to the American West, one whose secrets may be shared with the readers, but which remains in the possession of a lucky few (as Neal's disastrous attempts to join in make clear). - Theme: Eternal Nature vs. Human Frailty. Description: While fly-fishing takes place in nature, the novel draws a clear line between the human skill and creativity that makes the craft an art, and the natural world in which people engage in that art. Nature is sublime and awe-inspiring in A River Runs Through It—it makes the characters feel small in comparison, but it is also a source of stability and relief. Influenced by his father's preaching and the Bible, Norman compares the space of nature to God's work throughout the book. At many points, the continuity and eternity of the natural world is contrasted to fleeting human affairs—whatever happens to humanity, however we might suffer, the rivers of Montana will continue on. But this point is not an occasion for fear or sadness at human insignificance. Instead, what Maclean emphasizes is the awe that comes from understanding nature's almighty power. And those who are unable to grasp this power are depicted unsympathetically: when Neal and the prostitute, Old Rawhide, get drunk and fall asleep on the riverbed instead of fly-fishing with Paul and Norman, they are rightfully punished through a painful sunburn. A character like Neal is portrayed as arrogant in his desire to use Montana's gifts for his own, selfish benefit, rather than acknowledging and admiring nature's power. This idea of "punishment" also links to an environmental message, which acknowledges that while nature will always continue on, uncaring of human affairs, humans can still corrupt and destroy nature through greed and ignorance.Even characters who acknowledge nature's power cannot escape their own human frailty. Paul is more adept than anyone at remaining attuned to nature and respecting Montana's might. But he is killed unceremoniously, almost trivially, with his body dumped on the ground. His death reminds the other characters that human life can be easily extinguished, in contrast to the mighty rivers that Paul knew and loved, which cannot so quickly be stamped out. - Theme: Grace, Disgrace, and Divine Will. Description: The sect of Christianity followed by Maclean's father, a "Scot and a Presbyterian," teaches that humans are a species fallen from an original state of grace. In this religious framework, which is threaded throughout the book, it is believed that only God can restore grace to people. Though human beings can develop specific skills, even reaching the realm of art, it may be impossible for them to ever truly recover grace while still alive on earth. Throughout the book, Maclean portrays characters as alternately touched by grace and condemned to the opposite: disgrace. Such disgrace is sometimes linked to shame, as in the naked bodies of Neal and the Old Rawhide discovered by Paul and Norman. Like Adam and Eve, the original subjects of the fall from divine grace, this couple now must be ashamed of their nakedness as tied to their sins. While disgrace in the book stems from human activity, grace is another thing entirely: it comes not from the human but from the divine. Norman and Paul's father holds the most radical version of this belief. For him, even fly-fishing can only succeed with God's grace. This sentiment is somewhat at odds with Norman's and Paul's confidence that fly-fishing is a matter of skill and art, as detailed above. Yet both sons internalize their father's belief to a certain extent, in their understanding of fly-fishing as something as holy as church, and as something beyond human comprehension. Ultimately, the notion of divine grace helps both Norman and his father grapple with Paul's death by fitting it into the concept of divine will. Even if they cannot fully accept that God is behind Paul's death, it can be comforting for them to hand over responsibility to God and thus transform a sense of helplessness into understanding. Despite this, however, Norman is never entirely sure whether Paul is touched by divine grace, or whether his death shows that God chose not to bestow grace upon him—a possibility that Norman finds excruciating. - Climax: Norman and his father watch Paul catch a huge fish on the Blackfoot River near Missoula, the last time they'll see him fish before Paul's death. - Summary: A River Runs Through It begins with the narrator, Norman Maclean, describing what it was like to grow up in Missoula, Montana, as the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister who holds two things sacred: God and fly-fishing. Norman and his brother, Paul, spend much of their time out of school in church services and studying the Bible. But their father also introduces them to the complex, intricate art of fishing, in which one must learn to read the river and attempt to listen to its words. Their family is close-knit, and somewhat suspicious of the outside world. Norman and Paul only fight once, and when their mother tries to separate them, she falls down, and the two are chastened into never fighting again. Paul, though, retains a fighting streak. From a young age, he is incredibly stubborn, and enjoys betting on anything—as he gets older, he begins to gamble. Norman spends his teenage summers working for the United States Forest Service, while Paul is a lifeguard, giving him time to fish in the evenings. Paul has come to be the expert fisherman among the two, and his greatest goal is to not let work interfere with his fishing. He becomes a newspaper reporter in Helena, the capital of Montana. In the summer of 1937, when the bulk of the novella takes place, Paul is living in Helena, while Norman lives with his wife Jessie's family in Wolf Creek. Norman's mother-in-law, Florence, has just told Norman that Jessie's brother Neal will be arriving shortly from the West Coast, and she'd love for him to fish with Norman and Paul. Norman runs into Paul outside a bar, though it's not yet noon. Neither Norman nor Paul like Neal, whom they consider an outsider and a failed Montanan, but they love Florence, so they agree to fish on the Elkhorn with Neal. The two brothers go fishing together the next morning. On the way Paul tells Norman about getting into a car crash (probably while drunk) and of the fine he'll have to pay—he tells it as a joke, but Norman isn't sure how seriously to take it. Still, Paul regains the upper hand when they're fishing, as Norman admires his technique of "shadow casting." Norman stays with Paul for the night, but Paul goes out on the town, and Norman later gets a call in the middle of the night to come down to the jail. Paul had gotten into a fight with a man who had insulted the girl he was with, a part-Native American woman whom Norman calls "Mo-nah-se-tah." Norman drives them home, and then drives back to Wolf Creek himself, trying to figure out how he might be able to help Paul. A few days later Neal arrives on the train wearing two sweaters and carrying a monogrammed suitcase—certainly not a regular sight in Wolf Creek, Montana. As soon as he can, Neal tries to sneak off to a bar, and Norman goes with him, since Jessie has asked him to keep an eye on her brother. There they meet Long Bow, a regular at the bar, and Old Rawhide, the town whore. Neal slowly starts sidling up to Old Rawhide, at which point Norman says he'll make it an early night. The next morning Paul is at their door bright and early for the fishing trip. Florence is slightly embarrassed that Neal is still in bed, having had a late night—though Paul says he didn't go to bed at all. The three men pile into the truck with Jessie's other brother Ken, Jessie, and Florence, to go down to the Elkhorn. Once again, Jessie admonishes Norman to keep an eye on Neal, but as soon as they go downstream together, Neal says he's going to stay at a certain bend, and soon nods off. Enraptured by the day, Norman soon forgets about Neal, and joins Paul in fishing. Finally, as storm clouds are approaching, he thinks to go back to look for Neal. He searches for him along the river with rain pelting down, but doesn't find him. When he and Paul get back to the truck, Neal is safe and dry inside, while the women are angry with Norman for having abandoned Neal. Realizing that Jessie is unhappy with him, Norman suggests that he go away for a few days, and spend some time fishing with Paul. Jessie agrees. Norman drives up to Helena, but when the brothers drive to their regular summer cabin and its nearby river, it turns out that Neal and Old Rawhide have followed them, and Neal claims that now he wants to fish with the brothers right now. It's midday and too hot for good fishing, and Neal has forgotten his rod, but Paul has no patience for such lack of care, so he makes them get into the car anyway. Neal and Old Rawhide have brought liquor and are increasingly tipsy. Norman and Paul leave them, bury some beers in the cold river for afterward, and find their own fishing holes, where they fish as long as they can until the heat grows unbearable. But on their way back, the beers aren't there. The brothers are almost back to the car when they catch sight of two naked, red bodies lying on a sandbar: Neal and Old Rawhide have drunk all their liquor, all the beers, and are fast asleep, with horrific sunburns developing. Norman and Paul drive them back to town in silence, drop off Old Rawhide, and return home, where Paul leaves Norman to face the women (Jessie, Florence, and Ken's wife Dorothy). They immediately get Neal into bed, and Norman and Jessie, though they begin to fight, are soon reconciled. The other women repeat that they love Norman as well. Feeling absolved, Norman, following Jessie's suggestion, goes back to Helena to finish his fishing trip with Paul. Paul suggests they stop by their parents' home and invite their father along. They do so, and their parents seem thrilled to see them—especially Paul—but are upset when Paul slips out after dinner to the bars. Still, the next morning, he is ready to fish before Norman or his father. The three of them fish a number of holes together. At first, Norman is more successful than his brother, and this gives him a burst of pride and joy, but Paul soon regains the upper hand. After a while, Norman decides he's finished, and sits by his father, who's reading the Bible. They both watch Paul try to reach his limit, admiring his skill and artistry. The present-day Norman who is narrating this story, long after the event, notes that he often thinks about this fishing trip, since it was the last time he would fish with Paul. Not long afterward, Paul would be beaten to death and left outside an alley. Norman and his father ask each other over and over again if there was anything they could have done, but never reach an answer. All they can truly understand is that Paul was an incredible fisherman and artist. As an old man, Norman continues to fly-fish, reveling in the beauty and rhythm of the sport, but he continues to be haunted by his past.

- Genre: Novel, romance. - Title: A Room with a View - Point of view: - Setting: Florence, Italy; England. - Character: Lucy Honeychurch. Description: Lucy begins the novel as a young, somewhat naïve British woman abroad in Italy. She is under the care of her older cousin Charlotte, but eager to break out on her own and lead a more independent life. When George kisses her outside of Florence, she herself is shocked, and follows Charlotte's guidance in promising not to tell anyone about it. Back in England, she becomes engaged to Cecil, and gradually convinces herself that she loves him, denying her real feelings for George. This becomes more difficult, though, when the Emersons move into a villa near her home, and she has to see George again. George kisses her a second time at Windy Corner, and Lucy is furious with him. When she tells him to leave, he delivers an impassioned speech about how Cecil does not respect her or any woman as an equal, and not long after she does end her engagement. However, Lucy still denies her love for George—and plans to run away to Greece to escape her true feelings—until Mr. Emerson convinces her to be honest with herself. Over the course of the novel, Lucy becomes more independent and assertive, and disregards both her own family and social expectations and norms when she finally marries George and elopes with him to Italy. - Character: Charlotte Bartlett. Description: Charlotte is Lucy's older cousin, who chaperons her trip to Italy. From a slightly older generation than Lucy, she believes in the traditional social norms of the Victorian period and is aghast when George kisses Lucy. She is genuinely concerned for Lucy and looks out for her, but Lucy becomes increasingly irritated with her, and by the later parts of the novel she outright dislikes her cousin. Lucy is especially upset when she learns that Charlotte has actually told Miss Lavish about Lucy and George's kiss. Charlotte seems to be against George for the entire novel, but it is possible that she actually helps Lucy run into Mr. Emerson at the end of the novel, so that he can convince her to pursue her love for George. In the last chapter, George even suggests that Charlotte may have been a proponent of Lucy and George being together from the very beginning, and there is an implication that Charlotte may have herself denied her feelings and love, as Lucy almost does. - Character: George Emerson. Description: George is a young man who has been brought up by his father to be critical and skeptical of traditional social norms. He believes in the equality of the sexes and shares in his father's optimistic hope for a kind of utopian future of freedom and equality. George is perhaps the most modern character in the novel—his depression and abstract, lofty concerns with whether the universe "fits" or not foreshadow the kind of overly self-conscious characters of high modernist fiction. George loves Lucy and twice acts on his impulse to kiss her, even once while she is engaged to Cecil. George delivers a stirring speech to Lucy about Cecil's sexism and essentially makes her realize that Cecil is not right for her, but it is only after speaking to Mr. Emerson that Lucy finally accepts her love for George, and the two marry and run off together to Italy. - Character: Mr. Emerson. Description: George's father, Mr. Emerson is an intelligent, thoughtful man who comes from a somewhat lower-class background. He has little regard for social niceties and perhaps lacks tact, but he means well and is a kind person. He encourages George to trust in love and follow his heart, not realizing that George is in love with Lucy. When he learns that George has kissed Lucy twice, he apologizes to her, but once he realizes that Lucy also has feelings for George he is a major force in urging and persuading Lucy to follow her own heart and be with George. - Character: Mr. Beebe. Description: A reverend from Lucy's hometown who happens to be in Florence at the same time as her. He is a kind, if somewhat reserved, person, who helps Lucy throughout the novel. He dislikes Cecil, and so is relieved when Lucy breaks off her engagement to him. Together with Charlotte, he helps convince Mrs. Honeychurch to let Lucy go to Greece with the Alans. However, Mr. Beebe does not approve when Lucy runs off with George. - Character: Miss Lavish. Description: A British woman staying at the Pension Bertolini, who somewhat arrogantly thinks that she is finding the "real" Italy in contrast to naïve tourists. She is also a novelist, and writes a novel under a pen-name that Cecil later reads. In the novel is a romantic scene that is obviously based on George and Lucy's kiss outside of Florence, and this causes some trouble when Cecil reads this scene aloud to Lucy and George. - Character: The Miss Alans. Description: Two old spinster sisters staying at the Pension Bertolini in the beginning of the novel. Lucy later invites them to move into a villa nearby Windy Corner, but Cecil ruins this plan by inviting the Emersons to take the villa instead. The Alans are offended, but later agree to take Lucy with them on a trip to Greece (though Lucy never ends up going). - Character: Mr. Eager. Description: A British clergyman at the Pension Bertolini who dislikes the Emersons and tells Lucy that Mr. Emerson murdered his own wife. It is later revealed that Mrs. Emerson died after becoming sick with depression and regret when George was sick as a baby. Mr. Eager encouraged Mrs. Emerson to believe that the sickness was the result of George's not being baptized, and this may be what Mr. Eager means by saying that Mr. Emerson murdered his wife. - Character: Mrs. Honeychurch. Description: Lucy's mother, who adheres to traditional Victorian social norms and ideas about gender roles. (For example, she bristles at learning that Miss Lavish is a novelist, thinking that women shouldn't be writers.) Mrs. Honeychurch is a kind and rather supportive mother, but doesn't quite understand what is happening with Lucy when she breaks off her engagement to Cecil. At the end of the novel, she is angry with Lucy for eloping with George to Italy. - Character: Cecil Vyse. Description: A family friend of the Honeychurches, with whom Lucy and Charlotte stay in Rome. Cecil proposes to Lucy twice unsuccessfully in Italy, and then proposes a third time at Windy Corner, where Lucy finally accepts. Lucy gradually convinces herself that she loves Cecil, despite his snobbery and rude attitude toward Lucy's family and the country society around her home. Cecil is intelligent but doesn't have the same sensibility for beauty that George and Lucy share. He is somewhat of a chauvinist and takes a patronizing attitude toward Lucy and other women, as George complains to Lucy and as Lucy herself tells Cecil when she leaves him. When Lucy leaves Cecil and explains the reasons why, he seems at first astonished and then accepting, and seems at least slightly changed. - Theme: Society, Manners, and Changing Social Norms. Description: The novel takes place at a transformative and transitional moment in British society, as the strict social manners, class hierarchy, and codes of behavior typical of the Victorian period give way to the greater freedom and liberality of modernity in the 20th century. This results in numerous tensions between new and old ways of thinking and doing things, evident in the contrast between young and old characters. Lucy, for example, has very different ideas about proper behavior for a lady than does Charlotte or Mrs. Honeychurch. And even the progressively minded Mr. Emerson doesn't quite understand George's abstract ponderings and concern with grand ideas about the universe fitting or not fitting together (the kind of thinking that might define the very modernist characters of authors like James Joyce or Virginia Woolf). The younger characters in the novel, as well as those who support more progressive social ideas (like Mr. Emerson) want to move away from strict social hierarchies, prejudiced snobbery against the lower classes, and patronizing, sexist attitudes toward women—in contrast to those like Mrs. Honeychurch or Mrs. Vyse, who place great importance on maintaining traditional social norms.This desire to break out of restrictive Victorian social structures and move toward greater freedom finds two major symbolic manifestations in the novel. The first is the recurrent motif of indoor and outdoor spaces. The openness of the outdoors suggests a kind of utopian freedom, as epitomized by the carefree romp of Freddy, George, and Mr. Beebe at the Sacred Lake (temporarily reminiscent of the primal Garden of Eden). Moreover, it is significant that both of Lucy's kisses with George take place outside, while she can only think of Cecil in relation to an inside room without a view—a sealed-off space within the structures of society. By contrast, she finds with George a room with a view out onto the freedom of the outdoors. The second important motif is the idea of travel. Lucy starts to think beyond the narrow social sphere of Windy Corner after being exposed to more of the world in Italy, and later thinks that she will travel to Greece to escape her troubles at home. Finally, she and George elope and find their own personal freedom in Italy. These foreign lands offer a possibility of literal, physical escape from England, as well as from the social structures there.Both of these motifs, though, also suggest that getting beyond the restrictions of traditional society is no simple matter. Ecstatic outdoor scenes are short-lived in the novel, and afterwards the characters have to resume their normal lives and habits. Moreover, while Lucy ends up with George in a room with a view of the outside, this is still an interior room. This may subtly hint that Lucy is not entirely free from society, or perhaps doesn't even desire the absolute state-of-nature freedom that the Sacred Lake might symbolize. And as for travel, it is doubtful whether Lucy's trips outside of England really allow her to escape her homeland. The Pension Bertolini is run by a British woman, after all, and is populated by a mostly British clientele of tourists and expatriates. Through the social dynamics of the novel, Forster is thus able to critique and satirize the upper classes and the fading social codes of the Victorian era, while simultaneously showing that one may not be able to escape this kind of society entirely. - Theme: Sexism and Women's Roles. Description: Throughout the novel, many of Lucy's experiences are dictated and limited by the fact that she is a woman. The novel takes place at a time when women had few rights and opportunities outside of the home, and rarely stepped outside of traditional, prescribed roles like that of a dutiful wife or mother, but also at a time when people were starting to speak up for greater gender equality and women's rights. We see how strict gender roles oppress and constrict Lucy, and over the course of the novel, we see her gradually gain some independence and assert her ability to make her own decisions. But, Forster's novel shows that this move toward greater gender equality is not as simple as Lucy simply standing up to oppressive male figures. For one thing, it is not only men who perpetuate sexism or gendered stereotypes. Mrs. Honeychurch and Charlotte both have traditional, old-fashioned ideas about the proper behavior and conduct of a woman, and seek to uphold these ideas both in their own lives and in Lucy's. Additionally, Lucy comes to assert her independence largely through the help and persuasion of three men: Mr. Emerson, George, and Mr. Beebe. To what degree might their attempts to help Lucy be the same as Cecil's controlling desire to "rescue" her? Lucy herself raises this point when George tells her to leave Cecil because Cecil only wants to tell her what to do. She retorts that George himself is doing the same thing by telling her to leave Cecil.Probably the most detailed statement about women and gender issues comes from George, when he speaks out to Lucy against Cecil, deploring Cecil's treatment of women. When Lucy later leaves Cecil, she repeats George's accusations, such that Cecil feels someone else is speaking through Lucy. The fact that Lucy's articulation of her own independence as a woman comes from a male character may be a way for Forster to hint that he understands the paradox of a male author writing a female character's journey toward empowerment. Even if Lucy stands up for her power as a woman, it is a man (Forster) who is ultimately speaking through her. This does not negate Lucy's journey toward greater independence or the novel's critique of sexist and patronizing attitudes in figures like Cecil. Rather, it shows that issues involving gender, sexism, and equality are not as simple as one group (men) oppressing another (women). There are complex entanglements between both groups, and moving toward greater equality may involve combating entrenched attitudes on both sides, while finding allies on both sides, as well. - Theme: Honesty. Description: In Florence, when Lucy is trying to explain her kiss with George to Charlotte, she tries as hard as she can to be absolutely honest about everything. And throughout the novel, Lucy insists to herself that she must not lie. But, over the course of A Room with a View, simple black-and-white distinctions between truths and lies start to blur. Often, Lucy does not quite lie, but leaves out the whole truth, omits certain things from stories, or doesn't tell certain people certain things. She doesn't tell Charlotte, for example, about George throwing her (blood-stained) pictures into the river in Florence, and later promises not to tell her mother about George kissing her. Later in the novel, she keeps her history with George a secret from her fiancé Cecil, as well as from her mother. Despite the importance Lucy places on absolute honesty, these kinds of half-lies can often be seen as justifiable—for example, they can be a necessary means to an end (Lucy doesn't tell her mother about the kiss in order to protect Charlotte), or can be understood as in the best interest of those involved (Lucy doesn't tell Cecil about George so as not to hurt him or make him unnecessarily jealous).But while the novel reveals the ambiguities that almost always surround issues of lying and truthfulness, it also suggests that there is one kind of lie that no one can get a way with: lying to oneself. Lucy is greatly concerned with not lying to others, but for much of the novel she doesn't realize that she is deceiving herself in pretending not to have feelings for George. She tries to suppress and stifle her love for him, and lies to herself about how much she loves Cecil—but in the end, her true feelings come out, and she is only able to find happiness when she embraces this truth and stops lying to herself about her own feelings. Thus, while one cannot always be absolutely honest in all facets of life (and perhaps would not necessarily want to be), Forster displays through the character of Lucy the ultimate importance of being honest at least to oneself. - Theme: Education and Independence. Description: When the novel begins in Florence, Lucy is a young, rather naïve woman and—while she is not exactly old by the end—the novel follows her growth from a child to a more mature, independent adult. Along the way, Lucy undergoes various processes of education, as she learns more about the world, social interactions, and herself, taking lessons from her own experience as well as from other people such as Charlotte, Cecil, and George. In fact, one could see the entire plot of the novel as the process of Lucy shifting from one guide or teacher to another. at the beginning of the novel, she listens to and learns from Charlotte. Throughout the middle of the novel, she learns about art, literature, and London society from Cecil. And finally, she learns from George, Mr. Emerson, and Mr. Beebe to respect her own feelings and desires.This process of learning, maturing, and awakening allows Lucy to become more independent, standing up to her mother and the rest of her family, for example, by eloping with George. However, Lucy only acts on her own wishes at the encouragement of others. This may raise the question of whether one can be taught by someone else to think and act for oneself. If Lucy is to some degree taught by George and Mr. Emerson to be independent, does this detract from such independence, since she is in a sense still dependent on their very teaching?For much of the novel, it seems that characters cannot escape their own upbringings, and live lives that are in many ways predetermined by the educations they have had. Even George is in a sense only so critical and progressively minded because he was raised that way by his father. When speaking to his mother, Cecil says that he wants to bring up his own children just as Lucy was raised, suggesting that someone's character is (at least mostly) dictated by how they are raised and educated. But even if Lucy does not achieve absolute independence from her various authority figures and, so to speak, teachers, she certainly does undergo a transformation toward greater autonomy and self-determination. At the end of the novel, she may in some sense still be learning from George, but is in a much more equal relationship than she was in with Cecil. Much of her life has been determined by her upbringing and various form of education from older family members and friends, but this very education gives her the ability to break free, to some extent, from the limited life offered to her at Windy Corner. - Theme: Love. Description: A Room with a View can be seen as a romance novel, revolving around the romantic plot of Lucy and her decision between George and Cecil. Through Lucy's relationships with these two men, we see two different kinds of love. With Cecil, Lucy has a rational relationship with gradually growing affection, of which her family approves. He is from a respectable social background, and her mother is pleased at the match between Lucy and him. By contrast, Lucy's relationship with George is confusing to her and irrational. It grows out of sudden moments of immediate attraction in ways that traditional society finds inappropriate. Whereas Cecil politely asks for Lucy's hand in marriage three times, and asks her permission to kiss her once they are engaged, George impulsively embraces and kisses Lucy twice—once when she is already engaged to Cecil.Lucy herself is unaware of her own feelings for George for most of the novel. She gradually convinces herself that she loves Cecil and denies any affection for George until the very end of the novel. At last, though, her true feelings come to the surface, and she realizes how she feels. Forster thus shows that one cannot force or engineer love, as Cecil and Lucy try to do. True love is more of an unintentional, irrational experience that often surprises those who feel it. Through Lucy's experiences, the novel seems to suggest that one can try to stifle or suppress love, but never entirely get rid of it. Lucy can only ignore her true feelings for George for so long.But, even once Lucy realizes that she does not love Cecil and starts to acknowledge her feelings for George, she doesn't immediately pursue her love, and only ends up with George because she coincidentally (or perhaps with Charlotte's help) runs into Mr. Emerson, who then convinces her to follow her heart. As George opines at the end of the novel, many people and things help Lucy and him end up together (including, for example, Mr. Emerson and Mr. Beebe). While Forster may be accused of sentimentality in his championing the inevitable victory of true love, he is at least realistic insofar as he shows that such love—while it may seem fated or destined to be—doesn't simply come about by itself. George has to take the initiative to kiss Lucy, while Lucy has to take the bold step of breaking off her engagement to Cecil. It is only when George, Lucy, and other characters take deliberate action that love can triumph. - Theme: Beauty. Description: Aside from the characters and plot of A Room with a View, one might first notice that Forster's novel is filled with beautiful things. Characters gaze at Renaissance frescoes, admire springtime foliage and flowers, see the rolling hills of Italy, walk through scenic woods, and enjoy classical piano music. These aesthetic experiences—taking in artistic or natural beauty—hold an almost mystical power in the novel, often speaking to the inner feelings of characters like Lucy that cannot be put into words. By playing Beethoven, for example, Lucy comes to understand and experience parts of her own personality that she otherwise wouldn't. In the novel, beauty stirs those who experience it, and offers brief transcendent moments of escape or freedom from the strictures and stresses of society. Experiences of intense beauty also spur characters to act impulsively on feelings. Both times that George kisses Lucy inappropriately, he is partly spurred on by the scenic natural environment surrounding him. But Forster also takes care to demonstrate that there is a difference between admiring or appreciating beauty in a detached way and being truly moved by it. Cecil is intelligent enough to appreciate fine art and music, but is never really inspired by these things. He attempts to remark upon the beauty of the countryside, but finds himself fumbling to say the "correct" things about a landscape. By contrast, Mr. Beebe, Freddy, and George do not simply admire or praise the beautiful Sacred Lake, but are moved to an exuberant scene of careless revelry.For some, then, experiences of beauty hold tremendous, transformative power. And if one steps out of the prescribed guidelines of which frescoes are supposed to be admired, or what piece of music is most fitting for a party, Forster's novel shows that such experiences can be found almost anywhere and take many different forms—from classic paintings to rolling Italian hills, from a secluded wood to a moving piece of music, from a stunning view to the object of one's affection. - Climax: After breaking off her engagement with Cecil but still not acknowledging her love for George, Lucy runs into Mr. Emerson in the church, and he convinces her to follow her heart and realize her true feelings for George. - Summary: A young British woman named Lucy is visiting Florence with her older cousin and chaperon, Charlotte. They are staying at the Pension Bertolini, and are disappointed to find that they have been given rooms without a view, contrary to what they have been promised. At dinner, two men—Mr. Emerson and his son George—overhear the ladies' complaints and offer to switch rooms. Charlotte is flabbergasted by this bold suggestion from these lower-class men and politely declines, but later a British reverend named Mr. Beebe mediates between the Emersons and Charlotte and, vouching for the good intentions of Mr. Emerson, allows Charlotte to accept the offer, so that Lucy and Charlotte end up staying in rooms with a view. The next day, Lucy goes to see a church with another British woman staying at the Pension Bertolini, a novelist named Miss Lavish. Miss Lavish abandons Lucy in the middle of Florence, and she finds herself alone at the church, where she sees the Emersons. George tells Lucy that his father has good intentions but lacks manners and tact, and Mr. Emerson tells Lucy that George is suffering from a strange kind of depression and "world-sorrow." Back at the Pension, Lucy plays piano and talks with some of the other guests, most of whom dislike the Emersons. On another day, Lucy goes on a walk through Florence and sees two Italian men get into a fight in a piazza. One of the men is stabbed and bleeds profusely right next to Lucy. She faints, and George—who happens to be nearby—catches her. Lucy is embarrassed but grateful to George, who picks up some photographs of hers that she dropped. They take a boat along the river back to the Pension, and George suddenly throws Lucy's photographs into the water, because they have blood on them. He tells her mysteriously, "I shall probably want to live," and asks her not to tell any of the gossiping ladies at the Pension about what has happened. The next day, Lucy and Charlotte spend time with another British clergyman, Mr. Eager, who dislikes the Emersons and even claims that Mr. Emerson murdered his wife. Lucy and Charlotte join Mr. Eager, Miss Lavish, the Emersons, and Mr. Beebe for a day-trip into the hills outside of Florence. Once they arrive, everyone walks around and Lucy ends up on her own. She happens upon a terrace with flowers all around, and come upon George. George impulsively kisses Lucy, and Charlotte walks onto the terrace just as this happens. When everyone prepares to go back to Florence, George is nowhere to be found, and the carriage takes off without him, leaving him to walk home in a storm. Lucy is distraught and promises to Charlotte that she is not to blame for what happened. Charlotte consoles her, and then back at the Pension Bertolini she chides Lucy for her carelessness. She apologizes for not being a better chaperon, and persuades Lucy to promise not to tell anyone—including her mother—about the kiss. Charlotte decides that they will leave Florence immediately the next morning, and head for Rome, where Lucy's family friends the Vyses are staying. The novel then jumps forward in time, to when Lucy is back at her England home, Windy Corner, after her Italy trip. Mrs. Honeychurch, Lucy's mother, and her brother Freddy are eagerly awaiting the result of Lucy being proposed to by Cecil Vyse. This is actually the third time he has proposed to her (he proposed twice in Italy, when she stayed with his family in Rome). Lucy accepts the proposal after having rejected the first two, and Mrs. Honeychurch is delighted. Freddy, though he doesn't completely like Cecil, is excited for the engagement, as well. Soon after, Mrs. Honeychurch takes Lucy and Cecil to a garden party to show off her daughter's fiancé. Cecil is snobbishly bored and fed up with the country society around Windy Corner. On the way back home, they ride by a villa whose owner—Sir Harry Otway—wants to rent out. Lucy suggests that the Miss Alans—two old spinster sisters who stayed at the Pension Bertolini—might want the place, and Sir Harry likes this idea. Cecil is annoyed with Sir Harry, seeing him as indicative of the pretentious but not truly upper-class society of the country. Lucy and Cecil walk home alone together through some woods, and Cecil says that he worries Lucy only imagines him in a room with no view. Lucy admits this is true, and Cecil says that he wants Lucy to think of him in the open air. They walk by a little pond that Lucy and Freddy bathed in as children and nicknamed The Sacred Lake. Cecil asks Lucy's permission to kiss her (which she grants), and the two share an awkward embrace. Cecil feels embarrassed for not simply taking her and kissing her romantically without asking. One day, Lucy learns from Freddy that Cecil has arranged for someone other than the Alans to move into Sir Harry's villa, someone by the name of Emerson. Worried, Lucy goes to talk to Cecil, who says that he ran into two somewhat lower-class men in the National Gallery in London and encouraged them to move into the villa to spite the snobbish Sir Harry. The Emersons eventually do move in, and arrive just as Lucy happens to be staying with Cecil and his mother Mrs. Vyse in London. There, Lucy receives a letter from Charlotte in which she expresses her concerns about the Emersons living so close to Windy Corner. She suggests that Lucy tell her mother about her history with George. Annoyed and furious, Lucy pens a cold reply to Charlotte expressing her resolve to keep her history with George a secret. Lucy attends a dinner party with Cecil and his London friends, and Cecil admires how she seems to be adjusting to London society. Mrs. Vyse enthusiastically tells Cecil, "make Lucy one of us," and comments that she is "purging off the Honeychurch taint." Back near Windy Corner, one Saturday afternoon, Mr. Beebe and Freddy pay a visit to the Emersons. In their conversation, Mr. Emerson insists on the equality of the sexes and says that "when we no longer despise our bodies," mankind will discover a utopian existence like that of the Garden of Eden. George, Mr. Beebe, and Freddy decide to go for a swim in The Sacred Lake. On the way, they discuss the coincidence of the Emersons meeting Lucy in Florence and then ending up here. George says that it is all because of fate. They arrive at the pond and are taken with the natural beauty of the water and its surroundings. They disrobe and then swim, frolic, play, and run around wildly until they encounter Cecil, Mrs. Honeychurch, and Lucy coming through the wood and hide until they are presentable. At dinner at Windy Corner, Mrs. Honeychurch asks Lucy about the letter she received from Charlotte. She suggests that they invite Charlotte to stay with them, which both Cecil and Lucy don't want to do. But Mrs. Honeychurch insists, and so Cecil and Lucy at last relent and agree to invite her. Charlotte accepts the invitation, and in addition George accepts Freddy's invitation to come to Windy Corner and play some tennis. George makes Lucy nervous, and the narrator comments that while it is easy for a reader, from an external point of view, to see that Lucy loves George and not Cecil, it is not so easy for Lucy herself to realize this. When Charlotte arrives, she asks Lucy if she has told her mother about George. Lucy is annoyed with Charlotte and says that she will not tell anyone about her history with George. The next Sunday, George visits Windy Corner after church to play tennis. Cecil refuses to play, so Lucy fills in for him. Afterwards, Cecil reads aloud from a comically bad novel he is reading. Lucy realizes it is written by Miss Lavish, under a pseudonym, and is amused. Lucy talks with George about the view from Windy Corner, and George says that his father has told him the only perfect view is "the view of the sky straight over heads." Lucy is fascinated by this, but realizes she is paying more attention to George than to Cecil, so she asks Cecil to read more of his book. He reads a passage in which the novel's heroine is sitting on a riverbank in spring and is suddenly kissed by a man. Lucy immediately realizes that the scene is modeled on her kiss with George. She stops Cecil, and they walk with George back toward Windy Corner. However, Cecil has to go back to get his book, which he left on the ground, leaving George and Lucy alone among some bushes for a moment. George seizes the opportunity to kiss her, shocking Lucy. In her room, Lucy discusses this kiss with Charlotte, and also accuses Charlotte of telling Miss Lavish about the first kiss. Charlotte admits to this, and apologizes. Lucy decides to talk to George, and tells him that he must leave immediately. George insists that he loves Lucy, that Lucy does not really love Cecil, and that Cecil is controlling and patronizing toward her and all women. After George leaves, Lucy looks at Cecil and suddenly realizes that he is "absolutely intolerable." Later that evening, she breaks off her engagement. Cecil is stunned, and Lucy explains that she wants to "choose for myself what is ladylike and right," and doesn't want to be controlled or stifled. Cecil comments that "a new voice" seems to be speaking through Lucy. Lucy insists to Cecil that she is not in love with someone else, and she resolves not to marry anyone. The narrator comments that Lucy has "sinned against passion and truth," in denying her love for George. Soon after, Mr. Beebe pays a visit to Windy Corner and learns about what has happened. He is sympathetic to Lucy and tells her about a trip the Miss Alans are planning to Greece. Lucy desperately wants to join them on this trip, to escape from her problems at home. Mr. Beebe talks this over with Charlotte, and the two agree that the trip would be good for Lucy. They help convince Mrs. Honeychurch to let Lucy go to Greece. Lucy and her mother visit the Miss Alans in London to make arrangements for the trip. The Alans talk as if Cecil and Lucy are still engaged, and Lucy doesn't correct them. On the way home, Lucy and her mother stop at the church to pick up Charlotte. Charlotte says she wants to stay for a service, so Lucy waits in Mr. Beebe's study. There, she finds Mr. Emerson, who apologizes on behalf of his son. Once he learns that Lucy is no longer engaged to Cecil, though, he realizes that Lucy really does love George, and he urges her to accept her feelings and act on her love. Lucy feels strengthened and emboldened by Mr. Emerson's encouragement. The novel then jumps forward to find Lucy and George, married, staying together in Florence at the Pension Bertolini. They are in the same room that Lucy stayed in last time—with a view. They are happy together, but Lucy is somewhat sad that Mr. Beebe, her mother, and Freddy are all upset with her for eloping with George. Lucy comments on how fortunate it is that Charlotte wanted to stay at the church that day, so that Lucy ran into Mr. Emerson, and George wonders if Charlotte actually set up the meeting intentionally. He wonders if Charlotte had actually always wanted Lucy and him to end up together, from the very beginning. Lucy says that this is possible, and she and George rejoice in their love, while also "conscious of a love more mysterious than this."

- Genre: Southern Gothic - Title: A Rose for Emily - Point of view: First-person plural ("we") limited - Setting: The fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi, located in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, where many of Faulkner's works are set - Character: Miss Emily Grierson. Description: A proud woman born to a highly respected Southern family, Miss Emily seems frozen in the past, bearing herself aristocratically even when she is impoverished after her controlling father's death. Though her thoughts and feelings are as impenetrable as the imposing, decaying house in which she lives, Miss Emily is nonetheless subject to intensive town scrutiny and gossip: the townspeople gossip about her haughtiness, her lack of a husband, and, in the days after her father's death, her bizarre denial of his death and attempt to keep his corpse. But Miss Emily is not as frozen in the past as she first appears to be: after all, she becomes romantically involved with a laborer from the North named Homer Barron—despite the Southern social convention that women of genteel heritage not marry men of a lower class, especially men from the North. Ms. Emily seems to be, for the first time, taking control of her own life, despite what other people think. However, when it becomes apparent that Homer has no intention of marriage—which only further scandalizes the townspeople—Miss Emily goes to mad extremes to maintain control of her life: she poisons Homer, and not only lives with but sleeps next to his corpse, going so far as to create a tomb-like room for him where she can relive forever the one hopeful, self-determined period of her life. She becomes increasingly disconnected from her community, more and more reclusive, bloated-looking and pale, with "iron-gray" hair, more and more resistant to change; and it is only after her death and funeral that the townspeople realize how deeply, tragically damaged Miss Emily was. - Character: The townspeople. Description: The story is narrated by "we," the townspeople in general, who also play a role in Miss Emily's tragedy. The townspeople respect Miss Emily as a kind of living monument to their glorified but lost pre-Civil War Southern past, but are therefore also highly judgmental and gossipy about her, sometimes hypocritically. They think Miss Emily is too haughty and choosy when it comes to her romantic involvements, and yet when she begins to see Homer Barron they think she is not choosy enough. For all that the townspeople scrutinize and judge Miss Emily, for all that they stick their noses in her business and intervene in her romantic affairs, they ironically fail to recognize that she is deeply damaged, even criminally insane, and they also fail to discover that she murdered Homer till some forty years after the fact. - Character: Homer Barron. Description: The "big, dark, ready" foreman of a construction company that arrives in Jefferson to pave the sidewalks, Homer is from the North but nonetheless becomes popular in town, a social drinker at the local Elks' Club. His presence in Jefferson suggests the reunification of North and South after the Civil War, and he himself is an agent of progress and industrialization in a heretofore rigidly conservative community. Indeed, even Miss Emily falls for his charms, and the two become romantically involved with one another, riding together on Sundays in Homer's "yellow-wheeled buggy" despite the townspeople's judgmental gossip about his connection to the genteel Southern Miss Emily. However, Homer is "not a marrying man." So, desperate to keep him with her, Miss Emily poisons Homer and keeps his corpse in her house, a ghastly husband indeed; it is evident that she lies next to and even embraces his rotting flesh. - Character: Miss Emily's father. Description: A proud Southern gentleman, controlling of his daughter, who thinks that no suitor is worthy of her hand in marriage. As a result, she never does marry when he is alive, and is close to being beyond "marriageable age" after he dies. When he dies, Miss Emily insists for three days that he is not dead at all, and would have kept his corpse had the town authorities not intervened. - Character: The Baptist minister and his wife. Description: Scandalized by the relationship between Miss Emily and Homer, some ladies in town coerce the Baptist minister into speaking with Miss Emily. He does so; and the day after their meeting the minister's wife writes to Miss Emily's two female cousins in Alabama, presumably advising them to come live with Miss Emily and oversee her conduct. - Character: Colonel Sartoris. Description: The mayor of Jefferson in the 1890s, Sartoris is a representative of the old genteel per-Civil War South (he was a Confederate Colonel in the war). Sartoris passed a racist law that forces black women in Jefferson to wear their aprons in public, and in 1894 he comes to the financially impoverished Miss Emily's aid by excusing her from having to pay her taxes in Jefferson. The town authorities who succeed him with their "modern ideas" are frustrated by this arrangement with Miss Emily, but are unable to change it. - Theme: The Post Civil-War South. Description: Before the American Civil War (known as the "antebellum South"), the South's economy relied on the agricultural output of plantations, large farms owned by wealthy Southern whites who exploited black slave labor to keep operating costs as low as possible. By its very nature, plantation life gave rise to a rigid social hierarchy—one in which wealthy white farmers were treated like aristocrats, middle-class and poor whites like commoners, and blacks like property. Along with this social hierarchy, plantation life also gave rise an aristocratic culture that valued very highly chivalric ideals (those associated with the institution of medieval knighthood) like courage, honor, courtesy, social propriety, female virginity, and a readiness to help the weak. "A Rose for Emily" is set in the South after the Civil War (the "postbellum" South), after slavery had been abolished and plantation life had collapsed. With their society in economic ruins, however, Southerners did not give up on their aristocratic culture but rather clung to it nostalgically, and yearned to return to a past more glorious in memory than it ever was in reality.This historical situation underlies Faulkner's depiction of the Southern (and fictional) town of Jefferson, Mississippi in "A Rose for Emily." The very epitome of the Old South in the short story is Colonel Sartoris, who as mayor passed a racist law forcing black women to wear their aprons in public—an insidious reminder of the old social hierarchy of the South—and who in 1894 excuses Miss Emily from paying taxes to Jefferson on a chivalric impulse. In addition, Miss Emily Grierson's family is presented as having been once wealthy and still highly respected in their Southern community; they quite likely belonged to the aristocratic class of slaveholders before the Civil War, though their fortune in the postbellum world has since dwindled. Nonetheless, the family is as proud of its aristocratic heritage as Sartoris is, so much so that Emily's father refuses to let his daughter become romantically involved with anyone of a lower social class. The townspeople of Jefferson not only approve of but seem to protect and uphold such rigid adherence to their old traditions. Even after Miss Emily's father dies and Miss Emily comes to think of herself as being socially better than her poverty would justify, the townspeople nonetheless tolerate her haughtiness because she is a living monument to their glorified past, just as significant to them in this respect as the Grierson family house itself, or the cemetery where Civil War soldiers are buried. - Theme: Tradition vs. Progress. Description: Even as white Southerners in the short story cling to their pre-Civil War traditions, ideals, and institutions, the world around them is quickly changing. Agriculture is being supplanted by industry, and aristocratic neighborhoods with their proud plantation-style houses like the Grierson's are being encroached upon by less grandiose but more economically practical garages and cotton gins. Likewise, the post-Sartoris generation of authorities in Jefferson—those men who belong to the Board of Aldermen that governs the town—are increasingly moving away from their forbears' aristocratic and chivalric ideals toward "more modern ideas" and practical, progressive governance—hence their decision to try to exact taxes from Miss Emily after all (even if unsuccessfully). While many years earlier, the gallant old Judge Stevens balks at the idea of telling a lady to her face that her property stinks, the authorities from this newer generation, we might imagine, would have fewer qualms about doing so. The principal figure of progress in Jefferson is Homer Barron, who has not only been contracted to pave the sidewalks in town—thereby making the town more accessible to all members of society, in what is a small act of both technological progress and a small act of democratization—but who also becomes a great favorite in town despite being from the North. It seems like the North and South, torn apart during the Civil War, are becoming reconciled to one another and reintegrated once more. However, the townspeople's conflicted attitude toward Homer—they think him a fine fellow, yet don't think he is good enough to court Miss Emily—is indicative of their broader ambivalence about progress in Jefferson. They are perhaps prepared to industrialize and modernize their infrastructure and methods of governance, they are even prepared to socialize with Northerners, but they are not yet prepared to part with the last vestige of the Old South or its rigid social hierarchy and culture of honor and sexual propriety.Miss Emily herself is perhaps the character in the short story most conflicted over tradition and progress, and most victimized by her society's cultural paralysis. She retains her aristocratic manner even after sinking into poverty, she refuses eligible suitors as beneath her even as she passes from the prime of her youth, and she even bizarrely denies her father's death, as though incapable of psychologically surviving the financial and social change his death entails for her. But, just as a future of spinsterhood seems imminent, Miss Emily almost miraculously adapts to the times by becoming romantically involved with Homer, a man not only from a lower social class than she but a Northerner to boot. Financial necessity no doubt influences her change in standard and manner, but also a genuine human need for companionship. However, the townspeople, who are charmed and friendly with Homer, nonetheless think this a step too far in the direction of progress, and are at first piteous of Miss Emily's fall, and later scandalized by the possibility that she is having physical relations with a man not serious about marriage—progressive behavior indeed. It is her society's inability to commit wholly to progress, to adaptation, that in part compels the already mentally unstable Miss Emily to create with poison and dusty secrecy a private world safely frozen in the past, unchanging. - Theme: Patriarchal Authority and Control. Description: Members of Jefferson's Board of Alderman, whether old and gallant and nostalgic for the Old South like Sartoris or young and business-like such as the newer generation of authorities, all have something in common: they are all male and govern over—and to the exclusion of—women. Faulkner foregrounds this dynamic when he has his narrator recall Sartoris's law requiring all black women to wear their aprons in public, and dramatizes it in Miss Emily's relationships with her father and the town authorities themselves. For even in private life, the men in Jefferson exert full control over women's lives, as Emily's father does in telling his daughter which suitors she may and may not allow to court her. Indeed, social repression, stiff propriety, and a fetishization of female virginity characterize the Southern culture portrayed in the story. However, one reason Ms. Emily draws so much attention to herself in town is because she often resists patriarchal authority, as when she flat-out refuses to pay her taxes (here she plays the old generation of patriarchal authority against the newer), or when she forbids the installation of a mailbox and postal numbers on her property. Even courting Homer Bell is a subtle act of rebellion on Miss Emily's part, against her society's social conventions and, presumably, the wishes of her dead father.Given how pre-determined the course of her life has been—not only by the Jefferson patriarchs but also by the Civil War and its aftermath and the code of conduct enforced on her by her society—it is no wonder that Miss Emily attempts to take control of her own life, to live on her terms, to be the master of her fate. Her ultimate gesture to this end, of course, is the murder of Homer and her lifelong marriage, as it were, to his rotting, dust-suffused corpse—instead of letting Homer leave her, Miss Emily asserts absolute control over his life, literally turning him into an object which she can manipulate at will. The madly desperate, horrific nature of this crime speaks to just how oppressed and stifled Miss Emily is, as well as to the huge denial of freedom which her society subjects her to. That her great aunt Wyatt went mad too suggests that Miss Emily's is not an isolated case. Although it would be misguided to insist on this comparison past a certain point, the subjugation of women in this story quietly reflects the even more virulent subjugation of black Americans at the hands of the white South, as Tobe's presence in the story quietly reminds us. - Theme: Time and Narrative. Description: "A Rose for Emily" is not a linear story, where the first event treated brings about the next, and so on—rather, it is nonlinear, jumping back and forth in time. However, there is a method to this temporal madness: the story opens with Miss Emily's funeral, then goes back in time, slowly revealing the central events of Miss Emily's life, before going back forward in time to the funeral. There, in the story's final scene, the townspeople discover in Homer's corpse and the strand of Miss Emily's hair the facts that make sense of all the events described before—for example, that Miss Emily bought arsenic from the druggist while in her thirties not to commit suicide as the townspeople suspected, but rather to murder her defective sweetheart. So, why does Faulkner structure his story like this? Toward the end of the story, its narrator makes a generalization about time that can be brought to bear on this question: for old people "all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years." Looked at in this light, doesn't the non-linear nature of the story present the past it describes less as a "diminishing road" and more as a "meadow", in which one might meander backward toward a glorified past? It is almost as if the townspeople's nostalgia for the Old South, their desire to go back to a time they remember or mythologize as better, infects their storytelling practices. Perhaps—at least for now—it would be better if Jefferson got back onto the road of time, paved and lined with garages, and left their increasingly irrelevant social conventions in the dust. If only the past had been a diminishing road for Ms. Emily, rather than a huge rose-colored meadow where only corpses and the dust grow. - Theme: Gossip, Social Conventions, and Judgment. Description: "A Rose for Emily" is narrated by a plural "we" voice, which stands in for the memory of the collective town. In this way, the story can be read as the town's collective, nostalgically tinged, darkly disturbed memory. And yet that collective voice has a darker edge than a simple collective memory. Because of that collective narrator, "A Rose for Emily" is also a collection of town gossip centering on Miss Emily, generated by decades of intense scrutiny on her life. The townspeople watch Miss Emily very closely, both because their own nostalgia for the pre-Civil War South makes her necessary to them as a representative of their aristocratic heritage, but also because, as an individual, she is eccentric, pitiable, exciting to watch and exciting to judge behind closed doors. Indeed, the "we" narrator almost seems sometimes aware that they have darker motives for scrutinizing Miss Emily's life, like taking a pleasure in her fall to poverty, a feeling of social superiority over her when she begins to court Homer and the like. But it is also through scrutiny and gossip that the society in Jefferson enforces its social conventions: for example, it is the gossip of "ladies" that leads the Baptist minister's wife to write to Miss Emily's cousins, who themselves come to Jefferson to scrutinize and oversee Miss Emily's conduct with Homer, whom, not serious about marriage, the town implicitly judges a danger to Miss Emily's virginity (and her ability to uphold the lost social conventions the town requires her to). It is almost as if the town needs Miss Emily to be the representative of its lost, mythologized past, and hates her for it.Ironically, for all that the townspeople watch and judge Miss Emily, for all that they intervene to make sure that she doesn't violate the social conventions of Jefferson, they nevertheless fail to realize—despite her buying the arsenic, despite the bad smell issuing from her place—that Miss Emily has in secret committed a dreadful and horrifying crime, nor do they realize just how damaged a woman she is prior to committing the crime itself. The implication is that close scrutiny does not a close community make; social bonds consisting solely of gossip and judgment are not enough for people living together to truly know and care for one another. - Climax: The townspeople's discovery that Miss Emily murdered Homer Barron and lived with his corpse - Summary: "A Rose for Emily" opens in the twentieth century on the day Miss Emily Grierson's funeral, held in the once grand, now decaying Grierson family house. Many townspeople were in attendance, not only to pay their respects but also out of curiosity, for no one had seen the interior of the Grierson house in ten years. However, the narrative quickly shifts back in time, and describes an episode in which Colonel Sartoris, the then-mayor of Jefferson, Mississippi, excused Miss Emily from having to pay taxes in 1894 (he did so because she was both impoverished and unmarried despite being in her forties). Almost twenty years after Sartoris granted this amnesty to Miss Emily, however, a newer generation of men had assumed power in Jefferson, with "modern ideas" and a more pragmatic approach to governance. This generation found the arrangement Sartoris had made with Miss Emily dissatisfying; but, despite their persistence, they failed in their several attempts to exact taxes from the increasingly reclusive woman. The narrator then likens this small victory of Miss Emily's (her continuing avoidance of taxes) to one she secured thirty years earlier, when she was in her thirties. Neighbors complained to the then-mayor of Jefferson, Judge Stevens, that a bad smell was issuing from Miss Emily's place, but Stevens refused to inform Miss Emily of this for fear of humiliating her. Instead, four men were dispatched to investigate the smell in secret and to spread an odor-neutralizing agent, lime, on Miss Emily's property. The smell went away thereafter. The narrative takes a final step back in time, to two years before the bad smell was detected. Miss Emily's father died, leaving her a "pauper." Miss Emily denied that he was dead, however, and would have kept his corpse had town authorities not intervened. In the same year as her father's death, a construction company headed by a Northerner named Homer Barron arrived in town to pave the sidewalks; he and Miss Emily came to be sweethearts despite the scandal of a Southern woman of genteel birth being romantically involved with a Northern laborer. The townspeople were only further scandalized, however, when they learned that Homer was by his own account "not a marrying man." Consequently, the Baptist minister's wife wrote to two of Miss Emily's haughty female cousins, who duly arrived in Jefferson to live with Miss Emily and oversee her conduct. Soon after, Homer deserted Miss Emily. She bought poison, arsenic—to commit suicide, the townspeople assumed. Yet her cousins departed within the week, and Homer returned to her within three days of their departure, leading the townspeople to suspect that it was only the haughty cousin who had driven Homer away. The day he returned, Homer was admitted into Miss Emily's house at dusk. Yet Homer Barron was never seen again, and the townspeople assumed that he had abandoned her after all. The narrative then moves forward, back up to Miss Emily's funeral. The narrator recalls how, after Miss Emily was buried, the townspeople found and eventually forced entry into a locked room in her house, where they discovered Homer Barron's corpse laid out in a bed and, on a pillow next to his head, a strand of Miss Emily's hair.

- Genre: Detective Fiction - Title: A Scandal in Bohemia - Point of view: First person limited; perspective of John Watson, who chronicles Holmes's adventures - Setting: London, Victorian Era - Character: Sherlock Holmes. Description: Sherlock Holmes is a private detective who has been contracted by Wilhelm von Ormstein, King of Bohemia, to confiscate photographic evidence of the King's previous affair with a woman named Irene Adler. The King has sought out Holmes and his assistant Dr. John Watson due to their reputation for solving difficult and delicate cases throughout Europe. To address the King's issue, Holmes and Watson don various disguises, gathering information about Irene's life. Eventually, while disguised as a clergyman, Sherlock tricks Irene into letting him into her home and he discovers where she is hiding the photographs. While he plans to return the next day to steal them, Adler outwits him—she is gone by the time he returns, leaving him a letter that promises never to ruin the King's life, but keeping the photographs for herself. Above all, Sherlock values intelligence and cunning, and rarely finds another individual whose mental faculties match his own. Even his closest friend Watson can only marvel at his deductions: when the two men are reunited after quite some time apart, Sherlock is able to deduce a number of minute details of Watson's life within the first few seconds of seeing him. Adler, however, is the only woman he would ever consider his intellectual equal, and he seems to think of her wistfully and almost romantically. Sherlock's rare intelligence is a boon to his detective work, but it sets him apart from those around him, and his lack of social connection keeps him almost completely isolated. He is also eccentric, eschewing most human interactions and choosing instead to isolate himself in his home at 221B Baker Street, consumed either by cocaine use or a mystery to solve. - Character: Dr. John Watson. Description: A medical doctor and close friend of Sherlock Holmes, Watson narrates "A Scandal in Bohemia" and assists Holmes in his investigation. He has also chronicled and published a number of Holmes's cases, and clearly admires the detective for his extraordinary powers of observation and deduction. He used to live with Sherlock at 221B Baker Street, but recently got married and moved in with his wife; he had not seen much of Sherlock since then, and he begins "A Scandal in Bohemia" by coming to visit his friend, wherein he is swept up in Sherlock's latest case. Watson is tolerant of Sherlock's eccentricities because he truly believes in the detective's genius, describing him as "the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen." He participates enthusiastically in the investigation, expressing to Holmes that he will gladly break the law and risk arrest for a good cause. While Watson is very intelligent in his own right, it is his admiration for his friend Sherlock that takes center stage in "A Scandal in Bohemia." - Character: Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein. Description: The King of Bohemia, and Sherlock Holmes's client in this case. He is currently engaged to the Princess of Scandinavia, but reveals to Holmes and Watson that years ago, while in Warsaw, he had a relationship with Irene Adler, an opera singer and "well-known adventuress." Irene has a number of letters and photos that would serve as proof of this indiscretion, and that information would likely jeopardize the King's current engagement. He will do anything to obtain and destroy this evidence, but Irene refuses to hand it over, and she has outsmarted the King's men more than once. He still admires Irene and notes that she would make an excellent queen, but he is more focused on maintaining his respectability and royal status. The King seems to be unaware of his surroundings and ignorant of his effect on others: when he arrives at 221B Baker Street in a mask, he believes himself to be incognito, despite the fact that Sherlock knows exactly who he is. He is also completely ignorant to Sherlock's general disdain for him, and when the King mentions that Irene is not on his level, he does not recognize it as an insult when Sherlock responds that she "seems indeed to be on a very different level to your Majesty." - Character: Irene Adler. Description: Irene Adler is an opera singer, world traveler, and former lover of Wilhelm von Ormstein, King of Bohemia. She has kept letters and photographs that are evidence of her relationship with the King and, according to him, she plans to use them to blackmail him if he tries to marry the Princess of Scandinavia. While Holmes manages to trick Irene with a disguise and gain entry in to her house, she catches on quickly and disguises herself to spy on Holmes and Watson, ultimately outwitting them and fleeing before they can seize her photographs. Irene is initially portrayed as the story's antagonist, but her intelligence and cunning earn Sherlock Holmes's admiration, and she proves not to be a malicious person at all. In the end, even though she doesn't hand over the photographs, she assures Holmes and the King that she means them no harm. Not only does the King of Bohemia proclaim that she would have made an excellent queen if she were not a commoner, but Sherlock considers her more intelligent than any other women he has met. - Character: Godfrey Norton. Description: A lawyer who is Irene Adler's new husband. Not much is known about Norton, except that he is a lawyer and has been seeing Irene for some time. When Sherlock Holmes dresses as a groom and goes to Irene's neighborhood to gather information about her, he is somehow brought in to act as a witness to the marriage of Irene and Godfrey. In comparison with the King of Bohemia's wedding, which will presumably be a lavish royal affair, this ceremony is quick and austere, with the newlyweds driving off in different directions. This quiet ceremony, coupled with the fact that Irene describes Norton as a better man than the King, present a strong contrast to the public but likely loveless royal marriage. - Theme: Logic vs. Emotion. Description: Unlike many Sherlock Holmes adventures, "A Scandal in Bohemia" does not present an unsolvable mystery for modern fiction's preeminent detective. Instead, Holmes must trick a young woman, Irene Adler, into divulging the whereabouts of a photograph that could damage the reputation of his latest client, the King of Bohemia. While Holmes is famous for his use of the powers of observation and deductive reasoning to solve crimes—his assistant, John Watson, portrays Holmes as more machine than man, rejecting emotion in favor of logic and intellect—"A Scandal in Bohemia" provides a brief glimpse of the detective's human side when he meets the unique and mysterious Adler. When Holmes finds himself bested by Adler, he comes to admire—and perhaps feel a certain affection for—this woman whose cunning matches his own. The story explores the tension between Holmes's cold and almost inhuman deductive abilities and his uncharacteristic response to Ms. Adler in order to question whether emotion is incompatible with reason. Watson's description of Holmes at the beginning of the story establishes him not just as an excellent detective, but as superhuman in his intellectual abilities. Watson, who has accompanied Holmes on many cases and observed his methods, describes him as "the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen," and compares him to a "sensitive instrument." When Holmes sees Watson again after months apart, he deduces a number of details of Watson's life that seem incomprehensible to the doctor. Holmes notes, for example, that Watson has employed a clumsy servant girl based on the cuts on the inside of his left shoe. Watson is astounded by Holmes's ability to know so much about him just based on his outward appearance, which leads to a discussion between the two men in which Holmes tells his friend, "You see, but you do not observe." Holmes employs this same incredible process of observation and deduction on the "mysterious" masked visitor to 221B Baker Street, whom he identifies as Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, a.k.a. King of Bohemia, well before the man can unmask himself. The detective walks Watson through his process, deducing solely from the short note he has received that the client is a German nobleman living in Bohemia. Together these moments reflect Holmes as an expert collector of what he refers to as "data," again underscoring the methodical, machine-like approach he takes to his work—and suggesting that all human behavior can essentially be boiled down into discrete, observable data points. Unsurprisingly, the remarkable precision of Holmes's powers of deduction doesn't translate to any sort of similar emotional sensitivity.  In fact, Watson portrays Holmes as socially aloof and somewhat marginalized due to his disdain for human emotion or contact. Watson begins his story by noting that he and Holmes had drifted apart prior to its events, largely due to their differing lifestyles: Watson was beginning to enjoy the comforts of married life, whereas Holmes "loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul." He makes these comments without judgement, accepting Holmes's isolation as an essential part of his being. Holmes's social and emotional detachment is further intensified by his drug use. When Watson was not around, the detective would hide away in his apartment, alternating "between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature." When the two men meet again, it is Watson, not Holmes, who initiates contact. Holmes seems uninterested in seeing his friend and hardly speaks to him at first. Watson is used to this treatment, however. He notes that Holmes's "manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me." Once again, Watson comments without judgement and ascribes this behavior to Holmes's unique personality, sensing that emotionality would only distract him from his detective work. Strictly logical judgment and reason are thus presented as antithetical to social connection; this is regarded as an acceptable trade-off for Holmes's remarkable talents. Adler is one of the few characters to elicit anything like emotion from Holmes, and one of the major themes of "A Scandal in Bohemia" is Watson's surprise at his friend's rare and somewhat contradictory behavior towards her. Watson is quick to note that "It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler." However, Holmes's reaction to Adler is about as close as the detective would ever get, in this or any other story, to an emotional attachment to a woman. It is notably Adler's cunning that catches Holmes's attention, and for him, "she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex." In fact, Watson begins "A Scandal in Bohemia" with a statement about Holmes's feelings for Adler, claiming that to him, "she is always THE woman." When the King attempts to give Holmes a valuable emerald ring for his work, the detective requests the photo of Adler instead, adding that he values it more highly. This kind of sentimental memento is a surprising choice for a man like Sherlock Holmes and suggests more than passing interest on his part. Yet it is not the image of Adler, per se, that attracts Holmes's attention, but rather the fact that she alone is able to dupe one of the world's greatest detectives. In a way, Holmes's interest in Adler only reinforces his single-minded obsession with intellect and cunning. Adler herself, however, appears much more emotional than her would-be antagonist, getting married midway through the story and then skipping town with her beloved. For Adler, it seems, emotion does not prevent her from outwitting the great Sherlock Holmes—and would in fact suggest that feeling and logic are not as incompatible as they may seem.  Either way, "A Scandal in Bohemia" presents two sides of Sherlock Holmes: the cold, calculating mind that speaks of emotion "with a gibe and a sneer," and the glimmer of sentimental attachment to another person. While this brief show of emotion is not nearly enough to "throw a doubt upon all his mental results" or truly distract him from his work, his admiration for Adler gives readers a glimpse of the man behind the machine. - Theme: Disguise and Deception. Description: The prolific use of disguises in "A Scandal in Bohemia" sends the message that not everything is what it seems, and that appearances are never to be trusted. Sherlock Holmes, the King of Bohemia, and Irene Adler all attempt to disguise themselves in order to get what they want, with varied results; the quality of their disguises, and their ability to fool those around them, is a measure of the intellectual capacity of each character in the story. The King of Bohemia attempts to disguise himself when he comes to meet Holmes but is unprepared for the detective's powers of observation and detection. When a man arrives wearing a mask and calling himself Count Von Kramm, Holmes quickly recognizes him for who he is: "Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, and hereditary King of Bohemia." In his demeanor, Holmes makes clear that he is unimpressed by his visitor's royal status as well as his attempts at trickery. The King does not seem to understand the concept of disguise, believing that a flimsy face mask could somehow render him incognito, despite the opulence of his dress, carriage, and even of the paper he uses to write the note. His inability to hide his true identity is a signal of the King's lack of intellect and creativity: he is incapable of stepping outside of himself or being anyone other than the King of Bohemia. Holmes, on the other hand, is a master of disguise, and manages to fool everyone around him, including his friend Watson, with his costumes. He begins by transforming into "a drunken-looking groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered, with an inflamed face and disreputable clothes" to glean information about Irene Adler from the neighborhood workmen. His second disguise is that of a clergyman, which he uses to trick Adler into inviting him into her house so that he can find out where she has hidden the much-coveted photo of herself with the King of Bohemia. This is an essential part of his method of detection: the disguise allows him to enter into the world of the crime and observe as much as possible without being recognized. Unlike the King in his ineffectual mask, Holmes embodies the character he is taking on. Watson notes that for Holmes, the disguise was not superficial: his "expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary." He then compares his friend's disguises to theater: "The stage lost a fine actor… when he became a specialist in crime." Although the goal of this disguise is to fool Adler, she is impressed to learn that she has been tricked by the clergyman costume. In her final message to the detective, she cheers him on: "You really did it very well. You took me in completely." Holmes's skill with deception, then, reflects his deductive prowess and cunning, as only by closely observing the world can he hope to imitate it. Adler's use of disguise, meanwhile, serves a complex dual purpose in the story. On one hand, she wants to spy on Holmes and learn more about the investigation without being observed herself; at the same time, she wants Holmes to know that she has tricked him, proving that she too is capable of a superior level of cunning. Once Holmes has identified the location of the photograph that the King of Bohemia needs so urgently, he and Watson return to discuss their plans to retrieve it. They are still on the street in front of Holmes's apartment at 221B Baker Street when the detective announces that he will go to Adler's house at 8:00 a.m. the following day, before she is awake, taking her by surprise. As reach the door of Holmes's apartment, they are greeted by "a slim youth in an ulster who had hurried by." Holmes has heard the voice before but cannot place it. The youth is Adler in disguise, of course—she had been present during the men's conversation and is now aware of the detective's plans for the next day. Not content to simply leave town undetected, Adler leaves a note for Holmes when he arrives at her house, acknowledging that she was behind the disguise. She is proud of having successfully deceived Holmes, noting that "I have been trained as an actress myself. Male costume is nothing new to me."  Trickery is a form of cunning, and in this detective story it is a valuable skill, as is the ability to see through another's disguise. The King of Bohemia attempts to take part in this game of disguises and ends up looking foolish and ignorant; ironically, it is his elevated social status that renders him incapable of disguising himself. Holmes and Adler, however, take pride in their ability to mask themselves and infiltrate each other's world, using disguises to prove their intellectual value. - Theme: Love, Friendship, and. Admiration. Description: "A Scandal in Bohemia" presents a number of intertwined romantic and intellectual pairings: on the one hand, there is the engagement of the King of Bohemia to the Princess of Scandinavia, the marriage of Irene Adler and Godfrey Norton, and the fling between the King and Adler; on the other hand, there is the mutual admiration between both Holmes and Watson and between Adler and Holmes. This juxtaposition of romantic and platonic love establishes a sense of hierarchy in which romantic love, based on passion and emotion, is portrayed as inferior to an intellectual connection. There is a sense of mutual admiration between Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler that borders on romantic interest but is based entirely in a meeting of two extraordinary minds.  Watson notably chooses to begin his tale by focusing on Holmes's admiration for Adler. Prior to discussing the details of the case itself, he announces, "To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman." This establishes their relationship as the fundamental building block of this story, and as the central character in Holmes's world. Holmes generally has a low opinion of women, deeming them of a lesser intellect. While to modern readers this is certainly an unfair judgment, up to this point Holmes had not come into contact with a woman with mental capacities to match his own. Adler, however, manages to trick Holmes with a disguise, spy on him to find out his plans, and then foil those plans by leaving England before he can retrieve the King's photos. He is duly surprised and impressed. While this does not change the way Holmes feels about women in general, it places Adler in a different category altogether: "In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex," according to Watson. Holmes's feelings of surprise and admiration for Irene Adler are not unrequited, as Adler is clearly fascinated by the detective as well. She is equally surprised that Holmes is able to deceive her with his disguises, despite the fact that she had been warned of his extraordinary abilities. Though Adler escapes before Holmes and the King can retrieve the photo they seek, she leaves a letter, not addressed to the King—the man she had previously taken as a lover—but to Holmes, recognizing him as a "formidable […] antagonist" and seeming to take pleasure in recounting his deception. While she has found her romantic match in her new husband, Godfrey Norton, she has also found her intellectual match in Sherlock Holmes. Similarly, there is a sense of mutual admiration between Holmes and Watson that is entirely outside of—and superior to—any romantic sentiment. Watson is a true and loyal friend, devoted to the documentation of Holmes's detective work out of pure admiration. He explains that it is "a pleasure to me to study his system of work, and to follow the quick, subtle methods by which he disentangled the most inextricable mysteries." It is this pleasure that kept the two men close during the time before Watson's marriage. Despite claiming a satisfying life as a married man, Watson clearly misses Holmes, and when he happens by Baker Street, he is "seized with a keen desire" to see his friend. When he arrives, he is undeterred by strange and silent manner, because he is one of the few people who truly understands him.  Holmes may not be expressive or emotional, but he has his own ways of expressing his admiration for his friend. Once he and Watson have discussed the upcoming case, Holmes asks Watson to stay, noting that he needs him: "I am lost without my Boswell," he says, referring to James Boswell, whose biography of his friend Samuel Johnson is one of the most celebrated biographies of all time. Holmes is at his best when he has an audience, and Watson provides that for him, both through his unflagging admiration and his published chronicles of their adventures together. In contrast to these celebrated intellectual matches, the romantic entanglements in "A Scandal in Bohemia" are of little consequence and something of a distraction to the main action. The King's relationship with Adler is presented primarily as a problem to be solved—in fact, the King would like to destroy all evidence of their prior affections by destroying the photograph. He describes himself as having been "mad-insane" at the time, especially considering that as royalty, he could not possibly be linked to a commoner, much less a "well-known adventuress" such as Adler. There is no hint of romance in the King's planned marriage to a Scandinavian princess, either. He will only note that she is "the very soul of delicacy," referring to her highly principled nature. He expresses no love for her, nor feels any real loyalty. When Adler has revealed her ultimate plan to get away without giving up the desired photos, the King is reminded of his affection for her: "Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?" In the King's context, marriage is separate from romantic sentiment, and suitability is based entirely on social status. Watson's recent marriage is also presented as something of a problem, as it has kept the two friends apart for so long. In addition, Watson references married life once at the beginning of the story, yet once he and Holmes are reunited, he returns to his bachelor lifestyle, spending his free time with Holmes while on a case and even sleeping at 221B Baker Street instead of at his marital home.   In "A Scandal in Bohemia," despite the fact that Holmes's case involves saving a royal marriage, romance and love have little value to these characters. Despite being in happy marriages to other people, both Watson and Adler establish their most vital connections to Holmes via their mental capabilities. While it does not preclude the possibility of these characters finding fulfillment in love in their own personal lives, it is clear that this emotion has no place in their dealings with Holmes. - Theme: Justice. Description: In "A Scandal in Bohemia," as with most of Holmes's adventures, the detective serves a very unconventional form of justice that is not necessarily in line with state-sanctioned law and order. As a private detective, Holmes is deliberately separate from official law enforcement and is able to take on cases that the police could not—and he is also able to use methods that aren't available to the police. The story ultimately suggests the justice and the law are not synonymous, and sometimes it requires extralegal measures to solve a tricky case. The case of the King of Bohemia is not one that would commonly be solved by the London Metropolitan Police, which is why the King has come from Prague himself to consult with Holmes directly. The King emphasizes the importance of secrecy in this case, as exposure would be shameful for the royal family. Despite the fact that Dr. Watson chronicles many of Holmes's adventures, the detective himself is considered more discreet than the local authorities would be. More importantly, he is known for "clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police," according to Watson. This establishes a hierarchy of investigative work, in which Holmes is not only separate from, but also better than, the police. This means that he is often employed by the rich and powerful, such as the King of Bohemia and "the reigning family of Holland." In essence, while most Londoners are at the mercy of the Metropolitan Police, who may or may not have the capacity to bring about justice, Sherlock Holmes's extraordinary detective work is reserved for a privileged few.   Because he is not connected to any official police force, Holmes is not bound by the same moral codes of behavior, and often spends much of his time breaking the law in the pursuit of truth. Holmes is unfazed when, in the course of their discussion, the King of Bohemia admits that he has resorted to bribery and attempted robbery to retrieve the photographs from Irene Adler. Unlike the police, Holmes is unconcerned about the letter of the law, especially when it involves a mystery that interests him. The detective is unconcerned about his client's crimes in part because his own methods of investigation are unethical, if not outright illegal. He uses disguises and trickery to gain information about Adler, and even employs accomplices to stage an authentic-looking ruse to get him into Adler's home. As morally questionable as they may be, such methods of investigation prove effective, and Holmes is proud of the fact that he is not bound by law in the course of his investigation. When he asks Watson to help him, he asks him, "You don't mind breaking the law… nor running a chance of arrest?" Both Holmes and Watson seem to enjoy the freedom that comes with private investigation, and Watson justifies tricking Adler by telling himself that they "are not injuring her. We are but preventing her from injuring another." Holmes, on the other hand, feels no need to make justifications whatsoever. The conclusion of the investigation, in which Adler leaves England without giving up the photo, raises the question of whether or not justice has been served in this case. Adler has clearly outsmarted the detective and his client, and Holmes is forced to admit as much to the King, noting: "I am sorry that I have not been able to bring your Majesty's business to a more successful conclusion." Yet his apology is insincere, as Holmes is more interested in Adler's wit than the fate of the King's marriage. The King's response highlights the ultimately subjective nature of justice, however. He is satisfied with the outcome of the case because Adler has pledged not to expose their past relationship and ruin his chances of a royal wedding. In the end, the objective was not to obtain the photographs or even to punish for any crimes she may have committed; the ultimate goal was to make the King of Bohemia feel that his secret was safe. He closes the case by announcing that the "photograph is now as safe as if it were in the fire." The fact that the King and Holmes are willing to take Adler at her word establishes this woman as an extraordinary character who is somehow more trustworthy than an ordinary criminal. In contrast to a police investigation, in which solving the case and administering justice are one in the same, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes often place law and order into question. More importantly, "A Scandal in Bohemia" is reflective of a historical period in which modern investigation was mysterious—and therefore not part of orthodox police work—and a set of experimental methods that were only available to those who could pay for a private detective. Holmes sees the work of police, who worked to keep the streets of London safe and clean, as beneath him, and is content to take on more "interesting" cases that engage his mental capacities and allowed him to break the law, if need be. - Climax: Sherlock Holmes discovers where Irene Adler has hidden her precious photo - Summary: The famous London detective Sherlock Holmes is talking with his friend and companion John Watson when he receives a visit from a masked man, whom he deduces is actually Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, the king of Bohemia. Once the man is unmasked, he asks for Holmes's help retrieving a very valuable set of photographs. The King is engaged to a Scandinavian princess, but is worried that the princess's family would disapprove of his previous relationship with a young American opera singer named Irene Adler. Ms. Adler has evidence of this relationship, namely photographs of the two of them together, and has refused to return them to the King. His agents have offered to buy them from her and have even broken into her home in an attempt to steal them, but neither tactic was successful. Holmes is the King's last hope of retrieving the photos. Holmes agrees, and invites Watson to join him. Dressed as an out of work groom, Sherlock goes to Irene Adler's house and gathers valuable information from her workers: she has a gentleman caller, a lawyer named Godfrey Norton, who can be expected at the house at least once per day. Mr. Norton soon arrives at Ms. Adler's house and then they both leave for St. Monica's Church, followed by Holmes, still disguised as a groom. He is swept into the church to witness the marriage of Ms. Adler and Mr. Norton, and then observes them go their separate ways after the ceremony. Holmes returns to Irene's house that evening, this time dressed as a clergyman. He stages a fight with some men on the street and Irene brings him in to tend to his injuries. Once inside, he signals to Watson, who throws a small rocket into the house and yells "Fire!" Irene runs to a panel in her sitting room to protect the photographs of her and the King. Holmes observes this, and know knows where the photographs are hidden; he informs her that the fire was a false alarm, and he later leaves and meets up with Watson on the street. As the two men walk back to 221B Baker Street, they discuss plans to retrieve the photographs early the next morning. When the get to the front door, a young person walks by and says "Good-night Mister Sherlock Holmes," in a voice that is familiar to Holmes, though he cannot place it. Upon arriving at Irene Adler's home the next morning, the men find that she has already left England, but has addressed a letter to Sherlock. She congratulates him for tricking her into letting him in her home, but notes that she quickly saw through the clergyman disguise. She also reveals that it was she, dressed as a young man, who greeted him the night before at the door of 221B Baker Street. She and her new husband, Mr. Norton, have left England permanently, taking the photographs with them; the King need not worry, however, because she loves her new husband and has no desire to impede the King's royal wedding. The King is satisfied with this outcome to the case, and offers Sherlock an emerald snake ring as payment. Sherlock refuses the ring and instead requests a photo of Irene—one that she left behind with the letter—as a memento of the most remarkable woman he has ever met.

- Genre: Novel, Satire, Sentimental Fiction, Travelogue - Title: A Sentimental Journey - Point of view: First Person - Setting: France - Character: Yorick (The Narrator). Description: Yorick, the protagonist and narrator, is an English priest. He is sentimental, humorous, and internally contradictory: both prudish and oversexed, both religious and skeptical of organized religion's hypocrisy. When the novel begins, he abruptly decides to travel to France. He leaves behind his beloved Eliza, to whom he has sworn to be faithful. When he first arrives in France, Yorick feels generous and open-minded but behaves rudely and xenophobically—he refuses to give alms to a Franciscan monk, harshly criticizes the monk's religious order, and claims that he (Yorick) has an obligation to give to his fellow Englishmen before giving to anyone else. Yorick regrets his rudeness, however; he later apologizes to the monk, exchanges snuff-boxes with him, and uses the monk's snuff-box to remind himself to improve personally over the course of his travels. Shortly after meeting the monk, Yorick also meets Madame de L—, a young Flemish traveler whose look of suffering tugs at his heartstrings. Despite having sworn faithfulness to Eliza, Yorick ends up in several flirtatious situations with Madame de L— and, later, with a Parisian grisset (a young woman), Madame R—'s chambermaid, and a young madwoman named Maria. These flirtations humorously reveal Yorick's unruly sexuality, which seems to underly much of his sentimental kindness to women, as well as his inconstancy, fickle mind, and fluid personal identity. In keeping with Yorick's fluid identity, his story ends on an inconclusive note. Though he seems to have become more open-minded toward foreigners after his encounter with the monk, he decides to leave France for Italy after suddenly getting sick of Parisians; and though he continually tries to avoid infidelity to Eliza, the story ends just as he entangles himself in yet another sexually fraught situation with a Piedmontese lady and her maid. - Character: La Fleur. Description: La Fleur is Yorick's French servant, whom Yorick hires in Montriul after having trouble handling his baggage by himself. Prior to working for Yorick, La Fleur served in the French army, where he learned to play the drum and the fife, and then went home, where he was unemployed. Though La Fleur has none of the skills that Yorick wants in a servant—he doesn't know how to shave Yorick or take care of Yorick's wig—Yorick appreciates La Fleur due to La Fleur's loyalty and positive, even-keeled attitude. La Fleur's name means "flower" in French, which hints at his vanity and his romantic nature. Yorick describes him as a "coxcomb," a man excessively concerned with his own appearance, and as they are taking their leave of Montriul, Yorick sees him kissing the hands of six different women and weeping. As Yorick largely approves of La Fleur's behavior, La Fleur serves to emphasize Yorick's loyalty to his friends, his sentimentality about women, and his self-indulgent sexuality. Later, La Fleur's romantic adventures in Paris—a brief liaison with a servant girl who he almost immediately discovers is unfaithful to him—serve as a kind of counterpoint or reinforcement for Yorick's Parisian flirtations with the grisset and Madame de R—'s chambermaid. - Character: Madame de L—. Description: Madame de L— is a young Flemish woman from Brussels who is about 26 years old and has tan skin and an "interesting" though not beautiful face. Yorick meets her in a coach-yard in Calais while trying to buy a carriage. He thinks she looks like a superior person and imagines, from her look of suffering, that she is a widow. Due to his overactive sentimentality and sexuality, he immediately develops a crush on her and decides to help her in some way. The owner of the coach-yard, Monsieur Dessein, keeps leaving Madame de L— and Yorick alone, which allows their flirtation to progress. Yorick is about to invite Madame de L— to travel with him in a two-person carriage, despite the risqué rumors such an arrangement might engender, when her brother arrives to travel with her. After Yorick and Madame de L— both leave Calais, they glimpse each other again at Amiens. Madame de L— sends Yorick a note asking him to deliver a letter to Madame de R— in Paris and inviting him to visit her in Brussels, where she promises to tell him her tale of suffering. Though initially her invitation delights Yorick, he recalls his romantic promises to Eliza and resolves not to visit Brussels without her. As the first and most extended of Yorick's flirtations in France, Madame de L— serves to reveal Yorick's sentimentality about suffering women, his overactive sexuality, and his wavering faithfulness to Eliza. - Character: Franciscan Monk (Father Lorenzo). Description: The Franciscan monk, whose name is later revealed to be Father Lorenzo, is a member of a Catholic religious order that takes a vow of poverty and relies on charity to support itself. Prior to becoming a monk at 45, he worked as a soldier and had a failed romantic affair. He begs alms of Yorick shortly after Yorick's arrival in Calais, France. Yorick rudely and xenophobically denies the monk, criticizes his religious order's vow of poverty, and claims that he (Yorick) has a duty to give to other English people before giving to foreigners. The monk's lack of anger and humble acceptance of Yorick's response make Yorick regret his rudeness and resolve to improve his manners. Shortly thereafter, the monk approaches Yorick in a carriage-yard—where Yorick is looking to buy a carriage—and offers him a snuff-box. Yorick tries to give the monk his own snuff-box as an apology; the monk denies that Yorick needs to apologize, and Yorick and the monk exchange snuff-boxes in a gesture of goodwill. Thereafter, Yorick uses the monk's snuff-box to remind himself to be more mannered and humane. The monk thus represents foreign travel's humanizing influence and religion's potentially admirable qualities. The next time Yorick passes through Calais, he learns the monk has died, visits his grave, and cries. - Character: Count de B****. Description: Count de B**** is an Anglophile French aristocrat—he loves Shakespeare, English literature, and English people. Yorick first learns of the Count when he attempts to buy the Count's copy of Shakespeare's complete works, which the Count has sent to a Paris bookstore to be bound. After Yorick has gotten in trouble with the French police for traveling without a passport, he remembers the Count's fondness for English people and appeals to him for help. The Count not only obtains a passport for Yorick but also introduces him into Parisian high society. As an Anglophile Frenchman, the Count represents the humanizing effects of learning about other countries and caring about foreigners. - Character: The Chambermaid. Description: The chambermaid is a pretty young maid employed by Madame de R—, a Parisian lady to whom Yorick is supposed to deliver a letter from Madame de L—. Yorick first meets the chambermaid in a Parisian bookstore; he cautions her against falling in love, gives her a crown coin, and walks her partway home. Talking with her, he learns she works for Madame de R— and states his intention to visit her mistress in the morning. When he fails to keep the appointment, the chambermaid comes to his hotel room at Madame de R—'s request. In his hotel room, Yorick almost succumbs to the temptation to take sexual advantage of the chambermaid but eventually escorts her out instead. This episode reveals the potentially predatory nature of Yorick's overactive sex drive and his attention to women, which the novel for the most part treats as humorous. - Character: Maria. Description: Maria is a beautiful young "madwoman" who lives in the French countryside near Moulines. Yorick seeks her out after having heard about her from his friend Mr. Shandy (who encountered her in Laurence Sterne's other novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman). Though Yorick seems genuinely moved by Maria's suffering, his reaction to her also contains humorously overblown sentimentality—he keeps crying and mopping both their faces with his handkerchief—and sexuality. Thus, Maria betrays the mixture of genuine kindness, satirized sentiment, and base sexuality at play in Yorick's reactions to women. - Character: Old French Soldier. Description: Yorick meets the old French soldier at the Opera comique in Paris, where they share a box. When they see a tall German man blocking the view of a dwarf, the old French soldier convinces an opera employee to rectify the situation on the dwarf's behalf, which makes Yorick applaud. Later, when Yorick overhears members of the crowd yelling at a priest to keep his hands up while standing near some young women, the old French soldier explains the vulgar joke they are making, notes that all countries have good and bad points, and expounds on the value of learning about different kinds of people to grow in "mutual toleration" and "mutual love." Because of this cosmopolitan attitude, the old French soldier represents—like Count de B****—the value of learning about foreign countries and caring about foreign people. - Character: Grisset. Description: The grisset (a term for a young French woman of the working class) is a good-looking woman who works in a Paris shop. Yorick asks directions to the Opera comique from her, flirts with her, and takes her pulse under the pretense of proving that she has a good heart. - Theme: Sentimentality. Description: Throughout A Sentimental Journey, the author, Laurence Sterne, seems to satirize sentimentality by showing his characters emoting melodramatically over silly things. Both Yorick (the narrator) and the characters he meets frequently indulge in inappropriate, disproportionate emotional responses. Early in the novel, Yorick sees an abandoned one-person carriage called a Desobligeant in the coach-yard of the hotel-master Monsieur Dessein. Imagining a whole adventurous history for the carriage, Yorick works himself into an intense sympathy with the abandoned carriage and scolds Monsieur Dessein for not selling the carriage to another traveler. As carriages don't have feelings, Sterne is clearly mocking Yorick's overactive sympathy. A little later, Yorick meets a German traveler, whose sons have died of smallpox, weeping and mourning a death—not of his sons, but of a donkey he believed was his friend. Again, Sterne is clearly satirizing the German traveler's misplaced sentimentality, which leads him to mourn an animal while recounting the death of his own sons quite matter-of-factly. Incidents such as these—in which characters have comically intense emotional reactions to less important events while ignoring more important ones—recur throughout A Sentimental Journey. Despite Sterne's satire of overblown sentiment, however, other moments in A Sentimental Journey suggest that emotion helps us understand the world. Indeed, at some moments, Yorick's sentimentality leads him to a truer understanding of the world. When Yorick realizes that the French police may imprison him for entering France without a passport, he at first minimizes the danger he is in, trying to convince himself that prison wouldn't be so bad. Shortly after, he encounters a caged starling that repeats the phrase "I can't get out." Yorick's intense sentimental reaction to the caged starling makes him realize how terrible imprisonment would be and motivates him to seek help with his passport. With his freedom threatened, Yorick also comes to a moral understanding of the evils of slavery. Thus, in A Sentimental Journey, Sterne satirizes overblown sentiment but illustrates how appropriate emotional responses can improve people's understanding of the world. - Theme: Travel. Description: In A Sentimental Journey, several characters argue that travel—specifically, encounters with foreigners—can improve people morally by helping them to meet, understand, and love those different from themselves. The book's narrator, the Englishman Yorick, improves this way during his travels in France. Yorick begins his travels in France by behaving rudely to someone unlike himself. When a Franciscan monk begs Yorick for alms, Yorick not only refuses to give him anything but criticizes his religious order's voluntary poverty. Yorick also betrays his prejudice against other nationalities, claiming that if he were going to give money to anyone, he would give it to other poor Englishmen first. Because the Franciscan monk responds with humility and resignation rather than anger, Yorick immediately regrets his rudeness. He later apologizes to the monk, and the two men exchange snuff-boxes as a gesture of friendship. At subsequent points in the novel, the monk's snuff-box reminds Yorick of the cosmopolitan virtues to which he aspires. Thus, A Sentimental Journey suggests that Yorick's encounter with a foreign monk really has improved him. Yet not all the characters Yorick meets improve this way after meeting foreigners, which suggests that the result of such an encounter depends on the attitude a person brings to it. When Yorick is making the rounds of Parisian society, the people he meets only want him to reinforce their own identities and views: the Marquis de B**** just wants Yorick to suggest the Marquis is still a womanizer, Madame de Q*** just wants Yorick to listen to and approve of her wit, and so on. None of them care what they could learn from the foreigner, Yorick, in their midst. A Sentimental Journey thus illustrates that encounters with foreigners, which travel provides, can improve people morally—but only if they are open to change and new experiences. - Theme: Sexuality and Kindness. Description: Yorick, the narrator of A Sentimental Journey, at one point argues that "nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece"—in other words, kindness often contains mixed motives involving romance and sex, which we cannot remove without damaging our instinct to be kind. The novel largely supports Yorick's argument—but it also suggests that sexual attraction can lead to unkindness in the form of predatory behavior and infidelity. On the one hand, Yorick tends to be kind to women, due to his sexually tinged esteem for women in general. For example, he pays polite attention to Madame de L— and expresses interest in her suffering, he gives money and advice to Madame de R—'s chambermaid, and he wipes up the scorned madwoman Maria's tears when she seems in need of human contact and sympathy. These actions show how Yorick's sexual attraction to women makes him considerate toward them. Yet Yorick's sexual attraction to women also tempts him toward unkind, even predatory acts. For example, he narrowly resists taking advantage of Madame de R—'s chambermaid, a young woman of a lower social class who is only visiting him on an errand from her employer. Moreover, Yorick has promised his "eternal fidelity" to a woman named Eliza, a promise he seems in constant danger of breaking due to his sexual attraction to other women. In A Sentimental Journey, then, sexuality both motivates Yorick to kindness and tempts him to behave unkindly—it's a double-edged sword. - Theme: National vs. Personal Identity. Description: In A Sentimental Journey, national identity is rigid while personal identity is fluid, a contrast that cautions against applying stereotypes to individuals. During his travels through France, the narrator Yorick is constantly looking out for and commenting on examples of French national character. He notes the particular phrases that French people use most often, criticizes the way French men flirt, and comments on French beggars' "urbanity." In one long passage, he criticizes French politeness and contrasts it with English authenticity. In all these instances, Yorick seems to affirm that individuals fall into certain rigid national types. Yet Yorick's own personal identity is so fluid he almost lacks definition. As he says at one point, "There is not a more perplexing affair in life to me, than to set about telling any one who I am." He is constantly changing his mind: he criticizes the King of France and then toasts his health, berates the Franciscan monk and immediately regrets it, develops a sudden dislike for the hotel-master Monsieur Dessein and then curses himself for it, and so on. Yorick's difficulty defining himself makes the reader question the rigid opinions of various national groups—can other people, whether French, English, or otherwise, be neatly categorized when Yorick himself cannot? Although A Sentimental Journey traffics in national stereotypes, it implicitly advises against applying them to individuals, who cannot be so easily defined. - Theme: Religion. Description: A Sentimental Journey associates religion with hypocrisy and sexual repression, yet some characters' religious sentiments motivate them to admirable behavior. Thus, the novel suggests that religion can be either a negative or positive force, depending on the motives of the people practicing it. In a characteristic episode satirizing organized religion, the narrator Yorick persuades the aging Frenchwoman Madame de V***, who claims she "believe[s] nothing," to renounce her nihilism. He persuades her not by talking about God, but by claiming that only religion could protect a woman as beautiful as she is from male sexual attentions. The story implies that Madame de V*** becomes interested in organized religion again due to Yorick's sexual flattery—a vain and hypocritical motive, since Yorick is also arguing that religion represses sexuality. In episodes like these, the novel evinces a healthy skepticism for religion in general—and, perhaps, European Catholicism in particular. Yet not all religious characters in A Sentimental Journey are vain, repressed hypocrites. Traveling through France toward Italy, Yorick meets a peasant family who dance every evening after dinner to thank God with "a chearful and contented mind." The novel represents this joyous, physical, non-repressive religious worship as admirable. In A Sentimental Journey, then, whether religion is good or bad depends not on religion itself, but on the worshipers' motives and personalities. - Climax: Yorick becomes sick of French society and decides to leave for Italy - Summary: An English priest named Yorick, deciding to travel to France, packs and sails for Calais. In Calais, a Franciscan monk begs Yorick for alms. Yorick cruelly rebuffs him. After the monk leaves, Yorick regrets his cruelty and resolves to let his trip teach him to be a better person. Yorick visits a carriage-yard to buy a carriage. There, he sees the monk speaking to a lady (later revealed to be Madame L—). Retreating, Yorick crosses paths with Monsieur Dessein, a hotel-owner and proprietor of the carriage-yard, who offers to show him some carriages. Shortly after, Yorick bumps into Madame L—, offers her his hand, and follows Monsieur Dessein to the carriage-house with her. Believing he sees suffering on her face, Yorick develops a crush on Madame L— and wishes to do something good for her. When they reach the carriage-house, Monsieur Dessein realizes he has the wrong key and goes to fetch the right one, leaving Yorick and Madame L— alone. The monk approaches them. Yorick apologizes for his earlier behavior and offers the monk his snuff-box. The monk and Yorick exchange snuff-boxes as a gesture of friendship, and the monk departs. Yorick wants to offer to travel with Madame L— in a two-person carriage, but he worries people may infer an inappropriate sexual relationship between them. Monsieur Dessein returns with the right key, but a servant calls him away. Alone again, Yorick and Madame L— chat awkwardly about French men and flirtation. Then Monsieur Dessein comes back and tells Madame L— her brother has arrived at the hotel. As Madame L— is leaving, Yorick mentions that her brother's arrival has spoiled a proposal he wanted to make her; she replies that she guesses what the proposal is and that if her brother had not arrived, she would have accepted. Yorick buys a carriage and rides to Montriul, where he hires a servant, a young man named La Fleur with no useful skills. Yorick and La Fleur travel on to Amiens, where Yorick sees Madame L— riding by in her brother's coach. Later, Madame L— sends Yorick a letter asking him to deliver another letter to Madame de R— in Paris and inviting him to visit her sometime in Brussels. Recalling that he has sworn faithfulness to Eliza back in England, Yorick vows not to visit Brussels without her. By a series of coincidences, La Fleur ends up running into Madame L—, who asks him whether he has a letter from Yorick for her. La Fleur, embarrassed, runs back to Yorick and convinces him to copy a love letter La Fleur has on hand so that La Fleur can give something to Madame L—. Unable to think up a letter of his own on the spot, Yorick goes along with La Fleur's plan and copies the letter. Then he and La Fleur leave for Paris. In Paris, Yorick decides to visit the Opera comique and enters a shop to ask an attractive grisset (a term for a young French woman, generally of the working class) for directions. Though she repeats the directions several times, Yorick forgets them as soon as he leaves and returns to ask again. While there, Yorick mentions that the grisset must have an excellent pulse, since she has a good heart, and he lays his fingers on her wrist. The grisset's husband walks in, bows to Yorick, and leaves. Yorick is shocked by his behavior. A little later, he buys some gloves from the grisset and departs. Yorick finds the Opera comique, where he shares a box with an old French soldier. In the standing section, they see a tall German man blocking the view of a dwarf and refusing to move. The old French soldier summons an opera employee to deal with the German. Yorick applauds him. Later, they chat; the soldier tells Yorick that all nations have good and bad aspects and that travel is good because it helps people learn about and love one another. Yorick heartily approves of the sentiment. Walking home from the Opera, Yorick pops into a bookstore to buy some Shakespeare. The bookseller refuses to sell him the Shakespeare in the store, which belongs to Count de B****, who is having it bound. The bookseller mentions that Count de B**** is an Anglophile. A chambermaid comes into the store to buy a book; Yorick leaves the store with her, advises her against falling in love, and gives her a crown coin. When she mentions she works for Madame de R—, Yorick tells her he has a letter for her employer and says he'll visit the next day. When Yorick returns to his hotel, La Fleur tells him the French police have come looking for him because he doesn't have a passport. Initially, Yorick blows off his potential trouble with the law. Then he overhears a caged starling in a hotel hallway repeating the phrase "I can't get out," which reminds Yorick of the horrors of incarceration and slavery. The next morning, Yorick rides to Versailles to visit a French official who could get him a passport. As the official is busy, Yorick decides to visit and beg for help from Count de B**** instead. Yorick finds Count de B**** reading Shakespeare. He tells Count de B**** that, although they don't know each other, Yorick is relying on his fellow Englishman, Shakespeare, to introduce them. Count de B**** asks Yorick's name, and Yorick points to the name Yorick (the former king's dead jester) in Hamlet. Count de B**** pockets the play and leaves the room. A few hours later, Count de B**** returns with a passport. He tells Yorick that he could only have gotten a passport so quickly for a jester. Yorick goes back to his hotel room, where the chambermaid is waiting for him to ask whether he has a letter for Madame de R—. He and the chambermaid end up sitting on the bed; helping her with a loose shoe strap, Yorick knocks her over and feels extreme sexual temptation, but he hustles her out of his room before anything happens. Count de B**** introduces Yorick to various important people in Parisian society. After three weeks, Yorick gets sick of hobnobbing with them and decides to leave France for Italy. On the way, he decides to stop in Moulines to visit Maria, a young madwoman he heard about from a friend. He finds Maria in the countryside, cries with her, and walks her to Moulines; when they part, he thinks that if it weren't for his beloved Eliza, he would marry her. Yorick's carriage is delayed on the way to Turin by a large stone in the road. Yorick stops at an inn for the night, where the innkeeper demands that Yorick share his room with a lady from Piedmont and her maid. Embarrassed at having to share a room for the night, Yorick and the lady talk through a series of rules they will follow to make the experience as painless as possible. Among the rules is that Yorick will not speak after they have gone to bed except to say his prayers. After they go to bed, however, Yorick tosses and turns so miserably that he ends up shouting, "O my God!" The lady scolds him. While making excuses for his outburst, the maid quietly enters the room, at which point Yorick ends up throwing out his arm and catching hold of her—(at this point, the story breaks off).

- Genre: Short Story - Title: A Small, Good Thing - Point of view: Third-Person - Setting: Mid-20th-century U.S. - Character: Ann Weiss. Description: Ann, Howard's wife, is a 33-year-old mother to an eight-year-old boy, Scotty. At the beginning of the story, Ann is a cheerful woman who seems fulfilled by motherhood and overjoyed about her son's upcoming birthday. When she goes to order a birthday cake, she tells the baker about Scotty and the party, and his dismissive attitude offends her. She assumes that the baker must have a wife and kids of his own, so she can't understand why he wouldn't be interested in hearing about her son. But, unbeknownst to her, the baker is lonely and childless, and hearing about Scotty upsets him. This misunderstanding shows Ann's idealism: she's been lucky in her life thus far, and she's seemingly unable to empathize with other people's experiences. This idealism comes crashing down when Scotty is hit by a car on the morning of his birthday, falls into a coma, and dies a few days later. Amid this trauma, Ann is so paralyzed by worry and grief that she has little energy to consider Howard's feelings, and she becomes so cynical that she no longer believes having children is worth it. Her experience speaks to the fact that life can change from joyful to tragic in an instant, as well as the idea that deep familial bonds can be just as devastating as they are satisfying. At the end of the story, Ann is able to find a small but significant respite from her grief when she and Howard return to the bakery: she ends up confiding in the baker about Scotty's death and bonding with him over their mutual loneliness. Her newfound connection with someone she previously disliked shows how the tragedy of her son's death has made her more empathetic to others, as well as how simple kindness from strangers can be deeply meaningful for people who are coping with tragedy. - Character: Howard Weiss. Description: Howard is Ann's husband and eight-year-old Scotty's father. Prior to Scotty's accident, he leads a life that he recognizes is happy and "lucky," in the sense that nothing particularly traumatic has happened to him. However, when Scotty is hit by a car and falls into a coma on the morning of his eighth birthday, Howard is forced to recognize that life is chaotic and uncontrollable in its ability to quickly shift from joyous to tragic. The stress that he experiences after the accident is exacerbated by mysterious calls that the Weisses begin receiving at the house while they wait for news about Scotty's condition, leading Howard to believe that a "psychopath" is targeting them. (Unbeknownst to the couple, the calls are from a baker reminding them to pick up Scotty's birthday cake.) Howard tries to remain stoic so as not to upset Ann, but when Scotty still hasn't woken up after several days in the hospital, he begins to panic. Whereas, at first, he and Ann struggle to communicate openly and confide in each other, their growing worry over Scotty brings them together and allows them to connect more deeply. When Scotty ends up dying unexpectedly, Howard openly weeps and grieves his son, seemingly unable to accept that his formerly easy, happy life has been turned on its head in such a sort time. At the end of the story, when he and Ann return to the bakery to confront the baker about his relentless calls, they spark an unexpected friendship with the man. They tell the baker about Scotty's death, and he, in turn, confides in them about being childless and lonely. Howard's ability to bond with and feel comforted by a stranger in this way speaks to the importance of human connection and small kindnesses in the wake of tragedy. - Character: Scotty Weiss. Description: Scotty is Ann and Howard Weiss's eight-year-old son. At the beginning of the story, he's still seven and will be turning eight the following Monday. On the morning of his birthday, however, he gets hit by a car on his way to school and suffers brain trauma. Although Scotty feels okay at first, he soon falls into a coma and is hospitalized. His parents are distraught, though his doctor, Dr. Francis, believes that Scotty is fine and will wake up at any time. Scotty remains in the coma for a few days and then suddenly dies. This disorienting turn of events drives home the fragility and cyclical nature of life: opposing forces like life and death or joy and tragedy are in a delicate balance that can change in an instant. Losing Scotty devastates his parents; their grief in the wake of his death is a testament to how deep family bonds can be just as heartbreaking as they are fulfilling. - Character: The Baker. Description: Ann Weiss orders her son Scotty's birthday cake from the baker. He is an older man, and he's polite yet abrupt and uninterested in small talk when taking Ann's order. When Ann fails to pick up the cake on the morning of Scotty's birthday, the baker begins to call the Weisses' home repeatedly, becoming increasingly rude and cryptic on the phone. This odd behavior is a result of the baker's anger and loneliness. Unbeknownst to him, though, Ann and Howard are also angry and lonely, having just lost their son in a tragic car accident on the morning of his birthday. The baker is ultimately able to sympathize with the couple when they come to the bakery and tell him about Scotty's death, and he's surprisingly compassionate despite his earlier behavior. He explains that he's childless and lonely, having spent decades baking wedding and birthday cakes for other people without hitting certain life milestones himself. Through sharing their mutual sadness, the Weisses and the baker come to understand each other, and the three of them spend the night talking and eating fresh bread in the bakery. Eating, the baker tells the couple, is "a small, good thing" to appreciate during trying times. The baker's character is a testament to how tragedy can bring people together, as well as how meaningful small gestures of kindness can be in the midst of tragedy. - Character: Dr. Francis. Description: After Scotty is hit by a car and falls into a coma, Dr. Francis is his doctor in the hospital. When Scotty is first admitted, Dr. Francis assures Howard and Ann that their son will be fine, insisting that Scotty's deep sleep is not a coma. He's a well-dressed, handsome man with a trustworthy demeanor, so the Weisses are eager to believe him and lean on him as a source of comfort as they anxiously wait for their son to wake up. Yet Dr. Francis gradually sounds less and less sure about what's wrong with Scotty, as he hesitates to make a formal diagnosis and often contradicts himself when he shares news with the Weisses. He and another doctor eventually decide to operate on Scotty, but before they can, Scotty suddenly dies. Dr. Francis is very upset about losing a young patient, and he comforts Ann and Howard as they take in the tragedy of their son's death. He's very sympathetic to the grieving parents, and even after all of his miscommunication with them during Scotty's coma, Ann perceives Dr. Francis as being "full of some goodness she didn't understand." Dr. Francis's character arc thus speaks to tragedy's ability to bring people together and empathize with one another. - Character: Franklin. Description: Franklin is a teenage boy who's hospitalized at the same time Scotty is in his coma. He was stabbed while watching a fight at a party, even though he wasn't participating in the fight. Ann runs into Franklin's family in a waiting room as they anxiously await news of his condition, much like Scotty's parents are waiting for him to wake up. Franklin eventually dies in surgery, and his death is similar to Scotty's in its suddenness and cruelty. - Character: Franklin's Family. Description: Ann meets a family in the hospital waiting room when she's looking for the elevator. The family is waiting for news about their son, Franklin, who is in surgery after being stabbed in a fight at a party. Franklin wasn't participating in the fight, only watching, but he was stabbed anyway. When Ann enters the waiting room on her way out of the hospital, his mother, father, and teenaged sister want to know if she has news about their son. She apologizes and tells them that she's also waiting for news about her own son. Ann feels an immediate connection to the family and longs to talk with them more, because they're coping with the same uncertainty and fear that she is. But when Ann returns to the hospital soon after this, the family is gone. She asks the nurses what happened to Franklin and learns that he has died. Although Frank's family's presence in the story is brief, the instant bond that Ann feels with them speaks to the importance of human connection and understanding during difficult times. - Character: The Driver. Description: The driver who hits Scotty with his car knows that he has hit a child. He waits until Scotty gets up to drive away from the scene of the accident. The driver never appears again in the story, but this cruel act is a testament to how life can change from stable and happy to chaotic and tragic in an instant. - Theme: Joy and Tragedy. Description: "A Small, Good Thing" is a story that focuses on the joy of birth and the tragedy of death: Ann and Howard's son, Scotty, is hit by a car on his eighth birthday, and he dies suddenly after a period of unconsciousness. Ann had ordered a birthday cake for her son the day before, and throughout the story the parents receive calls from the baker about picking up the cake—painful and constant reminders that what was supposed to be a day of celebration has instead become a day of mourning. The contrast of birth and death in the story show that joy and tragedy are both an inevitable part of life that can strike at any time, and that there's very little way to control or avoid either. Prior to their son's sudden death, the couple lived an easy, happy life, which they come to realize was just a matter of luck. As Ann orders her son's birthday cake in the story's opening scene, she feels glad to be in "this special time of cakes and birthday parties." The plural of "cakes and birthday parties" suggests that Ann isn't just looking forward to her son's birthday the following day—she's excited about the stage of life her son is in, in which he attends birthday parties and has his own. That Ann characterizes this stage of life as one of lighthearted celebration (and particularly the celebration of life) suggests that it's been a joyful, exciting time for the whole family. Ann's husband, Howard, also emphasizes that their life has been idyllic until now. After his son's accident, Howard thinks about how he'd been "happy and, so far, lucky […] So far, he had kept away from […] those forces he knew existed and that could cripple or bring down a man if the luck went bad, if things suddenly turned." Howard frames tragedy as a reality he always knew about in the back of his mind but never had to grapple with personally. Now that "things [have] suddenly turned" in his own life, though, he has a firsthand understanding that life is indeed fickle and fleeting. Just as he couldn't control his son's tragic accident—it was the result of "the luck [going] bad"—he didn't control his previously happy circumstances, either. The couple also comes to terms with the idea that, like happiness, tragedy is arbitrary and uncontrollable—they can't undo it, nor can they do much to improve the outcome. Scotty is killed in a random hit-and-run car accident while he's walking to school, which harks back to Howard's suggestion that life can "cripple or bring down a man." At this point in the story, it's unclear if the accident will leave Scotty literally "cripple[d]" or will "bring [him] down" by killing him, but tragedy nevertheless descends unexpectedly and irreversibly. While Scotty is in the hospital, Ann meets a couple in the waiting room whose son has also endured a tragic, meaningless accident. The boy, Franklin, was attacked during a fight at a party, but he hadn't been participating in the fight, only watching. Like Scotty, Franklin is suddenly and needlessly pulled into a random, tragic accident and eventually dies in the hospital. The parallelism between the two boys' fates emphasizes that tragedy can strike unexpectedly and for no real reason. In addition, neither Scotty's nor Franklin's parents are able to save their sons. Both families stake out in the hospital, as if going home to rest would somehow negatively affect their sons' recovery. But waiting around with bated breath for news of their sons doesn't help, as both boys die in the hospital. And while the hospital staff does actively work to save the boys, even they are powerless in the end. The story suggests that while it's a parent's job to protect and care for their kids, and it's a healthcare worker's job to do the same for their patients, neither can have that kind of full control over their circumstances. Birth and death are contrasted throughout the story, just like joy and tragedy: the sadness of Scotty's death is bookended by moments of happiness, like his birthday, which speaks to the idea that life is a combination of both. When the doctor brings Ann and Howard into a hospital room after Scotty's death, a doctor in a "green delivery room outfit" is also in the room. His uniform draws attention to the fact that births were occurring in the hospital while Scotty was dying—and that Scotty himself was born on the day of the accident, eight years before. The simultaneous unfolding of both birth and death in the hospital is like a microcosm of life itself. There are moments of joy, represented by births, and tragedies, like illnesses and death, happening at any given moment, and humans can only do so much to stave off or control birth and death. At the end of the story, the baker opens up to Ann and Howard about his own experience with life and death, joy and tragedy. As a baker, his job is to help people celebrate these different life events—like weddings and birthdays—with his cakes, while simultaneously grieving his own childlessness and loneliness. Just like how his "ovens [are] endlessly full and endlessly empty" as he works through the orders each day, his life as a baker reflects the idea that life is a combination of life and death, fullness and emptiness, joy and tragedy. At the end of the story, the baker shares food with the grieving couple and tells them that "eating is a small, good thing in a time like this." This small but significant exchange embodies the story's core idea that life is a constant, uncontrollable ebb and flow of joy and tragedy. Both the couple and the baker are knee-deep in their own grief, but they nevertheless experience a moment of joy in connecting with one another and experiencing a small, simple pleasure. - Theme: Family, Isolation, and Loss. Description: In Raymond Carver's "A Small, Good Thing," Ann and Howard Weiss's son, Scotty, slips into a coma after being hit by a car on his birthday and dies soon after. When Ann goes to pick up what was supposed to be Scotty's birthday cake and tells the baker about her son's tragic death, he tells her about the loneliness of baking cakes for birthdays and weddings without having children of his own. In her grief, Ann thinks about how she and Howard are alone now, too, even though they once had a child. Through Ann, Howard, and the baker, the story suggests that while family can be a source of deep satisfaction and support—which is why not having it can be so painful—it's not a perfect balm against feelings of loneliness and grief. At the beginning of the story, Ann is clearly happy and fulfilled by her family ties and assumes that other people must enjoy this kind of satisfying connection with family, too. When she orders a birthday cake from a baker, she is confused by his disinterest in her son's birthday, because she thinks that he "must have children who'd gone through this special time of cakes and birthday parties." She can't understand why he wouldn't feel the same interest and excitement she does when discussing a child's birthday party, because she assumes everyone must have the benefit of having a family and watching one's children grow up. The family of another boy in the hospital also provides an example of the deep sense of connection and support that family can give. While waiting for updates on their son Franklin's surgery, Franklin's family comes together for a long vigil in the waiting room. The table before them is littered with food wrappers and cigarette butts, implying that they've been there a long time. They wait with bated breath for updates about Franklin, and when Ann walks through the waiting room, they hound her for information about how their son is doing, mistaking her for a nurse. The family's deep anxiety about their son's well-being, as well as their commitment to being there for him through his surgery, speaks to the idea that family can be a powerful source of support and connection. However, since family can be such an important source of connection, satisfaction, and belonging, the story underscores that losing a family member—or not having family to begin with, like the baker—means painfully losing access to these things. After her son's death, Ann becomes more cynical about the value of having children. She looks at Franklin's teenage sister and thinks, "don't have children […] for God's sake, don't," as if she believes that having children—and possibly losing them one day—will cause only suffering for the girl. Once, family was a source of fulfillment for Ann, but now that she's lost Scotty, she thinks of family as just a different way to end up lonely. This is shown when, after Scotty's death, Ann thinks about how she and Howard are going to be alone from now on. She realizes that she is just as lonely after Scotty's death as someone who doesn't have children—like the baker—would be. When the couple gets home from the hospital without their son, she tells Howard that Scotty's "gone and now we'll have to get used to that. To being alone." This is similar to the "empty nest" many parents face when they are left alone in the house after their children grow up and move out. Howard and Ann are empty nesters now because their child is gone, but while most parents have to adjust to being empty nesters after their children have grown up, Ann and Howard lose the experience of watching this process unfold and lose their connection with their child entirely. The story suggests that this experience of a lack of connection is similar to that of having no children in the first place. After Ann tells the baker about Scotty's death, the baker "began to speak of loneliness, and of the sense of doubt and limitation that had come to him in his middle years. He told them what it was like to be childless all these years." He describes the loneliness of baking cakes for birthdays and weddings without having children of his own to share those same experiences with. And just as the baker bakes cakes for other people's weddings and birthdays but never gets to enjoy them himself, the cake Ann ordered for Scotty also goes uneaten. Ann now experiences the same loneliness as the childless baker does, even though she once had a child of her own. Although the story frames family as a key source of support and connection, it also shows that family is not some perfect shield against loneliness: even when the characters still have family ties, they can still feel isolated. For instance, even after Ann and Howard have lost their son, they still have part of their family left in each other. However, neither of them seems to consider this a real protection from loneliness. When Ann and Howard get home from the hospital and Ann declares they'll be alone from this point on, they aren't actually alone. They still have each other, so they have some semblance of family, but this doesn't protect them from the deep loneliness that comes from losing a child. Likewise, Ann notes that while Scotty was in the hospital, it hardly occurred to her that the accident was affecting her husband, too. She thought of it as a tragedy encompassing only her and her son, even though her husband had been at the hospital all along—and Scotty was his son, too. This disconnection underscores that having family, though often a critical source of support and connection, doesn't always mean protection from loneliness. - Theme: Connection, Understanding, and Adversity. Description: Before the start of "A Small, Good Thing," Ann and Howard Weiss and their son, Scotty, lived a fairly idyllic life. But on his eighth birthday, Scotty is hit by a car and eventually dies after being comatose in the hospital for days. During and after their time waiting in the hospital, Ann and Howard connect with strangers who are also experiencing hardship or uncertainty. Scotty's death causes Ann and Howard to connect with others over their shared pain in a way they couldn't in the past, suggesting that tragedy allows people to understand each other on a deeper level than they can during better times. In the story, Ann and Howard don't connect deeply with others or see other people's pain prior to experiencing tragedy themselves. For instance, at the beginning of the story, Ann orders a birthday cake for Scotty from a baker, who dodges her attempts at conversation. The baker's "abrupt" way of talking to Ann makes her uncomfortable, and she immediately brands him as unfriendly and disinterested. She can't understand why he doesn't make an effort to connect with her about her son's birthday. She assumes that a man his age must have children of his own and should be able to understand how she feels about Scotty's birthday. Later, when Ann fails to pick up the cake because she's with Scotty in the hospital, the baker calls her repeatedly. After Scotty dies, Ann finally realizes that these phone calls must be from the baker. Both parties are angry—Ann and Howard because of the incessant phone calls and painful reminders of their son's death, and the baker because the couple didn't pick up the cake. But when Ann and Howard open up to the baker about their son's death, the baker opens up, too. Before this conversation, Ann thought that the baker was unfriendly—but what he tells her about his own struggles gives her insight into his behavior. She's learned that the baker likely didn't want to chat about her son's birthday during their first meeting because his own childlessness grieves him deeply. Now that Howard and Ann have experienced tragedy themselves, they're able to listen to what the baker has gone through and connect with him over their shared struggles. Dealing with her son's accident also makes Ann more empathetic towards other people who are dealing with tragedy, like another family she meets in the hospital's waiting room, who are also waiting to see if their son, Franklin, will survive. When Ann first comes into the waiting room, Franklin's mother immediately asks her if she has any news about Franklin's condition, and Franklin's father explains that his son was stabbed during a fight at a party. Ann wants to talk more with Franklin's family but feels unable to say anything else. She recognizes the connection in their situation: they "were in the same kind of waiting she was in. She was afraid, and they were afraid. They had that in common." Her son hasn't yet died at this point, so Ann hasn't been fully transformed by her tragedy. She still struggles to communicate her pain with the family (an issue she doesn't have when talking to the baker after Scotty's death). But she nevertheless feels connected to them and wants to share with them in a way she perhaps wouldn't have before the accident. It's possible that Ann wouldn't have felt the same connection with this family in a normal time, because they're Black and Ann is implied to be white—her last name, Weiss, literally means "white" in German and Yiddish. This racial difference is magnified because the story is set in an indeterminate past era, which is signaled by Ann referring to the family's race using language that is currently considered offensive. The family's tragedy, then, is what bridges the gap between their experiences. Both Ann and Franklin's family are struggling with waiting to hear news about a son, and then both families must grapple with terrible loss. The story implies that without this shared experience of tragedy, these two families likely wouldn't have the same level of connection and empathy for one another. The story suggests that in times of tragedy, people are often more vulnerable with one another—and, by extension, more empathetic—compared to in good or neutral times. At first, Scotty's doctor in the hospital, Dr. Francis, is vague about Scotty's condition and continually assures Howard and Ann that Scotty will wake up. Howard and Ann don't understand what's happening and are increasingly frustrated by Dr. Francis's lack of communication. The couple is left out of the doctors' conversations, and no one at the hospital attempts to connect or empathize with them while they are in this waiting period. Only when Scotty has died does Dr. Francis fully describe his own confusion about what has happened and express his compassion for the grieving parents. Dr. Francis can freely communicate his empathy for the couple now because he is going through a version of the couple's traumatic experience as well by losing such a young patient unexpectedly. It's this shared experience of sudden loss that breaks down the usually stiff, formal patient-doctor dynamic and allows the doctor to see and treat the family as humans. Throughout the story, Ann and Howard go from being unable to connect with strangers to having emotional conversations with them. The limbo state while Scotty is asleep is a transitional phase, in which Ann and Howard begin to connect with people (like the family in the waiting room) over their shared pain but are unable to fully communicate their feelings, because they haven't yet been entirely opened up to the empathy that Scotty's death triggers in them. At the end of the story, they manage to empathize even with the baker, because their personal tragedy has allowed them to share their sadness, and understand other people's sadness better in turn. - Theme: Compassion and Comfort. Description: In their deep grief, Ann and Howard search for comfort and compassion after their son, Scotty, dies on his eighth birthday after being hit by a car while walking to school. As they grapple with this loss, Ann and Howard don't glean much comfort from the people they initially reach out to, like their families, Scotty's friendly doctor, or even each other. Instead, they find comfort from unlikely strangers and experiences—most notably, sharing hot rolls with an irritable baker in the middle of the night. With this, the story suggests that "small, good things"—like having conversation with strangers, or sharing a meal—are simple but significant sources of comfort in times of sadness and shouldn't be overlooked. Throughout the story, the people Ann expects to get comfort from often fall short of her expectations. For instance, Ann and Howard stay with Scotty by themselves in the hospital, without anyone else in their family to support them. After they leave the hospital, Ann calls her relatives to tell them Scotty has died, but these conversations are brief. In other words, Ann doesn't turn to her family, who seem to be the most natural choice, for comfort. Ann and Howard are also unable to share their emotions with each other throughout the ordeal. They deal with the situation together, talking to doctors and determining who will feed the dog, but they never really confide in each other. Ann admits that she hadn't even thought of Howard as part of the tragedy at first—she thought only of how it was affecting herself and Scotty. Doctors, too, prove unable to give the comfort Ann and Howard crave. When they first get to the hospital, Ann and Howard turn Scotty's doctor, Dr. Francis, whom they initially judge as competent and friendly, as someone who can bring them compassion and guidance. But throughout the story, he continually makes empty promises that Scotty will be alright and that there's nothing to worry about, even as the parents become increasingly frightened. Ann and Howard soon find that small kindnesses and conversations with strangers bring them the most comfort. For instance, Ann expected to connect most with Dr. Francis, but instead, it's the baker who made Scotty's birthday cake—a person whom Ann initially disliked, considering him cold, disinterested, and unfriendly—who ends up giving them the most compassion and comfort. At the end of the story, when Ann and Howard confront the baker about continually calling them because they failed to pick up their son's birthday cake, what started as a conflict becomes a moment of connection. When they tell the baker that their son is dead, he immediately softens and has compassion for them, and offers them food and sympathy. Though they came to the bakery to angrily confront the baker, Ann and Howard spend most of the night after Scotty's death grieving and eating with the baker. He makes a space for them in his shop, shares his own struggles with them, and gives them homemade food, doing for them what a family would often do in a time of grief. That the parents' presuppositions of the doctor and baker are swiftly dismantled (and even inverted) in the story suggests that support and compassion can be found in unlikely places and people. Ultimately, Ann and Howard discover throughout their ordeal that it's hard to tell which people will provide comfort and compassion from their outward appearances. - Climax: Scotty dies suddenly after being in a coma for days. - Summary: "A Small, Good Thing" opens with Ann Weiss ordering a cake for her son Scotty's birthday party—he's turning eight years old on Monday. She tries to strike up a conversation with the baker, assuming he must have kids of his own and understand the excitement of birthday parties and cakes, but he seems disinterested, which offends Ann. On the morning of Scotty's birthday, Scotty is hit by a car while walking to school. The driver waits until Scotty gets up and then drives away. Though he seems fine, Scotty walks home instead of going on to school, and he soon slips into unconsciousness. Ann can't wake him, so she calls her husband, Howard, who calls an ambulance. At the hospital, the doctor, Dr. Francis, insists he that Scotty is in a deep, restorative sleep, not a coma, and that he's bound to wake up soon. After spending the whole day in the hospital at Scotty's bedside, Howard decides to go home for an hour to bathe and change clothes. The phone rings as he's walking in the door, and he thinks it must be the hospital calling to say that Scotty's condition has worsened. But the phone call is from the baker about the cake, which hasn't been picked up. Howard says he doesn't know anything about a cake and hangs up. While Howard is in the bath, he gets another call, but the caller doesn't say anything. Scotty is still asleep when Howard gets back to the hospital, so he encourages Ann to go home to rest—though he warns her to not talk to the "creep" who's calling the house. Ann, however, refuses to leave Scotty's side. When Dr. Francis does his rounds, he informs the parents that Scotty has a concussion but that he should wake up soon. By the next afternoon, Scotty still hasn't woken up. Ann and Howard realize they need to feed the dog, so Ann begrudgingly agrees to go home to do it. On her way out of the hospital, Ann meets a Black family who are also waiting to hear whether their son, Franklin, will live. When Ann gets home, the baker calls again, though he's vague and threatening, and Ann doesn't know who the call is from or what it's about. She asks if he's calling about Scotty, and the baker says it "has to do with Scotty." Panicked, Ann calls Howard, who affirms that Scotty's condition hasn't changed since Ann left, and that the caller is probably a psychopath who heard about Scotty's accident. When Ann returns to the hospital, the family she met earlier is gone. She asks the nurses what happened to Franklin and is saddened to learn that he has died. When Ann gets to Scotty's room, Howard tells her that the doctors are going to operate on Scotty. Suddenly, Scotty wakes up, howls, and dies. The doctors are shocked at Scotty's sudden death, but Dr. Francis tries to comfort Ann and Howard. When Howard and Ann get home that night, they get another call. The caller (whom they still don't realize is the baker) says, "Your Scotty, I got him ready for you." He calls again after midnight, and Ann suddenly realizes that it's been the baker calling all along. Even though it's the middle of the night, Ann and Howard rush to the bakery to confront the baker about the phone calls. The baker is angry at them because of the wasted money and time he spent on the cake, but Ann is furious and tells him her son is dead. The baker immediately softens and apologizes. He sits down with couple, and they talk through the night. The baker gives them hot rolls, and tells them that "eating is a small, good thing in a time like this."

- Genre: Science fiction - Title: A Sound of Thunder - Point of view: Third person limited - Setting: The U.S. in the year 2055, and North America or an equivalent landmass in 60 million BC - Character: Mr. Eckels. Description: The protagonist of "A Sound of Thunder," Eckels is a hunter who enjoys exotic safaris and decides that traveling back in time to shoot a dinosaur is the logical next adventure for him. At the Time Safari, Inc. office, Eckels discusses the recent election with the company official and expresses his approval for Keith's win over Deutscher. He also jokes that he'd be running away to the past if the election had gone differently, ironically foreshadowing the ways in which his trip will change history. Eckels is nervous as he departs on his safari with Mr. Travis, Lesperance, and two other hunters. Eckels, who has seemed marked for death throughout the story, repeatedly asks for assurance of his safety and seems to want to master life and death on this dangerous hunt without facing any real risks. When faced with the T. rex and its sound of thunder, however, he finds that he is not prepared to face his own mortality. Instead, he wanders off the path and accidentally crushes a butterfly—a mistake that irrevocably changes history and ostensibly leads Travis to shoot Eckels in the story's final moments (accompanied by another "sound of thunder"). Eckels exemplifies a person meddling with forces that they do not fully understand, and he overestimates his ability to keep his cool under pressure. His fate demonstrates the danger of allowing people to play with new technology: even with safety precautions, human error is always a possibility. - Character: Mr. Travis. Description: A safari guide employed by Time Safari, Inc., Mr. Travis leads the expedition on which Mr. Eckels sets out. Travis has a keen sense of the danger of their trip, but he is primarily concerned with protecting the bottom line. He stresses how much Time Safari, Inc. pays the government in order to stay in business and warns the hunters that they must avoid straying from the path at all costs. He also scolds Eckels for handling his gun improperly. Yet despite his apparent concern for rules, Mr. Travis also appears volatile and impatient. For instance, he responds with anger when Eckels does not keep total silence during the dinosaur's approach. And after the hunt concludes, Travis becomes enraged when he realizes that Eckels has strayed from the path. He laments the huge government fine to be paid and suggests leaving Eckels behind, although that would only compound the damage to the past. Lesperance talks him down from this extreme punishment, but Travis still forces Eckels to retrieve the bullets from the dead animal's corpse. After returning to the present, Travis tells Eckels to leave and never return. When Eckels draws attention to his mistake of stepping on a butterfly, however, Travis responds with deadly force. Impervious to Eckels' pleas, he aims his rifle at the man's head and concludes the story with another sound of thunder. - Character: Lesperance. Description: Lesperance is another guide employed by Time Safari, Inc. His duty is to travel back in time ahead of a scheduled safari and find a dinosaur that is going to die anyway, then loop back again to mark the creature with red paint. The process is supposed to ensure that the hunters do not disturb the natural order. Lesperance appears more sympathetic than does Mr. Travis, protesting his punishment of Eckels. - Character: Company agent. Description: An unnamed official who greets Mr. Eckels when he first arrives at Time Safari, Inc., as well as when he returns from the safari. He emphasizes the danger of the trip and the company's lack of liability for any harm Eckels may suffer. He also discusses the presidential election with Eckels, giving a description of Deutscher as an "anti-everything man." - Theme: Cause and Effect. Description: In "A Sound of Thunder," Ray Bradbury imagines a world in which humanity can take touristic journeys back in time. As Eckels, a man on a prehistoric hunting trip, discovers, however, even the slightest alteration to the past can forever alter the course of history; after accidentally crushing a butterfly underfoot 65 million years ago, Eckels returns to a present drastically different from the one he'd initially left behind. Small actions can have major repercussions, and, as with much of Bradbury's work, the tale condemns the hubristic use of increasingly powerful technology in a world that human beings do not fully understand. By emphasizing the drastic effects of something as seemingly mundane as crushing a butterfly eons in the past, the story suggests the intimate connection between the past, present, and future, and ultimately argues that every action, no matter how small, has consequences. The company offering the time travel experiences, Time Safari, Inc., at first seems to understand the dangers of altering the past, as is evidenced by the precautions and warnings given to potential travelers. The company emphasizes that it does not guarantee any particular outcome—not even its clients' safe return. Before setting off, Eckels has to sign a release of all liability, which the company's agent explains in terms of danger during the safari: "Those dinosaurs are hungry." The company has also set up anti-gravity pathways to prevent safari goers from interacting with the world around them and pre-selected dinosaurs that would have naturally died within minutes of being shot by time-traveling hunters anyway. Mr. Travis, Eckels's guide, explains the theory behind the company's many safety precautions to ensure minimal effects on the past from their safaris. At such a great distance into the past, he says, tiny shifts could snowball over time and have a huge impact on human civilization. Things that seem small to Mr. Eckels because they have little impact in an ordinary human lifetime, such as stepping on a mouse or a plant, could mean much more when the time scale of their consequences is millions of years. Nonetheless, there are penalties in place for the possibility that someone might go off the path—suggesting that the company's precautions are not as failsafe as they should be, given its alleged appreciation of the danger of altering the past. While the company can account for some causes that might lead to changes in the past, and therefore the present and future, it overestimates its ability to control events and overlooks the ever-present element of chance. For example, when the dinosaur frightens Eckels, he does not have the presence of mind to follow instructions and return to the time machine. Instead, he wanders off the path, and the safari guides do not notice until the damage is already done. Bradbury seems to thus be presenting a sort of naïveté on the part of humankind; the company paradoxically articulates the immense danger of changing the past in any way, yet also foolishly believes in its own ability to safeguard against such changes. Mr. Travis admits, "Maybe Time can't be changed by us […] We don't know. We're guessing." The precautions taken by Time Safaris, Inc., then, are based on an incomplete understanding of what time travel technology can do. This element of uncertainty gives the scenario a hint of recklessness, as human beings are meddling with powers they do not fully understand. Even the smallest slip-up proves enough to set a cascade of historical changes in motion. When Eckels wanders off the path, he does little more than trample a few plants and step on a butterfly. This tiny act of destruction, however, sets in motion a total political upheaval and even changes to the English language back in the year 2055. The first hint that Eckels sees is the sign in the Time Safaris, Inc. office, which now reads "TYME SEFARI INC." He quickly discovers that the changes go much deeper than simple spelling, this time with an ironic twist. When Eckels first arrived in the office, he joked with the company's agent about the possibility of wanting to escape the present if Deutscher rather than Keith had won the election. Upon returning, he finds that his trip to the past has caused Deutscher to win after all. The plot of "A Sound of Thunder" hinges on the idea that the relation between cause and effect is far more complex than humans might like to think. Bradbury uses the conventions of science fiction to explore the consequences of using technology without fully understanding it. His story anticipates a future when humans will be able to meddle with history, and demonstrates how futile and and misguided such an effort would be. Bradbury urges readers to raise the question of whether some technological advances serve only to facilitate human hubris. - Theme: Authoritarianism, Fascism, and Nostalgia. Description: While "A Sound of Thunder" takes place in the 2050s, it is in many ways just as much about the concerns of the 1950s. Writing in the aftermath of World War II and at the outset of the Cold War, Bradbury embeds the fear of anti-American authoritarianism in his text. He paints a portrait of futuristic America as an imperialist nation that has found a new direction for its colonial energies (that is, the past), yet is threatened from within by the specter of fascism (represented by the political candidate Deutscher). Bradbury does not stop there, however: by portraying time travel as a literal manifestation of nostalgia for a simpler past, his narrative suggests that such nostalgia may in fact bring about an authoritarian threat from within. While the characters in "A Sound of Thunder" see the past as new territory ripe for exploitation, the present is filled with anxiety about the political direction of the country. The entire narrative is framed by the previous day's presidential election, which is a clear choice between true-blue American democracy and German-influenced dictatorship. Mr. Eckels fears the possibility that the United States might be compromised—even colonized—by these "foreign" values. During the story's opening scene, Mr. Eckels expresses his relief that presidential candidate Keith was elected, joking that he "might be here now running away from the results" if that were not the case. The company agent for Time Safari, Inc. describes the other candidate, Deutscher, as "an anti-everything man." It is important to note that Deutscher is a stereotypically German name; given the fact that this story was published during the 1950s, shortly following World War II, pairing a German name with fear of "the worst kind of dictatorship" was likely intended by Bradbury to invoke the recent fear of Nazi Germany taking over much of the Western world. It also resonates with Cold War era fears of communist East Germany and the Soviet Union. The contrast with the ordinary, stereotypically American-sounding name "Keith" makes this clash of cultures particularly clear. Mr. Eckel's remark about "running away" via time travel, in turn, casts the past as a potential way out of the political fears of the present. If fascism or communism is knocking at the door, Eckels sees a return to a purportedly simpler world as the secret passage out. The characters in Bradbury's story are also specifically concerned with changing the trajectory of history in a way that might impact Western society, and especially the United States. For example, when trying to drive home the point that the safari has reached the prehistoric past, Mr. Travis lists off a number of historical figures significant to Christian and European history who have not been born yet, such as Christ, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler. He does not name any important figures from other parts of the world and he refers to the date in years "before President Keith," reinforcing his Western (and ultimately America-centric) view of human progress. Yet it is precisely this future—including the implicit victory of democracy over fascism—that is imperiled when Eckels steps off the path. Upon returning to the future, the safari group finds themselves in the midst of the very event that Eckels had joked about escaping: the election of "anti-everything man" Deutscher. When Eckels's blunder during the trip brings about a change in election results, Bradbury demonstrates not only the danger of meddling with history, but also an implicit relationship between nostalgia and authoritarianism. "A Sound of Thunder" shows that American democracy will not be saved from fascism or communism by a return to some earlier state. In fact, it is the excessive nostalgia imbued in time travel to the past that brings about this awakening of authoritarianism from within the United States. - Theme: Mortality. Description: Bradbury portrays Eckels as deeply concerned with mortality. His hobby of trophy hunting gets its thrill from feeling a certain power over life and death, and his choice to take a time travel safari derives partly from advertisements portraying triumph over aging and death. When confronted with genuine mortality, however, in the form of the dinosaur, Eckels decides to flee; later, this attempt survive ultimately brings about his own death, when a guide shoots him. Even time travel, Bradbury shows, can only offer brief respite from the deathly "sound of thunder." Bradbury thus uses a technology that can seemingly reverse the order of life and death in order to show that death is, in fact, inevitable. Time Safari, Inc. markets itself as not simply offering the thrill of hunting prehistoric game but of transcending mortality by reversing its cycle. Eckles, looking into the furnace of the time machine, recalls advertisements about rising "out of chars and ashes" and returning via birth or seed to "the time before the beginning." Such claims turn the ordinary cycle of life and death on its head; not only can customers visit another point in time, the company suggests, but they can in some sense reverse the flow of time itself.  The company's advertising inherently illustrates the hubris necessary to treat time—and the attendant processes of life and death—as one's personal playground. Indeed, despite choosing to undertake the massively dangerous safari to hunt a dinosaur, Eckels repeatedly seeks assurance that he will survive the trip. He clearly wants to experience having power over life and death without the risk, and becomes angry when the company agent insists that there are no guarantees of his safety. He asks again for reassurance when the guide Lesperance reveals that he's already gone back in time to tag their dinosaur, and again appears deeply unsatisfied with the guide's response that "there's no way of telling" whether he will make it out alive. Eckels's desire for reassurance asks for the impossible: the thrill of a dangerous situation without any actual danger. When the dinosaur finally appears in the story as a sort of death-machine, accompanied by a "sound of thunder," Eckels suddenly realizes just how dangerous a situation he is in, observing, "It was never like this before. I was always sure I'd come through alive." Eckels seems particularly aware of his body and of the threats that surround him, and Bradbury's descriptions of Eckels seem to mark him for death from the beginning of the story. This foreshadowing supports the broader point that death, for Bradbury, is inevitable, regardless of technological innovations. Multiple points in the story focus on Eckels' physicality—his eyelids, the feeling of phlegm in his throat, his stiff jaw and trembling arms. He often seems aware of but almost separated from his body, as when he "felt his mouth saying" a phrase rather than simply speaking. He remains stiff and pale during the safari, in contrast to his livelier companions. And when retreating from the hunt, Eckels walks away in a zombie-like stupor, as if he were already dead. In addition, Eckels is surrounded by signs of imminent death. The narrative gaze, following his eyes, fixates on the deadly weapons—"blue metal guns"—of the safari party in the time machine. During the safari, the scenery includes "flowers the color of blood" and the "death grin" of the dinosaur. Through his recognition of these signs—and particularly the terror of seeing the dinosaur—Eckles wanders off the path, crushing a butterfly and ensuring that he will be met with another deadly "sound of thunder" in the form of a gunshot by the story's end; as he begs to go back in time once again to stop himself from stepping off the path, Mr. Travis, another guide, shoots him (likely to stop his blabbing but getting the group in trouble). "A Sound of Thunder" thus explores mortality as at once a thrilling source of power, an advertising ploy, and an inevitability. Even as Eckels finds himself drawn in by the danger and excitement of reversing time in order to hunt a deadly predator, his attempts to survive only lead to his own demise. Even the boldest technological advancements are subject to the laws of nature, and as such it is folly, the story suggests, to attempt to defeat mortality. - Theme: Environmentalism. Description: "A Sound of Thunder" explores the human relationship to ecology and the natural environment. Through the device of time travel, Bradbury is able to show the potential impact of human interference in the environment on seemingly unrelated events. In Bradbury's world, humanity is inextricably intertwined with the environment, which human beings foolishly often influence with little care for the future. Even with precautions in place, damage is always possible. The story points to the idea that people may not realize the impact of their actions on the environment until it is too late. Time Safari, Inc., as represented by safari leaders Mr. Travis and Lesperance, appears to have an understanding of the potentially disastrous impact of their safaris. The company has a number of safety precautions in place to avert harm to or contamination of the environment, and Travis takes care to explain the need for such care to Eckels. Precautions against altering the ecology of the past include both technological solutions and rules for safari-goers' behavior. For example, the Machine and all its contents must be sanitized prior to the trip, and the time travelers wear special oxygen helmets to prevent them from introducing future bacteria into the past. The safari team also relies on a floating metal pathway to prevent physical contact with any plants or animals in the jungle. Travis emphatically warns the group to stay on the path, and when asked why the path is necessary, launches into a detailed explanation of ecological dependencies, the food chain, and the possible impacts of stepping on the wrong plant or animal. He clearly understands the chain of events by which killing "an important animal, a small bird, a roach, a flower even" could lead to "infinite billions of life forms [...] thrown into chaos and destruction." He goes on to detail the potential impacts on human civilization, such as preventing cities or whole countries from ever being founded. This explanation underscores the idea that all life on the planet is connected, and every life form is potentially of equal significance. Humans must be good stewards of the environment in order to preserve this delicate balance upon which both the natural and the civilized world depend. Knowing the risks, it would make more sense not to travel to the past at all. Time Safari, Inc., however, is interested primarily in making money, a detail through which Bradbury condemns short-sighted human concerns that come at the expense of the natural world. When he enters the office at the beginning of the story, Eckels hands over a check for ten thousand, a hefty sum for a brief journey. The company's official informs him that there is an additional ten-thousand-dollar fine if he disobeys instructions. This detail suggests that a price can be put on the potentially irreversible damage to the environment. Eckels must also sign a liability waiver before the journey, ensuring that the company cannot be sued for any harm that befalls the safari guests. Clearly, Time Safari, Inc. is intent on protecting their profit margin. Later, when Eckels goes off the path, Mr. Travis's initial concern is for the financial impact on the company: "That ruins us! We'll forfeit! Thousands of dollars of insurance!" Indeed, in this moment Travis also expresses what one could read as a possible motive for killing Eckels at the end of the story: "I'll have to report to the government. They might revoke our license to travel." With Eckels alive and expressing his horror at the changed future, it would be impossible to cover up what happened. As the company official makes clear prior to the safari, however, deaths on these hunts are extremely common. There is a distinct possibility, then, that killing Eckels is part of a plan to cover up what happened in order to stay in business. Regardless, it is clear that Time Safari, Inc. engages in business practices that threaten the balance of the natural world on a large and dramatic scale, and their employees focus on preserving their profit margin above all else. Bradbury suggests not only the importance of protecting and respecting the environment, but the finality and irreversible nature of environmental destruction. For instance, in spite of the primary financial motive explored above, Mr. Travis does react strongly when Eckles wanders off the path. His reaction, however, is too little, too late. Having failed to prevent this error, Travis attempts to punish Eckels, but he cannot undo the environmental destruction Eckels has already caused. After considering the option of leaving Eckels behind, Travis instructs him to retrieve bullets from the dead Tyrannosaurus, leading to further unnecessary contact with past: Lesperance even protests that Travis "didn't have to make him do that." No one fully realizes what Eckels has done until he notes the changes in the future and finds the dead butterfly on his shoes. By this time, there truly is nothing to be done. No one responds to his pleas to "take it back" or "make it alive again." Instead, the only thing left is retribution and/or a cover-up, which Travis sets in motion by shooting Eckels. In "A Sound of Thunder," Bradbury ultimately paints a picture of humanity's partial understanding of ecology, and people's failure to preserve the natural environment. Although Bradbury wrote in a time before the major advances of the modern environmentalist movement, his story resonates with many of the lessons of conservationists. If people meddle with the natural world, they may not know what they have done until it is far too late. - Climax: The Tyrannosaurus Rex charges the hunting party and is shot while Eckels retreats off the path - Summary: In the year 2055, Mr. Eckels enters the office of Time Safari, Inc. This company offers safaris to the past in order to hunt dinosaurs and other large prehistoric animals. Eckels greets the company official, who informs him that there are no guarantees that he will come back alive. While waiting for his safari guides, Eckels makes small talk by expressing his relief that Keith was victorious in the recent presidential election. The official agrees that Keith is the best candidate for American and democratic values, asserting the Deutscher would have brought about a dictatorship. Eckels takes another moment to reflect on the danger of the expedition, hands over his check, and departs with the safari guide Mr. Travis. Eckels settles into the Time Machine alongside Travis, fellow guide Lesperance, and two other hunters. The Machine blazes back through time as the travelers get settled with oxygen helmets. Eckels nervously contemplates the rifles they all hold, and eventually the passengers find themselves in the prehistoric past. Upon descending from the Machine, Travis emphasizes that the travelers must not disturb the natural environment. He exhorts the hunters to stay on the metal Path that hovers over the ground in order to prevent stepping on any plant or animal. Crushing even the smallest life form, he explains, could disrupt ecological balance and change the future, not just of nature, but of human society. Lesperance explains that the party can safely shoot the specific animal he has previously marked for them, because he has already traveled back in time to find a creature that would die of some accident anyway and looped back to mark it with paint. Eckels asks him whether their hunt will be a success, but the guide explains that there is no way to know because one cannot meet oneself while traveling through time. Soon the Tyrannosaurus Rex approaches with a sound of thunder. Eckels is transfixed when he comes face to face with the massive creature, proclaiming it impossible to kill and that he wishes to retreat. Lesperance directs him to wait in the Time Machine. Instead, dazed, Eckels wanders off the past while the other hunters shoot and kill the fearsome dinosaur. Travis returns to find Eckels in the Time Machine. Realizing that Eckels wandered off the path, Travis yells that his transgression could ruin the company and threatens to leave him behind. He eventually orders Eckels to retrieve the bullets from the carcass. When Eckels returns, covered in blood, they leave for the future. When they arrive, Travis orders Eckels to leave and never come back. Eckels, however, lingers for a moment, noticing that the atmosphere and small things about the office have changed. He slumps down into a chair and, examining his boots, finds that he has crushed a butterfly. Panicking, he asks the official about the election results and learns that Deutscher has won. After a few moments of pleading to go back and fix things, Eckels waits in silence while Travis aims a gun at him. Eckels hears Travis click the gun's safety, followed by a sound of thunder.

- Genre: detective fiction, crime fiction, serial fiction - Title: A Study in Scarlet - Point of view: first person; third person omniscient - Setting: late 19th century London, American "wild west" - Character: Sherlock Holmes. Description: The protagonist of the story, a consulting detective to the London police force (though they seldom give him credit for his help) who solves crimes while accompanied by his roommate John Watson. Though Holmes is highly intelligent, with sharp observational and deductive reasoning skills that allow him to understand a crime scene or deduce a person's history just by paying close attention, he can also be cold, petty, and arrogant. Though Holmes is vastly knowledgeable about certain areas, such as chemistry and British law, he is equally ignorant about others, such as astronomy. As Watson explains, Holmes is occasionally completely apathetic toward his surroundings but at other times is highly energetic and theatrical, particularly when he has a complex case to solve. - Character: John H. Watson. Description: The narrator for most of the novel, Watson is a British army doctor who was injured during the Afghan war. Upon his return to England he becomes Sherlock Holmes' roommate and companion. At the beginning of the novel, Watson often describes himself as friendless and lonely, with a "meaningless existence," but as he accompanies Holmes on the case, he befriends the consulting detective, despite all their differences. A foil to Holmes' analytical prowess, Watson is at once quite intelligent but also completely unable to follow Holmes' incredibly rapid deductions. Watson often marvels at his friend's abilities. Whereas Holmes is an eccentric and larger-than-life character, Watson allows us to view Holmes and their cases together through the eyes of an ordinary man. - Character: Jefferson Hope. Description: The antagonist and murderer of the case Holmes focuses on during A Study in Scarlet, Hope was originally an adventurous silver prospector who fell in love with Lucy Ferrier, who became his fiancée. After Lucy and John Ferrier's deaths due to the actions of the Mormons in general and Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson in particular, Hope becomes obsessed with revenge and spends two decades pursuing the two men. Though he eventually achieves his revenge against Drebber and Stangerson, Hope's obsession leads him to his own destruction, for his prolonged periods of self-neglect as he pursues revenge destroys his health and causes the rupture of his aortic aneurysm. - Character: John Ferrier. Description: Devout and moral, John Ferrier adopts the young girl Lucy as his daughter after most of their pioneer town dies of dehydration. Ferrier proves himself to be a loving father and hardworking man, and after assimilating into the Mormon community, amasses a large amount of wealth. Unlike most Mormon men, however, he does not marry, as he views the Mormon practice of polygamy as shameful. He also vows to never let his daughter marry a Mormon. Eventually he is killed by Joseph Stangerson for trying to protect Lucy from a forced Mormon marriage. - Character: Lucy Ferrier. Description: John Ferrier's adopted daughter, Lucy grows up in the Mormon community as a strong and beautiful young woman. Eventually she falls in love with Jefferson Hope, a Gentile who becomes her fiancé. Though the Mormons refuse to allow her to marry a non-Mormon, she and her father escape with Hope. However, after the Mormons recapture her and kill her father, she is forced by the Mormons to become one of Enoch Drebber's wives. A month after her marriage, Lucy dies, presumably out of grief or a broken heart. - Character: Enoch Drebber. Description: The wealthy son of Elder Drebber, a leader among the Mormons, Enoch Drebber is the first murder victim that Holmes and Watson encounter in their "study in scarlet." He uses his power among the Mormons to force Lucy Ferrier to become one of his wives (he is a polygamist), causing her to die of a broken heart and prompting Jefferson Hope to seek revenge against him. Sometime after Lucy's death (and for unexplained reasons that don't seem connected to her death), Drebber and other younger members of the Mormon Church broke from the elders and became Gentiles. With Stangerson, Drebber travels throughout Europe in order to flee Hope. Throughout the story, Drebber reveals himself to be a drunken, presumptuous, and lecherous lout, groping the maids at the boarding house where he stays, including Alice Charpentier. - Character: Joseph Stangerson. Description: The son of Elder Stangerson, Joseph Stangerson was one of Lucy's unwanted polygamous suitors. Stangerson killed John Ferrier and helped kidnap Lucy, and so he is one of the two men against whom Jefferson Hope vows revenge. After breaking with the Mormon Church sometime after Lucy's death, he became Drebber's relatively poor secretary. Unlike Drebber, who is unintelligent and often drunk, Stangerson is sharper and more wary of Hope's attempts on their lives. - Character: Brigham Young. Description: A fictionalized depiction of the leader of the Mormons. A cold but capable leader, Young leads the Mormons to Utah, declaring it to be their promised land. On the way, Young saves the wayfarers John Ferrier and Lucy Ferrier, who are on the brink of death. However, he is also indirectly responsible for their deaths, as it is presumably by his orders or permission that Lucy is forced to marry Drebber and that Ferrier is killed. - Theme: Observation and Deduction. Description: Observation and deduction are the lifeblood of A Study in Scarlet, especially in terms of the novel's format and characterization of Sherlock Holmes. Much of the novel (all but five chapters out of fourteen) is presented as "reminiscences" from John Watson's journal, a record of his observations of both the case and Holmes. The first interaction between Watson and the consulting detective represents the essence of the Holmes-Watson dynamic throughout the story: Holmes is attentive to clues to which others are oblivious, allowing him to quickly deduce information (in this case, Watson's recent return from Afghanistan), and Watson is astonished by Holmes' abilities. The narrator devotes an entire chapter to "The Science of Deduction," in which Watson makes his own observations of Holmes, attempting to determine the nature of his roommate's occupation based on the strengths and weaknesses in Holmes' knowledge. However, Watson finds himself unable to deduce what Holmes does for a living. By contrast, in his article "The Book of Life," Holmes claims that he can ascertain another person's history simply with careful observation (hence his deduction that Watson was an army doctor in Afghanistan). Holmes' observational and deduction skills are crucial to his characterization, as these skills originally belonged to the real-life person who inspired Doyle's creation of Holmes: Joseph Bell. Doyle's former mentor, Bell was a surgeon with keen deductive reasoning skills. Like Holmes, he often made deductions about people based on his observations of minute details. While Watson's purpose in the novel is mainly to admire Holmes' skills (and thus Joseph Bell's skills), he also serves as a foil to Holmes. Unlike Watson, who makes observations about Holmes but cannot analyze them, Holmes skillfully employs both observation and analysis in his detective work. However, it is not merely the analytical skills that distinguish a great detective but also the ability to use them carefully. For example, though Lestrade spots the word "rache" at the crime scene first, he incorrectly jumps to the wrong conclusion that the writer had meant to write "Rachel." Holmes, on the other hand, observes the exaggerated German styling of the lettering and deduces that the murderer had written the German word for "revenge" in order to throw the police off his trail. - Theme: Injustice and Hypocrisy. Description: The novel belongs to the genre of detective fiction, and it is very much concerned with justice, which in its most immediate form entails the pursuit of the murderer. However, as the novel progresses, other forms of justice, or rather injustice, begin to emerge. Most prominent among the story's injustices are those committed by the Mormon characters. In a controversial and perhaps exaggerated depiction of Mormonism, Doyle presents the Mormons' actions and practices as cruel, shameful, and hypocritical. For example, when the Mormons find John Ferrier and Lucy on the brink of death in the desert, a fictionalized version of the Mormon leader Brigham Young reveals that he is willing to let them die if they do not convert to Mormonism. When Ferrier first encounters the Mormons in the desert, they claim that they "seek a refuge from the violent man and from the godless." However, the narrator hints, in a very sensationalized account of the Mormon vigilante Danite band, that the "saints" themselves become violent against any potential dissenters, who mysteriously disappear if they voice their misgivings about Mormon practices. When Brigham Young gives Ferrier a month to force Lucy to marry either Drebber or Stangerson, the Mormons spend the next thirty days psychologically intimidating Ferrier by sending threatening notes and by leaving a countdown of numbers all over his house and farm. Eventually, John Ferrier becomes a victim of their violence, as Stangerson murders him in the name of keeping the Mormon faith. Jefferson Hope's murders – carried out as revenge for Drebber and Strangerson's actions – are therefore complicated in terms of justice. He sees his revenge as an act of justice, while the police see the crimes as injustices. Doyle also reveals injustice and hypocrisy in the police force. For example, in Part 1, Constable John Rance readily accepts Holmes' bribe to tell his account of the moments after Drebber's death. Though detectives Lestrade and Gregson are "the pick of a bad lot" in the Scotland Yard, meaning that they are the best of a bunch of bad detectives, they are nonetheless inferior detectives to Sherlock Holmes and yet they often claim the credit for cases that Holmes solves. This pattern of injustice initially makes Sherlock reluctant to solve Drebber's case, the credit for which Lestrade and Gregson also claim. In the beginning of the novel, Holmes remarks to Watson that though the detectives might admit their inferiority to him when privately asking for his help, they would never admit it to anyone else. Intent on exposing their hypocrisy, Watson publishes his journal recounting "the study in scarlet," informing the public of Holmes' efforts in bringing the murderer to justice, while simultaneously achieving for Holmes a professional or historical kind of justice by exposing Gregson's and Lestrade's inferior detective work. The book itself, then, is presented as an act of "justice" in the way it gives Holmes the credit he rightfully deserves. At the same time, the book plays with the idea of justice and injustice, and finding the gray areas that connect the two. - Theme: Gender and Misogyny. Description: Though the novel itself may not be misogynistic, it reveals sexist attitudes and practices toward women in both England and America at the time that Doyle was writing. Holmes and Watson, the story's protagonist and narrator, both casually insult women as being vain and weak, despite lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary from the story's female characters. For example, when Holmes recounts to Watson the competition between Gregson and Lestrade, he remarks, "They have their knives into one another, too. They are as jealous as a pair of professional beauties [the late 19th century equivalent of socialites or models]." Watson, recounting to the reader Sherlock's vanity, notes, "I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty." After Holmes realizes that the old woman he was following had escaped him, he exclaims, "We were the old women to be so taken in. It must have been a young man, and an active one, too, besides being an incomparable actor." Though the old woman in disguise was actually a man, Holmes does not seem to consider the possibility that a woman could have been strong or clever enough to escape him. Yet contrary to Holmes' and Watson's apparently ingrained beliefs about women, none of the novel's few female characters seem particularly weak or vain about their appearance, least of all Lucy Ferrier, who is described as both unaware of her beauty and strong enough to manage horses "with all the ease and grace of a true child of the West." Most strikingly misogynistic, however, is the novel's presentation of Mormon marriage practices and of the men's attitudes toward women. For example, Doyle presents polygamy as an essential part of following the Mormon faith. However, while men were expected to have multiple wives, the women were not allowed to have multiple husbands. Doyle's fictionalized version of the Mormons' leader, Brigham Young, further emphasizes this misogyny by describing women and girls as a supply of "heifers" to be distributed among the men. Even more troubling is the narrator's sensationalized account of rumors of "fresh women" who were brought to "the harems of the Elders" and who "bore upon their faces the traces of an unextinguishable horror" — suggesting that they were abducted, forced into marriage, and in all likelihood raped. This foreshadows Lucy's own experience, as Drebber later abducts her and forces her to marry him. Just as the "fresh women" were treated by Mormon men as sexual and reproductive objects, Drebber also sees Lucy as no more than an economic advantage. After Lucy dies, the narrator reveals that Drebber had married her in order to gain control of her father's property. Such marriages as Lucy's date as far back as the Middle Ages, when men sometimes raped wealthy young women in order to force them into marriage and thus control their inheritance. Though Drebber's primary motive is revealed to be primarily economic rather than sexual or reproductive, he still objectifies Lucy by forcing her to submit to his will. Non-Mormons in the story also exhibit a patriarchal attitude toward women and marriage, though not to the same extremes as Doyle's Mormons. For example, though Jefferson Hope clearly loves Lucy, he views his marriage to her as a way of "claiming" her. Even Lucy, despite her fortitude as a pioneer woman, has a sense of internalized misogyny and regards the men in her life as her principal authority. When Hope proposes their engagement, Lucy remarks, "Of course, if you and Father have arranged it all, there's no more to be said." - Theme: Revenge and Murder. Description: The novel's title, A Study in Scarlet, is drawn from Holmes' reference to murder as a "scarlet thread…running through the colourless skein of life." That the "skein of life" is "colourless" suggests that much of everyday life, to Holmes at least, is uninteresting. In contrast, the passionate motivations that culminate in a murder make it vibrant and exciting for him. To Holmes, Jefferson Hope's murder of Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson is just such a case and pulls him out of the occasional lethargy that Watson observes in him. Just as importantly, though, Holmes doesn't seem much to care about the morality of murder. Instead, he sees murder almost in artistic or aesthetic terms, as something that amplifies all the passions of otherwise boring life, something that defies easy understanding and therefore must be understood. In contrast to Holmes' rather amoral reasons for solving murders, Hope's act of murder is fueled by revenge. And revenge is an act of murder that is founded entirely on morality, as it is an effort by the murderer to punish those who harmed him or those he loved. Hope views his murder of Drebber and Stangerson primarily as a form of justice for Lucy, whom Drebber abducted and forced into marriage, and for Lucy's father John Ferrier, whom Stangerson murdered. In fact, Hope directly connects his revenge to what he sees as a kind of divine morality when he forces Drebber to choose between one of two pills, only one of which is poison. When Drebber chooses the poisonous pill, Hope believes he does so because God would not allow a man like Drebber to survive. Even after being caught by Holmes, Hope claims that he is no mere murderer but an "officer of justice." However, the novel's depiction of revenge is not entirely positive. Hope's revenge is destructive not only for his enemies but also for himself. His desire for revenge is all-consuming. He spends 20 years pursuing Drebber and Stangerson across America and Europe, often neglecting his own health and finances. Though Hope eventually achieves his revenge, it also ultimately destroys him, as his self-neglect leads to malnutrition and overexposure, which in turn leads to an aortic aneurysm that kills him the night after he is captured. Yet despite the destructive nature of revenge, Hope's successful revenge also brings him peace and joy. After Hope dies, Watson observes the "placid smile" found on the corpse, reflecting that it is as if "he had been able in his dying moments to look back upon a useful life and on work well done." Though Watson is fully engaged in the effort to bring the murderer – Hope – to justice, his narration makes it clear that he sympathizes to some extent with Hope and with his motivations, even if he continues to view any murder as a crime requiring justice. - Climax: Holmes captures Jefferson Hope - Summary: Part 1 of the novel is presented as an excerpt from the journal of John H. Watson, an army doctor who has just returned to England after being injured during the Second Afghan War. Watson is living in a London hotel, "leading a comfortless, meaningless existence," when he runs into an old colleague, Stamford. The two catch up, with Watson recounting to Stamford his misfortunes during the war and his need to find a less expensive residence. Stamford mentions that an acquaintance, Sherlock Holmes, is looking for a roommate, and after warning Watson about Holmes' eccentricity and scientific coldness, agrees to introduce them. After Holmes and Watson meet to discuss the rooms and review their compatibility with each other, they move immediately into 221B Baker Street, and find each other easy to live with. As he has little else to do, Watson becomes increasingly interested in his roommate's eccentricities — such as his deep knowledge of chemistry and British law and simultaneous ignorance of literature and astronomy — and spends much of his time speculating about Holmes' profession but failing to come to a conclusion. Holmes, however, eventually reveals that he is a "consulting detective" who helps other detectives with their cases by applying "the science of deduction and analysis." Holmes claims that he is able to deduce the history and profession of any man through careful observation and analysis. Though Watson is skeptical, when a Scotland Yard messenger whom comes to their door confirms Holmes' deduction that he was once a Marine sergeant, Watson is amazed. The messenger delivers a letter from a Scotland Yard detective, Tobias Gregson, asking for assistance on a recent murder case. Though Holmes is initially reluctant to take the case because Gregson and his colleague Lestrade will likely take the credit for solving it, Watson convinces him to take the case, and Holmes invites Watson to the crime scene at an empty house on Brixton Road. Approaching the house, Watson watches Holmes examine the road and garden path outside the house before they meet Gregson and Lestrade inside, where the body of an American man, Enoch Drebber, lies on the ground. Though there are splashes of blood all over the floor, there is no wound on the body, and on the wall, written in blood, is the word "RACHE." Detectives Gregson and Lestrade are at a loss to explain the mystery, though Lestrade offers an incorrect theory that the murderer had tried to write "Rachel" but was disturbed before finishing. When the police move the body, they discover a small gold wedding ring. After Holmes thoroughly examines the room with his tape measure and magnifying glass, he soon disproves Lestrade's theory, saying that "RACHE" means "revenge" in German and that it was intended to put the police off the murderer's trail. Though Gregson and Lestrade are somewhat scornful of Holmes' methods, they are astounded when Holmes gives them a detailed profile of the killer: the murderer was six feet tall, with small feet, square-toed boots, a florid face, and long fingernails on his right hand. He smoked a Trichonopoly cigar, arrived with the victim in a cab whose horse had three old shoes and one new shoe, and he poisoned the victim. Having learned all he can from the crime scene, Holmes decides to interview the constable who found the body. When Holmes and Watson visit the constable, John Rance, at his home, they find him unwilling to talk until bribed by Holmes, who learns that Rance had encountered no one near the scene of the crime, except an exceptionally drunk man. Deducing that the drunk man was actually the murderer in disguise, Holmes scolds the officer for his incompetence. On their way back to Baker Street, Holmes explains to Watson that the murderer had lost the ring and went back to the crime scene to look for it. In order to draw out the murderer, Holmes decides to put out a newspaper advertisement claiming that Watson has the lost ring and is willing to return it to its owner. That very night, an old woman visits 221B, claiming that the ring belongs to her daughter. Watson gives the woman the ring, and she leaves. Believing her to be the murderer's accomplice, Holmes follows her by secretly jumping onto the back of her cab. However, when the cab stops, the woman is nowhere to be found, leading Holmes to conclude that the old woman was actually a man in disguise. The next day, Gregson visits Holmes and Watson at Baker Street and triumphantly informs them that he has arrested a man named Arthur Charpentier for Drebber's murder. Drebber, he discovered, had been staying at the boarding house of Arthur's mother and had attempted to abduct Arthur's sister Alice. As Arthur had angrily chased Drebber into the street and had no alibi for the time of the murder, Gregson took him into custody. However, Lestrade soon arrives to announce that there has been another murder. Intending to question Joseph Stangerson, Drebber's secretary, Lestrade found him stabbed to death in his hotel room with the word "RACHE" written on the wall. Though Lestrade did not find anything else about the room particularly important, Holmes realizes that the pillbox in Stangerson's hotel room is the last clue. After obtaining the pillbox from Lestrade, Holmes tests the two pills on an old dog in the building. The first pill has no effect, but the second pill immediately kills the dog, leading Holmes to conclude that the pillbox contained one poisonous pill and one harmless pill. Just then, Wiggins, one of the street urchins employed by Holmes, arrives to tell him that the cab Holmes wanted is here. Requesting the driver's help with his luggage, Holmes summons the cab driver to the room. Catching the driver off guard, Holmes handcuffs him and introduces the driver to the others as Jefferson Hope, the murderer of Drebber and Stangerson. In Part 2, the story flashes back nearly 40 years to the desert in western America. It is 1847, and a man named John Ferrier and a little girl named Lucy are on the brink of death. The last survivors among pioneers who had died of dehydration and starvation, Ferrier and Lucy were unable to find water and are lying down to die. They are found, however, by a host of Mormons led by Brigham Young heading to what they call the new "promised land." Young offers them assistance only if they convert to Mormonism, and they agree, assimilating into the Mormon community in the newly built Salt Lake City. Ferrier adopts Lucy, raising her as his daughter, and she grows up to be a beautiful and strong young woman who falls in love with a Gentile (non-Mormon) hunter and silver prospector, Jefferson Hope. Lucy and Hope become engaged and plan to get married after Hope returns from a two-month mining job in Nevada. Soon, rumor spends of their engagement, and Brigham Young visits John Ferrier to tell him that Lucy is forbidden from marrying a Gentile and that he has 30 days to force Lucy to marry either Enoch Drebber or Joseph Stangerson, sons of the Mormon elders. Ferrier, who views Mormon polygamous practices as shameful, never wanted his daughter to marry a Mormon, and sends out a message to Hope, asking for help. That day, he finds Stangerson and Drebber in his home, presumptuously arguing over who has the better claim to Lucy. Furious, Ferrier throws them out, and the men threaten retribution. The next day, Ferrier finds a note pinned to his blanket, warning that he has only 29 days left. The day after that, the number 28 mysteriously appears on the ceiling, and every day a new number appears around the house, counting down the days Lucy has left to make a decision between Drebber and Stangerson. Two days before the Ferriers' time runs out, Hope finally arrives, helping them to escape Salt Lake City in the middle of the night. When their supplies begin to dwindle, Hope leaves Ferrier and Lucy at the campsite to hunt for food, but when he returns he finds the campsite empty, save for a dying fire and a newly dug grave for Ferrier. When Hope returns to Salt Lake City, he learns that Stangerson had murdered Ferrier and that Lucy was forced to marry Drebber. Now that Hope has nothing else to live for, he decides to devote the rest of his life to revenge. A month after her wedding, Lucy dies, presumably out of grief or a broken heart, but Drebber, who married her for her father's property, is unconcerned. While Drebber's other wives mourn Lucy, Hope breaks into Drebber's house to kiss Lucy's forehead and to take her wedding ring, exclaiming that he will not let her be buried in it. For months, Hope lives in the mountains outside Salt Lake City, prowling around town and making close but unsuccessful attempts to take Drebber's and Stangerson's lives. Though Hope is intent on revenge, his time in the mountains damages his health, forcing him to return to his old job in Nevada to regain his health and earn money. Years later, he returns to Utah to kills Drebber and Stangerson, only to discover that they have broken from the church and moved away. For years, Hope travels from town to town in America looking for the men, tracking them to Cleveland and then all over Europe, until he finally found them in London. The narrative now returns to Watson's account of Hope's capture. After a brief moment of wild resistance, Hope calms down and agrees to go with the men to Scotland Yard. Because he suffers from an aortic aneurysm that could burst at any time, Hope decides to tell his story to the detectives. The men he killed, he argues, were murderers themselves and deserved to die. He recounts his history with Drebber and Stangerson and their responsibility for the deaths of Lucy and John Ferrier. After he tracked the men to London, he became a cab driver and after following Drebber and Stangerson around the city, finally caught one of the men, Drebber, alone. As Drebber was drunk, it was easy for Hope to lead him to the house on Brixton Street, where he forced Drebber to take a pill from pillbox and took the other himself, leaving it to God to decide who would die. (Throughout the time he his telling this story to the detectives, Hope's aneurysm causes his nose to bleed, though he doesn't realize it at the time.) After Drebber died, an elated Hope decided on a whim to write "RACHE" on the wall to lead the police down the wrong path, and left the house. Later, he realized that Lucy's ring was missing, so he returned to the crime scene but found Constable Rance already there and only narrowly avoided suspicion by pretending to be drunk. After seeing Holmes' advertisement in the paper, he had a friend disguise himself to pick up the ring at Baker Street. Hope had intended to enact the same revenge on Stangerson, but as news of Drebber's murder had already reached him, Stangerson was being even more cautious than usual. Hope, however, found a way into Stangerson's hotel room and attempted to force him to choose a pill, just as he did to Drebber. But Stangerson ignored the pills and attacked him, leading Hope to stab him in self-defense. Concluding his statement, Hope insists that he was acting as "an officer of justice." Days later, Hope dies of his aneurysm before he was scheduled to appear in court. His body is found with a smile on his face, as if he is at peace. After withholding much information from Watson during the course of the investigations, Holmes now tells him everything, explaining how he had deduced Hope's identity and how he used street urchins like Wiggins to find him. Watson commends his detective skills, and Holmes shows Watson an article that gave Lestrade and Gregson full credit for solving the case. Indignant on Holmes' behalf, Watson decides to publish his account of the case to set the public straight.

- Genre: Historical novel - Title: A Tale of Two Cities - Point of view: Third person omniscient - Setting: London and Paris - Character: Charles Darnay (a.k.a. Charles Evrémonde). Description: Renouncing the terrible sins of his family, the Evrémondes, Charles abandons his position in the French aristocracy to make his own way in England. Charles believes in the revolutionary ideal of liberty, but is not a radical revolutionary. Instead, he represents a rational middle ground between the self-satisfied exploitation practiced by the old aristocracy and the murderous rage exhibited by the revolutionaries. Charles has a heroic sense of justice and obligation, as shown when he arranges to provide for the oppressed French peasantry, and later endangers himself in coming to Gabelle's aid. However, Charles is also deluded in thinking he can divert the force of history and change the Revolution for the better. Similarly, Charles constantly overlooks Sydney Carton's potential and must learn from his wife, Lucie, to have faith in Carton. Charles represents an imperfect but virtuous humanity in whose future we must trust. - Character: Dr. Alexandre Manette. Description: An accomplished French physician who gets imprisoned in the Bastille, and loses his mind. In his madness, Manette embodies the terrible psychological trauma of persecution from tyranny. Manette is eventually "resurrected"—saved from his madness—by the love of his daughter, Lucie. Manette also shows how suffering can become strength when he returns to Paris and gains a position of authority within the Revolution. Manette tries to return the favor of resurrection when he saves Charles Evrémonde at his trial. However, Manette is ultimately a tragic figure: his old letter from the Bastille seals Charles's fate. Falling once more into madness, Manette's story implies that individuals cannot escape the fateful pull of history. - Character: Lucie Manette. Description: The daughter of Dr. Manette, and Charles's wife. With her qualities of innocence, devotion, and abiding love, Lucie has the power to resurrect, or recall her father back to life, after his long imprisonment. Lucie is the novel's central figure of goodness and, against the forces of history and politics, she weaves a "golden thread" that knits together the core group of characters. Lucie represents religious faith: when no one else believes in Sydney Carton, she does. Her pity inspires his greatest deed. - Character: Sydney Carton. Description: In his youth, Sydney Carton wasted his great potential and mysteriously lost a woman he loved. Now he's a drunk and a lawyer who takes no credit for his work. Carton has no hope for his life. Only Lucie understands his potential for goodness. In his selfless dedication to her and her family, Carton represents the transformative power of love. His self-sacrifice at the end of the novel makes him a Christ figure. By saving Lucie's family, Carton redeems himself from sin and lives on in their grateful memory. - Character: Monsieur Defarge. Description: The former servant of Dr. Manette, Defarge uses his Paris wine shop as a place to organize French revolutionaries. Like his wife, Madame Defarge, Defarge is fiercely committed to overthrowing tyranny and avenging injustice. Yet Defarge always retains a shred of mercy, and does not participate in his wife's plot to kill Lucie. This quality of mercy makes Defarge a symbol for the failed Revolution, which ultimately loses sight of its ideals and revels in the violence it causes. - Character: Madame Defarge. Description: The wife of Monsieur Defarge, Madame Defarge assists the revolutionaries by stitching the names of their enemies into her knitting. Madame Defarge wants political liberty for the French people, but she is even more powerfully motivated by a bloodthirsty desire for revenge, hoping to exterminate anyone related to the Evrémondes. Where Lucie Manette is the embodiment of pity and goodness, Madame Defarge is her opposite, a figure of unforgiving rage. Over the course of the novel she emerges as a kind of anti-Christ, completely devoid of mercy, and as such comes to symbolize the French Revolution itself, which soon spun out of control and descended into extreme violence. - Character: Jerry Cruncher. Description: By day, an odd-job man for Mr. Lorry. By night, a "resurrection man"—robbing graves to sell body parts to sketchy doctors. He complains about his wife's praying because it makes him feel guilty about his secret activities, but by the end of the novel he decides to give up his secret job and endorses praying, a sign that he hopes to be resurrected himself through the power of Christ. - Character: Mrs. Cruncher. Description: The wife of Jerry Cruncher (and mother of Young Jerry), Mrs. Cruncher's regular praying constantly upsets Cruncher, who feels that it interferes with his work. Though in fact her praying interferes only in the sense that it forces Cruncher to face the guilt he feels at his job robbing graves. By the end of the novel, Cruncher has himself given up his job and taken up his wife's practice of praying regularly. - Character: Young Jerry. Description: The son of Jerry Cruncher and Mrs. Cruncher. Young Jerry is just a boy, but he becomes curious about what work his father goes off to do at night-time. He follows his father one night, and watches in terror as his father attempts to open up the grave of Roger Cly. Young Jerry then flees. Yet the next day Young Jerry asks his father what a "resurrection man" and to both his father's dismay and pride explains that he wants to be one when he grows up. - Theme: Tyranny and Revolution. Description: Much of the action of A Tale of Two Cities takes place in Paris during the French Revolution, which began in 1789. In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens shows how the tyranny of the French aristocracy—high taxes, unjust laws, and a complete disregard for the well-being of the poor—fed a rage among the commoners that eventually erupted in revolution. Dickens depicts this process most clearly through his portrayal of the decadent Marquis St. Evrémonde and the Marquis' cruel treatment of the commoners who live in the region under his control. However, while the French commoners' reasons for revolting were entirely understandable, and the French Revolution was widely praised for its stated ideals of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," Dickens takes a more pessimistic view. By showing how the revolutionaries use oppression and violence to further their own selfish and bloodthirsty ends, in A Tale of Two Cities Dickens suggests that whoever is in power, nobles or commoners, will fall prey to the temptation to exercise their full power. In other words, Dickens shows that while tyranny will inevitably lead to revolution, revolution will lead just as inevitably to tyranny. The only way to break this cycle is through the application of justice and mercy. - Theme: Secrecy and Surveillance. Description: Everybody in A Tale of Two Cities seems to have secrets: Dr. Manette's forgotten history detailed in his secret letter; Charles's secret past as an Evrémonde; Mr. Lorry's tight-lipped attitude about the "business" of Tellson's Bank; Jerry Cruncher's secret profession; and Monsieur and Madame Defarge's underground activities in organizing the Revolution. In part, all this secrecy results from political instability. In the clash between the French aristocracy and revolutionaries, both sides employ spies to find out their enemies' secrets and deal out harsh punishments to anyone suspected of being an enemy. In such an atmosphere, everyone suspects everyone else, and everyone feels that they must keep secrets in order to survive.Through the secrets kept by different characters, A Tale of Two Cities also explores a more general question about the human condition: what can we really know about other people, including those we're closest to? Even Lucie cannot fathom the depths of Dr. Manette's tortured mind, while Sydney Carton remains a mystery to everybody. Ultimately, through Lucie's example, the novel shows that, in fact, you can't ever know everything about other people. Instead, it suggests that love and faith are the only things that can bridge the gap between two individuals. - Theme: Fate and History. Description: Madame Defarge with her knitting and Lucie Manette weaving her "golden thread" both resemble the Fates, goddesses from Greek mythology who literally controlled the "threads" of human lives. As the presence of these two Fate figures suggests, A Tale of Two Cities is deeply concerned with human destiny. In particular, the novel explores how the fates of individuals are shaped by their personal histories and the broader forces of political history. For instance, both Charles and Dr. Manette try to shape and change history. Charles seeks to escape from his family's cruel aristocratic history and make his own way in London, but is inevitably drawn "like a magnet" back to France where he must face his family's past. Later in the novel, Dr. Manette seeks to use his influence within the Revolution to try to save Charles's life from the revolutionaries, but Dr. Manette's own forgotten past resurfaces in the form of an old letter that dooms Charles. Through these failures of characters to change the flow of history or to escape their own pasts, A Tale of Two Cities suggests that the force of history can be broken not by earthly appeals to justice or political influence, but only through Christian self-sacrifice, such as Carton's self-sacrifice that saves Charles at the end of the novel. - Theme: Sacrifice. Description: A Tale of Two Cities is full of examples of sacrifice, on both a personal and national level. Dr. Manette sacrifices his freedom in order to preserve his integrity. Charles sacrifices his family wealth and heritage in order to live a life free of guilt for his family's awful behavior. The French people are willing to sacrifice their own lives to free themselves from tyranny. In each case, Dickens suggests that, while painful in the short term, sacrifice leads to future strength and happiness. Dr. Manette is reunited with his daughter and gains a position of power in the French Revolution because of his earlier incarceration in the Bastille. Charles wins the love of Lucie. And France, Dickens suggests at the end of the novel, will emerge from its terrible and bloody revolution to a future of peace and prosperity. Yet none of these sacrifices can match the most important sacrifice in the novel—Sydney Carton's decision to sacrifice his life in order to save the lives of Lucie, Charles, and their family. The other characters' actions fit into the secular definition of "sacrifice," in which a person gives something up for noble reasons. Carton's sacrifice fits the Christian definition of the word. In Christianity, God sacrifices his son Jesus in order to redeem mankind from sin. Carton's sacrifice breaks the grip of fate and history that holds Charles, Lucie, Dr. Manette, and even, as the novel suggests, the revolutionaries. - Theme: Resurrection. Description: Closely connected to the theme of sacrifice is the promise of resurrection. Christianity teaches that Christ was resurrected into eternal life for making the ultimate sacrifice (his death) for mankind. Near the end of A Tale of Two Cities, Carton remembers a Christian prayer: "I am the resurrection and the life." As he goes to the guillotine to sacrifice himself, Carton has a vision of his own resurrection, both in heaven and on earth through Lucie and Charles's child, named Sydney Carton, whose life fulfills the original Carton's lost potential. Yet Carton's is not the only resurrection in the novel. After having been imprisoned for years, Dr. Manette is "recalled to life" by Lucie's love. Jerry Cruncher, meanwhile, works as a "resurrection man" stealing body parts from buried corpses, but by the end of the novel he gives it up in favor of praying for a holier resurrection of his own. - Theme: Imprisonment. Description: In the novel, the Bastille symbolizes the nobility's abuse of power, exemplified by the unjust imprisonment of Dr. Manette by Marquis St. Evrémonde. Yet the Bastille is not the only prison in A Tale of Two Cities. The revolutionaries also unjustly imprison Charles in La Force prison. Through this parallel, Dickens suggests that the French revolutionaries come to abuse their power just as much as the nobility did. The theme of imprisonment also links to the theme of history and fate. For instance, when Charles is drawn back to Paris because of his own past actions, each checkpoint he passes seems to him like a prison door shutting behind him. - Climax: Sydney Carton's rescue of Charles Darnay from prison - Summary: The year is 1775. On a mission for his employer, Tellson's Bank, Mr. Jarvis Lorry travels to Dover to meet Lucie Manette. On his way, Mr. Lorry receives a mysterious message and replies with the words "Recalled to life." When they meet, Mr. Lorry reveals to Lucie that her father, Dr. Alexandre Manette, who she thought was dead, is still alive. Dr. Manette had been secretly imprisoned for 18 years in the Bastille, but his former servant Monsieur Defarge, who now owns a wine shop in Paris that is a center of revolutionary activities, has smuggled Dr. Manette out of prison and hidden him in the store's attic. Meanwhile, Defarge's wife, Madame Defarge, secretly encodes the names of the Revolution's enemies into her knitting. Mr. Lorry and Lucie arrive in Paris to find Manette compulsively making shoes in a dark corner—prison has left him insane. Lucie lovingly restores him to himself and they return to London. The year is 1780. In London, Charles Darnay stands trial for treason as a spy. Lucie and Dr. Manette attend, having met Darnay during their return from France. The defense lawyer is Mr. Stryver, but it is his bored-looking associate, Sydney Carton, who wins the case. Carton points out how much he himself resembles Darnay in order to ruin the main witness's credibility. In France, the wealthy aristocracy wallows in luxury and ignores the suffering poor. Marquis St. Evrémonde recklessly runs over and kills a child with his carriage. At his castle, he meets his nephew Charles Evrémonde (a.k.a. Darnay) who has returned to France to renounce his family. That night, the Marquis is murdered in his sleep. Back in England, Charles, Stryver, and Sydney Carton all frequently visit Dr. Manette and Lucie. Mr. Stryver plans to propose to Lucie, but Mr. Lorry warns him that his proposal is unlikely to be accepted. Carton also admires Lucie; he tells her how she makes him believe that, despite his ruined past, he still has a shred of goodness deep within him. Charles obtains Dr. Manette's permission to marry Lucie, but Manette refuses to learn Charles's real name until the wedding day. On the wedding day, Dr. Manette relapses into his shoe-making madness after discovering that Charles is an Evrémonde. Mr. Lorry helps him recover. Charles and Lucie soon have a daughter of their own. The year is 1789. Defarge leads the peasants in destroying the Bastille. He searches Dr. Manette's old cell and finds a letter hidden in the chimney. The new Republic is declared, but its citizens grow extremely violent, imprisoning and killing aristocrats. Charles's former servant, Gabelle, writes a letter from prison asking for help. Charles secretly leaves for Paris and is immediately taken prisoner. Mr. Lorry travels to Paris on bank business and is soon joined by Lucie and Dr. Manette. Because of his imprisonment, Dr. Manette is a local hero. He uses his influence to get Charles a trial, but it takes over a year. Every day Lucie walks near the prison hoping Charles will see her. Charles is finally freed after Dr. Manette testifies. But that very night, he is arrested again on charges brought by Monsieur and Madame Defarge.Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher have come to Paris to help. On the street, they run into Miss Pross's brother, Solomon Pross, whom Jerry recognizes from Charles's English trial as John Barsad. Sydney Carton also shows up and, threatening to reveal Barsad as a spy, forces his cooperation to help Charles. At Charles's second trial, Defarge produces Dr. Manette's letter from the Bastille, which explains how the twin Evrémonde brothers—Charles's father and uncle—brutalized a peasant girl and her brother, then imprisoned Manette to protect themselves. Charles is sentenced to death and sent back to prison. Realizing his letter has doomed Charles, Dr. Manette loses his mind. That night, Carton overhears Madame Defarge at her wine shop plotting against Lucie and her daughter in order to exterminate the Evrémonde line. It is revealed that Madame Defarge was the sister of the peasants the Evrémondes killed. Carton conspires with Mr. Lorry to get everyone in a carriage ready to flee for England. With Barsad's help, Carton gets into Charles's prison cell, drugs him, and swaps clothes with him. Barsad drags the disguised Charles back to Mr. Lorry's carriage, which bolts for England. Madame Defarge shows up at Lucie's apartment, but Miss Pross blocks her way. The two scuffle. When Madame Defarge tries to draw her pistol, she accidentally shoots herself. The blast deafens Miss Pross for life. On his way to the guillotine in place of Charles, Carton promises to hold hands with a young seamstress, who has been wrongly accused. He dies knowing that his sacrifice was the greatest thing he's ever done.

- Genre: Short story - Title: A Temporary Matter - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Boston, Massachusetts - Character: Shukumar. Description: Shukumar is a 35-year-old doctoral student. Until somewhat recently, he'd been researching the agrarian revolts in India. Six months before the story takes place, Shukumar and his wife, Shoba, had been expecting their first child. While Shukumar was away at a conference, Shoba went into early labor and the baby was born as a stillbirth. Shukumar feels guilty for being away from Shoba during the tragedy, and he questions whether he even deserves to mourn their dead child. Shukumar's inability to reckon with his grief causes his relationship with Shoba to become increasingly strained. Shukumar spends his days home alone, essentially abandoning his dissertation. His guilt and grief leave him unable to work, socialize, or leave the house. Since the death, Shukumar has taken on the task of cooking for the couple, which he likes for the sole reason that it makes him feel productive. Shukumar frequently reflects back on happier times with Shoba. During a blackout that occurs for one hour each night while the electric company repairs a damaged power line, Shoba suggests that they share secrets in the dark. Shukumar jumps at the chance to reconnect with his wife. Confiding in one other seems to bring them closer together, and Shukumar responds to this new habit with a cautious optimism. In the very least, Shukumar hopes that their renewed communication might allow them finally to move on their lives—regardless of whether or not they choose to do so as a couple. When Shoba reveals that she's found an apartment and will be leaving Shukumar, he feels relief, for he admits to no longer loving his wife. But the shock of the news hurts him, and he retaliates with a secret of his own: unbeknownst to Shoba, he held their baby before it was time to cremate the body. Holding the baby and finding out details about the child was something Shoba didn't want to do. Because he no longer loves her, Shukumar describes the baby in vivid detail. Though cruel, getting this secret off his chest seems to provide Shukumar with some sense of closure. - Character: Shoba. Description: Shoba, 33 years old, is married to Shukumar and works as a proofreader. Since the loss of her baby, she has taken on more work projects in an effort to fill the time and take her mind off of her incessant grief. Before the baby's death, Shoba took great pride in her ability to plan for everything—good or bad. She loved to keep the kitchen stocked, cook elaborate meals, and entertain friends. In her cookbooks, she would record the first time she and Shukumar ate a meal together in a note next to each recipe. But the shock of the baby's death causes Shoba to lose faith in the predictability of life, and she stops cooking, shopping, cleaning, and thinking ahead. She avoids her husband, and she no longer cares about her own appearance, or that of the house. Shoba has plans to leave Shukumar, though this information is initially concealed from Shukumar and the reader. When Shoba suggests that she and Shukumar trade secrets back and forth, her real motivation is not to make an attempt at intimacy (as Shukumar and the reader first believe) but to prepare him (and herself) for the news that she's found an apartment and plans to move out. When Shukumar learns the truth, he retaliates by revealing the sex of their baby—the one thing that Shoba had wanted to remain a mystery. The news horrifies Shoba. Though the story's ending is ambiguous (Shoba and Shukumar weep together in the dark at their final two confessions), Lahiri seems to suggest that, freed of these two remaining, heavy secrets, Shoba and Shukumar will be able to move forward with their lives—even if they choose to do so separately. The fact that Shoba and Shukumar have finally communicated with one another seems to outweigh the importance of whether or not they remain a couple. - Character: Shoba's Mother. Description: Shoba's mother appears only in a memory of Shukumar's. He describes her as a serious, religious woman. Shukumar thinks back to when Shoba's mother came from Arizona to live with the couple after the baby's death. Shukumar had mentioned the baby in conversation. Shoba's mother looked up from her knitting only to respond, "But you weren't even there." Shoba's mother reinforces Shukumar's fear that his physical absence from the tragedy denies him the right to mourn the baby's death. - Character: Shukumar's Mother. Description: Shukumar compares Shoba to his mother, stating that after the death of his father, his mother had "fallen to pieces […], abandoning the house he grew up in and moving back to Calcutta, leaving Shukumar to settle it all." Shukumar admires Shoba's careful planning and preparation, especially compared to his mother's lack thereof—it's perhaps for this reason that Shukumar takes Shoba's grief-induced indifference especially hard. - Theme: Guilt and Grief. Description: In "A Temporary Matter," Shukumar and his wife, Shoba, suffer from unresolved grief. Six months before the story takes place, the couple was about to have their first baby. They'd been married for only a few years and were very much in love. However, three weeks before the baby's due date, while Shukumar was away at an academic conference, Shoba went into early labor and suffered a stillbirth. Now, both husband and wife grieve for the baby that never was, but they come to their grief from different places and with very different inhibitions that prevent them from moving forward with their lives. For Shukumar, the guilt of not being present for the birth renders him unable to grieve and ultimately costs him his marriage. Lahiri uses Shukumar's inner conflict to comment on the role guilt plays in the grieving process, suggesting that dwelling too heavily on one's role in a tragedy can ultimately prevent people from coming to terms with their grief in a healthy way. Shukumar feels unresolved guilt for not being present during the baby's birth. Before the couple was expecting their baby, Shukumar had made plans to attend an academic conference in Baltimore. Because the baby's due date was still three weeks away, Shoba encouraged him to attend; Shukumar would be in the job market the following year, Shoba reasoned, so it would be good for him to make contacts. But the baby came early, and Shoba was forced to undergo an emergency C-section while Shukumar was away. Although Shoba gave Shukumar her blessing to attend the conference, Shukumar insists that he "hadn't wanted to go." Lahiri emphasizes Shukumar's hesitancy to leave Shoba through his vivid recollection of the last time he saw Shoba pregnant: "Each time he thought of that moment […] it was the cab he remembered most, a station wagon, painted red with blue lettering." Lahiri's choice to preface Shukumar's memory with "Each time" reveals that Shukumar constantly replays this moment in his mind—he sees it as the instant he made the wrong decision. It's also significant that Shukumar recalls the cab most clearly in his memory. Shukumar chose to climb into the cab, and the cab was the vessel that carried him far away from Shoba and their child, and the danger they faced without him. After the baby's death, Shukumar's guilt causes him to retreat inward. He has no desire to leave the house or to socialize—especially not with Shoba. He loses interest in everything. Shukumar's newfound apathy causes him to stagnate, preventing him from moving forward in his life. Shukumar is no longer engrossed in his doctoral work. He admits that "nothing [is] pushing" him anymore, and he's been relieved of his teaching duties for the spring semester. He has no desire to leave the house, "not even […] to get the mail, or to buy fruit or wine at the stores by the trolley stop." At the beginning of the story, the reader learns that he hasn't even managed to brush his teeth that morning. When Shoba is home, her presence makes him feels so uncomfortable "that he fear[s] that putting on a record in his own house might be rude." Overcome with guilt and unable to face Shoba, Shukumar holes up in the one room he knows Shoba won't dare enter, for fear of summoning forth painful memories: the would-be nursery he's since converted into an office. Shukumar constantly thinks about the baby and the effect its death has had on his marriage, yet he never voices his thoughts out loud. He is ashamed to admit that he is thinking about a tragedy for which he wasn't around (and therefore isn't entitled to mourn), so he keeps these thoughts to himself. At the beginning of the story, the couple is informed by their electric company that their power will be cut for one hour each night so that a damaged power line can be repaired. At dinner during the first night of the blackout, Shukumar lights candles so they don't have to eat in complete darkness. Shoba remarks that the candles remind her of a rice ceremony (a Hindu custom celebrating the first time a baby eats solid food) where the power went out. "I had to attend an entire rice ceremony in the dark," she remembers. "The baby just cried and cried." Immediately, Shukumar considers the fact that "their baby had never cried," though he does not share the connection with Shoba, choosing instead to steer the conversation toward more mindless, banal subjects. Shukumar recalls a moment when Shoba's mother had moved in with the couple immediately after the baby's death to help them cope with the tragedy. Shukumar mentioned the baby's death in conversation, to which Shoba's mother replied simply, "But you weren't even there." Lahiri ends this section of the story with Shoba's mother's response. Thus, Shukumar is offered no chance to interject with any concluding remarks of self-defense or reflection—the story simply moves forward to the next scene. Shukumar's silence confirms Shoba's mother's remark: that Shukumar wasn't there, and that his grief is shameful. Because Shukumar feels ashamed and unworthy of his sadness, his grieving process stagnates, and he remains unable to move beyond the tragedy of his child's death.  The grief Shukumar feels for his dead child is very real, yet the guilt he feels at his core prevents him from confronting this grief directly. When Shukumar denies himself the right to grieve—and when others, like Shoba's mother, deny him his right, too—he retreats inward, alienating himself from Shoba and preventing the two of them from moving forward from their tragedy together. - Theme: The Difficulty of Communication. Description: When their power company shuts off the electricity for one hour each night, Shoba and Shukumar are forced to dine together or eat alone in darkness. The couple chooses the former, and at Shoba's insistence they soon find themselves trading secrets back and forth. As one night dissolves into the next, Shoba and Shukumar open up for the first time since their baby's stillbirth, and they discover that they've kept many secrets from one another over the years. Although the couple initially trades confessions to pass the time, their final exchange forces them both to become vulnerable with one another. This newfound vulnerability allows for the genuine communication needed to move on from their tragedy. When Shukumar and Shoba talk to one another in the beginning of the story, their words are brief and objective. On the first night of the blackout, Shukumar cooks lamb for dinner. Shoba remarks simply, "You made rogan josh." She doesn't offer any follow up, relating merely what is objectively in front of her. Shukumar responds to Shoba with an equal level of objectiveness and brevity, speaking only to announce when the meal is ready. At first, most of the couple's interactions unfold like this. They exchange brief, inconsequential statements, avoiding vulnerability completely. Their conversations don't develop into genuine communication: they merely tick away the seconds until husband and wife may retreat to their respective solitudes. The only way that Shukumar and Shoba can open up to one another—that they can engage in conversation that trades politeness for communicative honesty—is within the safe boundaries of Shoba's confessional game. On the first night of the blackout, Shoba suggests that they trade secrets, a game she remembers playing during blackouts in her childhood. "We all had to say something. […] A little poem. A joke." Shoba prefaces the game in this way to make honesty appear harmless and inconsequential. By downplaying the seriousness of their confessions—by viewing them as mere poems or games—she creates an unintimidating atmosphere for them to communicate without consequence. Shoba reveals that, early in their relationship, she'd looked through Shukumar's address book to see if he'd written in her name; Shukumar shares that he'd forgotten to tip the waiter the first time they went to dinner. The back-and-forth structure of the game allows Shoba and Shukumar to trade secrets without feeling any of the vulnerability that comes with genuine human communication. Because they both know that the other will offer up a similarly low-stakes secret, there is no real risk involved. The blackout's darkness adds another layer of safety to their structured communication. Unable to see one another's faces, the couple can pretend that they're whispering confessions into the void rather than to another person. By the end of the story, Shukumar realizes that the game was never Shoba's attempt at bringing the couple closer together; rather, Shoba had structured the game to build up to the moment she would reveal her plans to leave him. On the final night, the power has been restored. Shukumar suggests that they eat with the lights off once more. But Shoba tells Shukumar that she has a final secret to tell him—and it needs to be told with the lights on. "I've been looking for an apartment and I've found one," she reveals. The repeated nights of small, safe secrets were all part of Shoba's larger plans to brace Shukumar for the impact of her final, agonizing confession. As Shukumar states, "This was what she'd been trying to tell him for the past four evenings." The game was only another means through which she could safely broach the uncomfortable subject that she intends to leave her husband. The game wasn't Shoba's attempt at communication—it was a means of avoiding communication.  Shoba didn't initiate the game to rekindle her relationship with her husband through vulnerable communication—she initiated it to craft a safe, structured space to tell Shukumar that she has no desire to try to rekindle the relationship. Hurt, Shukumar offers his own final confession. Shoba had earlier decided she'd rather not know their dead baby's sex, stating, "at least they'd been spared that knowledge." Unbeknownst to Shoba, however, Shukumar arrived at the hospital before they'd cremated the baby, and held it in his arms. He'd hid this from Shoba, "because he still loved her then, and it was the one thing in her life she had wanted to be a surprise." Because Shoba's final confession has left him vulnerable, Shukumar decides to retaliate by revealing the sex of the baby. Shoba hadn't expected to be caught off guard in a game of her own design, and she breaks down. The couple's sudden vulnerability breaks down the wall that had grown between them since their baby's death. Lahiri ends the story ambiguously, with the couple crying together. Although it's unclear whether they will be able to repair their broken relationship, the fact that the couple has accepted vulnerability suggests that the removal of their respective, suppressed burdens will at least allow them to move forward with their lives—whether or not they do so as a couple is only of incidental importance. Despite their initial avoidance of communication, Shoba and Shukumar's final confessions leave them both vulnerable. In sadness, they "[weep] together, for the things they now knew." Despite the uncertainty of their relationship, their ability to finally connect with one another in a vulnerable way offers the possibility that their renewed communication will permit them to heal and move beyond their grief. The symbolism of Shoba's choice to turn off the lights (thus returning the couple to the invulnerable safety of darkness) seems to suggest that the couple isn't quite ready to move forward together—that feeling vulnerable and exposed without darkness's comfort is too much to bear. Still, their shared moment of vulnerability (however brief) shows that they've rediscovered a tool that could allow them to fix their relationship, should they choose to do so. - Theme: The Limits of Planning. Description: If Shukumar's grieving process is obstructed by his overwhelming guilt, Shoba's is inhibited by her reliance on planning and predictability. Shoba and Shukumar's marriage begins to unravel when the expectations they had for their life do not go as planned. Because Shoba relied so heavily on her ability to plan for the future, she finds herself unable to adapt to life after the unexpected death of their baby. This, in turn, obstructs her grieving process. Before the stillbirth, Shoba measured her success by her ability to plan and organize her life in the most efficient, effective way possible. To a certain degree, she might have even believed that having a healthy, happy baby could guarantee her success and happiness in her marriage. But when Shoba suffers a stillbirth, she is forced to reckon with the fact that not all of life can be planned for and predicted. The stillbirth complicates Shoba's ability to plan, and she struggles to recover in the aftermath. In Shoba's struggle, Lahiri suggests that life is inherently unpredictable, and efforts to plan and control one's life are thus likely to fail. Shoba plans out every aspect of her life. She feels best when she is able to enter into situations prepared. As the story unfolds, Lahiri shows the extent to which planning and precision dominate Shoba's personality—even her career allows her to exist in the realm of the prescribed and the predictable. The reader learns that Shoba works as a proofreader, "search[ing] for typographical errors in textbooks and mark[ing] them […] with an assortment of colored pencils." Shukumar admits that "he envie[s] her [for] the specificity of her task, so unlike the elusive nature of his." Shoba orients her life around what she can plan for. She chooses a career that rejects the elusiveness and ambiguity she so despises, that allows her to know precisely what each day will bring, and what tasks it will require her to undertake. Shoba even prefers to plan for the smallest, most inconsequential minutia of life. Shukumar notes that Shoba "was the type to prepare for surprises, good and bad. If she found a skirt or purse she liked she bought two." Down to the smallest details, Shoba feels best when she can exercise control by planning for the expected. But the baby's stillbirth shows Shoba that not all of life can be planned for. After the death of her baby, Shoba struggles to regain the control she once believed she could have over her own life. Despite Shoba's wide hips, which her doctor "had assured her were made for childbearing," the baby's birth fails to go according to plan. To Shoba, the stillbirth represents the unpredictability of her own body. In addition to the horrific loss of a child, the stillbirth forces Shoba to grapple with the realization that she can't even rely on herself to perform as expected, and even less so the volatile world around her. Shoba doesn't take well to this realization, and Lahiri illustrates this through the physical and behavioral changes Shoba undergoes in the months after her baby's death. When Shoba returns home from the gym looking disheveled, Shukumar notes that Shoba has become "the type of woman she'd once claimed she would never resemble." Shoba's thrown-together appearance reflects the new loss of control she feels on the inside. Shoba's behavioral shift further illustrates the extent to which she's given up on planning and precision. Before the baby's death, "the pantry was always stocked with extra bottles of olive and corn oil. […] There were endless boxes of pasta in all shapes and colors, zippered sacks of basmati rice, whole sides of lambs and goats." But Shoba hasn't shopped since the stillbirth, and Shukumar notes that "they'd eaten it all by now." Just as Shoba's precisely-stocked food supply has diminished, so too has her motivation to plan. Shoba's stillbirth forces her to come to terms with the fact that life is unpredictable, and that the success of one's life cannot be measured by one's ability to plan. When the unimaginable occurs—when Shoba and Shukumar's baby is born dead—Shoba's meticulous plans are rendered useless, and her inability to reckon with her newfound powerlessness leaves her stagnant, flailing, and unable to work through her loss. - Climax: Shoba tells Shukumar that she plans to move out, so Shukumar reveals the sex of their dead child. - Summary: Shukumar and Shoba, a married couple, receive a notice from their electric company informing them that for five days, their power will be cut off for one hour from 8:00 to 9:00 P.M. in order to repair a power line damaged in a snowstorm. The couple has grown increasingly distant from one another since their baby's stillbirth six months ago, and they are now accustomed to eating their meals in separate rooms. The couple is still overcome with grief from the loss of their child. Shoba suffers from the unexpectedness of the death, and Shukumar from the guilt of being absent from the birth—he'd been at a conference when Shoba went into labor, and hadn't been there to comfort his wife when their baby was born dead. In the wake of the stillbirth, Shukumar reflects on how Shoba has changed. Whereas his wife was once a careful planner and loved to entertain, she has now apathetically given up on preparing for the future, and the couple has isolated themselves from others. The temporary power outage forces Shukumar and Shoba to have dinner together, or else eat separately in darkness. The couple chooses to dine together, and at Shoba's suggestion, they begin to trade secrets back and forth as a way of passing the time until their electricity is restored—a game she recalls from her childhood trips to India when the generator would go out regularly. The game turns into "an exchange of confessions," with Shukumar and Shoba revealing, in turn, the small ways they've deceived and disappointed one another throughout their marriage. Revealing these truths allows Shukumar and Shoba to open up to one another for the first time since their baby's death, and their relationship appears to be on the mend. When the electric company sends a second notice the morning of the final day of the blackout informing the couple that the repairs have been completed ahead of schedule and the blackout is over, Shukumar suggests that the couple eats together in darkness one last time. As they finish eating, Shoba reveals that she has a final secret she'd like to confide in Shukumar, but it needs to be told with the lights on. Shoba tells Shukumar that she has found an apartment and intends to leave him. Shukumar realizes that the game of trading secrets was not Shoba's attempt to repair their marriage, but a means of preparing Shukumar for this final, difficult confession. Angrily, Shukumar responds with a brutal secret of his own: he reveals the sex of their dead baby, something Shoba wished to never know, and something she'd believed was a mystery to Shukumar, as well. Unbeknownst to Shoba, Shukumar had arrived at the hospital before the baby's body could be cremated, and he had held their dead child in his arms. Shukumar describes the scene to Shoba in vivid detail. After Shukumar confesses, Shoba turns the lights back off. The story ends as the couple weeps in darkness, "for the things they now knew."

- Genre: Domestic realism, American novel - Title: A Thousand Acres - Point of view: Point of View:First person (Ginny) - Setting: Setting:Zebulon Country (Midwestern United States) - Character: Ginny Cook Smith. Description: The protagonist and narrator of the novel, daughter of Larry Cook and wife of Tyler Smith. Ginny is a frustrated farmer's daughter, full of repressed desires and thwarted ambitions. Along with Rose Cook Lewis, her sister, she accepts Larry's inheritance: his farmland. Over the course of the novel, she becomes closer to her family, especially to Rose, but begins to drift away from Rose when they compete for the same man, Jess Clark. Ginny also remembers and then contends with her traumatic childhood, during which her own father repeatedly raped her. Ginny's path in the novel is depressing and sometimes nihilistic: she's blessed with her father's inheritance, but a mixture of greed, trauma, jealousy, and vengefulness lead her to break off all relations with her husband, sisters, and father. By the end of the novel, she's still a prisoner of her own traumatic past. Ginny corresponds to the character Goneril in King Lear. - Character: Rose Cook Lewis. Description: The daughter of Larry Cook, and wife of Pete Lewis. Like her sister, Ginny Cook Smith, Rose is an ambitious, often greedy woman, but Rose is more open about her feelings than Ginny is. While she loves Ginny and Caroline, and often looked out for Caroline over the years, her defining emotion is hatred for her father. Rose remembers that Larry would abuse her when she was a teenager; she'd often encourage him to have sex with her in order to protect Caroline, her little sister. Over the course of the novel, Rose gradually gives in to her desire to get revenge on Larry. At the same time, Rose must contend with breast cancer, which eventually ends her life. She's driven apart from Ginny over her love for Jess Clark, and by the end of the novel she's permanently estranged from the rest of her family. Rose corresponds to the character Regan in King Lear. - Character: Caroline Cook. Description: The youngest of Larry Cook's daughters, and her father's favorite. Caroline is the only Cook daughter to go to college and (it's suggested) the only daughter not to be sexually abused by Larry. Largely as a result, Caroline grows up much closer to Larry than either Rose or Ginny, and after Larry proposes signing away his property to his children, Caroline is the only one who has second thoughts—so that in the end, Larry spitefully cuts her out of the will. Over the course of the novel, Caroline continues to love her father and hate her sisters for, in her view, cheating Larry out of his own money and land. As the novel ends, Caroline is still unaware that her father is a rapist. Caroline corresponds to the character Cordelia in King Lear. - Character: Laurence Cook. Description: The patriarch of the Cook family, and the father of Rose, Caroline, and Ginny, Larry Cook is a proud, intimidating farmer who's risen to own one thousand acres of fertile farmland. As a younger man, Larry was suave, charismatic, and a shrewd businessman—he wasn't above taking advantage of his neighbors when he saw the opportunity to buy their land for cheap. As he enters old age, Larry decides to sign over his property to his three daughters, though he cuts Caroline out of the will when she questions his decision. Over the course of the book, we learn that Larry repeatedly raped his two eldest daughters after his wife, Mrs. Cook, died. Larry's horrible crimes lie at the heart of the novel: he has traumatized his daughters well into their adulthood. While Larry's Shakespearean counterpart, King Lear, was portrayed as a hubristic but ultimately sympathetic character, Larry is arguably the villain of the novel: he embodies the violent misogyny and sexism against which the Cook daughters battle in different ways. - Character: Harold Clark. Description: Larry Cook's neighbor and friendly rival, and father to Loren Clark and Jess Clark. Harold Clark is a seemingly easygoing, eccentric old farmer, but on closer inspection, he's surprisingly shrewd and perceptive. Over the years, he's maintained a steady rivalry with Larry, so that both men make a show of buying expensive equipment and property in order to outdo the other. Harold, Jess claims, projects an image of idiosyncrasy in order to disguise his true, serious nature. And yet, unlike his son, Jess, he can't stand change or uncertainty of any kind. After Larry turns against his daughters, Harold is one of the first to take Larry's side, revealing his own sexist beliefs in the process. Harold corresponds to the character of Gloucester in King Lear. - Character: Jess Clark. Description: The son of Harold Clark, and the brother of Loren Clark, Jess Clark is one of the most ambiguous characters in the novel. Unlike others in his community, Jess seems relatively uninterested in farming; as a young man, he runs away from home, and ends up traveling around the world, partly for his own interest and partly to avoid fighting in the Vietnam War. When he returns home, the charismatic, mischievous Jess soon begins an affair with Ginny Cook Smith, and convinces her that he's a good, honest man. Later, Jess also begins an affair with Rose Cook Lewis, leading Ginny to try to kill her own sister out of jealousy. Jess is the most charismatic character in the book, and yet he also seems to be a manipulative, greedy man—in the end, he abandons Rose as well, leaving her all alone on her vast property. Jess corresponds to the character Edmund in King Lear. - Character: Loren Clark. Description: The son of Harold Clark and the brother of Jess Clark, Loren is a minor character in the text, in spite of his close ties to Jess, Harold, and Larry. Unlike his brother, Jess, Loren is a faithful, hardworking son, and spends all his time helping his father work the farm. Loren corresponds to the character Edgar in King Lear. - Character: Mrs. Cook. Description: While Larry Cook's wife never appears in the novel, her presence hangs over every page. In flashbacks, we learn that Mrs. Cook was a meek, submissive woman who always gave Larry what he wanted. Mrs. Cook, according to Rose Cook Lewis, is the reason why Larry is so stubborn and ornery: she never challenged him, and encouraged him to get used to having everything "his way." - Character: Tyler "Ty" Smith. Description: The husband of Ginny Cook Smith, Ty Smith is a hardworking, ambitious farmer. Over the course of the book, his allegiances are never entirely clear: there are times when he seems to share his wife's dreams for developing their land, but there are also times when he seems to agree with Larry and Caroline Cook that Rose and Ginny have been treating their father poorly. Overall Ty is presented as a good husband, though Ginny keeps some of her miscarriages a secret from him and cheats on him with Jess Clark. When Ginny runs away from the farm, Ty stays behind to try and become a hog farmer. Ty corresponds to the character Albany in King Lear. - Character: Pete Lewis. Description: The husband of Rose Cook Lewis, Pete is a talented musician, and not a native of Rose's community. As an outsider among stoic farmers, he's often treated like a mere "tourist," even after he settles down with Rose. Though he seems charismatic and friendly in general, Pete also drinks a lot and beats Rose sometimes, to the point where he breaks her arm—and after this his abuse supposedly stops. Pete dies—whether by accident or suicide we never know—when he learns that Rose is having an affair with Jess Clark. Pete corresponds to the character Cornwall in King Lear. - Character: Marvin Carson. Description: The community's most prominent banker, who arranges for Tyler Smith and Ginny Cook Smith to borrow money and develop their new farmland. Much as the Fool's comic status in King Lear allowed him to speak his mind about Lear while the other characters flattered him, Marv's financial independence and neutrality sometimes allows him to speak the truth about Larry and the Cook sisters while other characters just try to tell them what they want to hear. Marvin corresponds to the character of the Fool in King Lear. - Theme: King Lear and Good vs. Evil. Description: It's no secret that A Thousand Acres is based on William Shakespeare's famous tragedy King Lear. Where Shakespeare's work is about an elderly king who tries to divide up his property between his three daughters, Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia, Smiley's novel is about an elderly farmer, Larry Cook, who tries to divide up his property between his three daughters, Rose, Ginny, and Caroline. There are long passages in A Thousand Acres that are intended as homages to famous speeches from King Lear, and many of the secondary and even smaller characters have direct counterparts in Lear. It's certainly important to keep the parallels between Smiley's novel and Shakespeare's play in mind while reading A Thousand Acres. But Smiley's goal isn't just to re-tell King Lear in a modern setting. Rather, she uses the original play as a source that she then plays with and revises, offering her own interpretation and critique of Shakespeare's themes.Lear, as its title suggests, puts the king at its center and explores its story around that central focus. A Thousand Acres, with a title that focuses on the land being divided rather than on any one character, takes a broader view, and in particular spends more time on the daughters' side of the story: Ginny (the counterpart to Goneril, who in Lear is power-hungry and greedy above all else) is the narrator of the novel. By focusing on Ginny's perspective, the novel presents her with real complexity. It isn't that she's presented as purely virtuous or good in the novel – she's at times power-hungry, greedy, and vengeful, to name a few traits – but the novel does present her choices and actions within a broader context, and in doing so shows how so-called "evil" women might themselves be the victims of societal evils like sexism and abuse.More broadly speaking, Smiley retells Lear in such a way that the characters in Lear who seemed more overtly evil (such as Edmund, Goneril, and Regan) are now presented as neither entirely sympathetic nor completely evil (Ginny, Jess Clark, Rose). Ginny initially seems to be a decent, moral person, and believes herself to be a decent person even after her actions grow increasingly greedy and cruel, making it more difficult for readers to condemn or condone these actions. Even a character like Larry Cook, who's guilty of an unambiguously evil crime, rape, may himself be the victim of other people's evil deeds later in life. In general, A Thousand Acres uses its Lear allusions to suggest that labels like "good" and "evil" often can't be so firmly applied in the real world. - Theme: Women, Sexual Abuse, and Fertility. Description: In King Lear, female characters tend to fall into two camps: purely good (such as Cordelia, the "good" daughter") and purely evil (Regan and Goneril, the "bad" daughters). It's the men of Lear – Lear, Edmund, Edgar, even Gloucester and Kent – who get the most time on stage, and who have the most psychological depth. As Smiley has stated in interviews and essays, part of her intention in writing One Thousand Acres was to offer the Lear story from a female perspective, a perspective that didn't have as firm a place in literature during Shakespeare's lifetime. Further, by setting Lear in late-1970s America, Smiley is able to examine the lives of women in a more recognizably contemporary environment that offers them more economic and sexual freedom. At the same time, Smiley shows how modern women are still burdened by sexism, and how the promise of being able to "have it all" is more perilous than it appears.Thanks to feminist activists of the 1950s and 60s, women in America in the 1970s –such as Ginny, Rose, and Caroline – had more social, economic, and sexual freedom than their parents enjoyed. Caroline is a successful attorney, and Larry Cook entrusts his valuable farmland to Ginny and Rose. And yet in spite of the advantages women enjoy in the novel, their actions and decisions are still greeted with skepticism and often ridicule by the mostly male-dominated society around them. At one point Larry calls his daughters "bitches" and "whores" and says that he would have been better off with sons—proving that even as gender equality has improved, it is by no means complete, and women continue to suffer from deep-seeded misogyny and sexism.Arguably the most important example of how misogyny continues to shape the female characters' lives is sexual abuse. Halfway through the novel, we learn that Larry Cook is an incestuous rapist: after the death of his wife, Larry began to sleep with his two eldest daughters, Ginny and Rose. Even though Larry's sexual abuse ended a long time ago, Ginny and Rose are still traumatized by their pasts—a fact that is both a realistic depiction of most sexual trauma and one that can be read as symbolizing the way that America's misogynist, disempowering, and often violent past – in which women were essentially the property of first their fathers and then their husbands – continues to limit modern women's freedom and happiness, even when they are, by all appearances, free to do whatever they choose.Smiley further explores the relationship between female freedom and misogyny through the concept of fertility, both literal and metaphorical. On a literal level, the novel examines the fertility of the human body – a woman's ability to have children. Smiley parallels female fertility with the fertility of farmland itself; "fertile" land is capable of bearing healthy crops, and fertile women are capable of bearing children. After their father gives him their land, Ginny and Rose are expected to be "fertile" in both senses of the word: they're expected to be good farmers, and, because of their culture's sexist assumptions, they're also expected to bear children and be good mothers to them. Indeed, not only are Rose and Ginny expected to have children, but they also expect it of themselves because they've internalized society's norms and ideas. Ginny, for instance, is convinced that her own life will be incomplete until she has children of her own.Smiley also shows how the two senses of "fertility" can conflict with one another. Ginny, who's had five miscarriages, suspects that the farmland itself keeps her infertile. The very water she drinks is tainted with chemicals like DDT to ward off pests — what's good for fertile crops is bad for her body. Put simply, Ginny not only struggles to be a good farmer and a good mother, but the novel suggests that the effort to be a good farmer (to excel at work) is sometimes at odds with the effort to be a good mother. By the same token, Smiley implies that the literal, financial freedom of women in the 70s (and even today) has been undercut by persistent sexist ideas, particularly the idea that a woman's purpose in life is to have a baby. The women of A Thousand Acres are expected to "be both" — to be successful, "modern" women with jobs and businesses, but also traditionally submissive, childbearing wives — even when doing both is almost impossible. - Theme: Inheritance, Land, and Memory. Description: A Thousand Acres studies inheritance: the passage of property, especially from one generation to the next. Sometimes, the "property" in question is literal: as the novel begins, Larry Cook signs the papers that turn over his thousand acres of farmland to his two eldest daughters, Ginny and Rose. But in reality, the characters' most importance inheritance is abstract: the memories and influences passed on from parents to children, and the way such memories and influences are often inextricably connected to concrete inheritances like land and money.The tragedy of Ginny and Rose's lives is that they want to inherit certain aspects of their father's legacy, such as his land and his money, but don't want to inherit other aspects of his legacy (they don't want to remember their father's cruelty and abusiveness—in fact, they don't really want to remember their father at all). Ginny and Rose talk about moving away from their farmland altogether and becoming waitresses in Saint Paul, thus freeing themselves from the memory of their father. But because of Ginny and Rose's strong desire for wealth and independence, and their sense of having a legitimate claim to their father's property, they remain on and take over running the farm. Because Ginny and Rose choose to inherit their father's property, they must also "inherit" memories of their father, traumatic though some of the memories are. As the novel goes on, Ginny and Rose try to maintain their new property and forget about their father, but nothing they try works. Their property is so closely connected to Larry's life and career that to live on the farm is to remember Larry. Smiley demonstrates the link between Larry and his property throughout her novel, most directly in the scene where Ginny walks through her father's house; the sight of specific rooms, especially her own, triggers her to vividly remember her father raping her. In the end, Ginny seems to realize the futility of her struggle: as long as she keeps her father's old property, her father will be "with" her. Her decision, toward the end of the novel, to leave the farm and move to the city suggests that her desire to be free of the traumatic familial legacy, her family's emotional inheritance, outweighs her desire for the potential wealth that ownership of the farm, her physical inheritance, offers. - Theme: Revenge. Description: Throughout the second half of the novel, Ginny and Rose are motivated by the desire to get revenge on their father for abusing them when they were teenagers. Perhaps surprisingly, Ginny and Rose don't try to get their revenge on Larry by simply telling people about his crimes—as Rose says, their vengeance must be more personal and "total." Instead, Ginny and Rose attempt to get revenge by reshaping the farmland Larry gives them and by treating Larry with condescension and contempt; in short, rubbing Larry's face in his own powerlessness after he has given up his land.Ginny and Rose's attempts to humiliate their father illustrate an important idea portrayed in the novel: revenge may be rooted in the legitimate need for justice (certainly, Larry deserves to be severely punished for his crimes), but ultimately it also corrupts the people seeking vengeance. As Ginny and Rose become increasingly hell-bent on defeating Larry, they begin to feel the "seduction" of revenge and, more generally, of cruelty and selfishness. As a result, they begin to treat other people (not just their rapist father) cruelly. Ginny and Rose succeed in "humiliating" Larry in a court dispute over the farmland, driving him further into senility, but in the process of pursuing this vengeance, they turn on each other. For instance, Ginny jealously attempts to murder Rose as revenge for Rose's decision to sleep with Ginny's former lover, Jess Clark. Once Ginny has established a "precedent" for revenge against one of her family members, her father, she begins seeking revenge against another family member, Rose, seemingly for a much more forgivable offense. In addition, the characters' attempts at vengeance – successful and otherwise – ultimately fail to bring the desired results. Ginny and Rose's "victory" over Larry doesn't bring them any peace. On the contrary, Ginny's "addiction" to revenge has torn her and Rose apart. Moreover, Ginny remains haunted by her father's abuse, even decades later. Revenge has not helped Ginny move past Larry's crimes; its primary consequence has been to destroy her life and connection to others even more thoroughly. - Theme: Appearance vs. Reality. Description: A Thousand Acres takes place in the American Midwest in a community so small that, at times, its inhabitants seem to know everything about one another. And yet many of the novel's characters, including some of the community's most prominent and popular residents, have dark secrets to hide; for example, Larry Cook abused his children, Ginny and Rose, even as he pretends to be a proud, upstanding member of the community. Smiley's novel studies the relationship between appearance and reality; particularly the appearance of innocence and goodness as it hides secret sin or evil.For some of the novel's characters, the separation between appearances and reality can be a source of freedom. Characters maintain a certain affect or public image, but beneath the surface, their personalities are very different. Appearance acts as a mask for reality, disguising and enabling the characters' true thoughts and feelings. Consider Harold Clark, Larry's neighbor and rival. Clark pretends to be an old eccentric, when in reality, he's extremely sharp and single-minded. Because he's so successful in affecting the appearance of eccentricity, Harold's neighbors mostly steer clear of him; they give him a lot of privacy, and even let him get away with overcharging on farm crops. In short, Clark manipulates his public image in order to benefit himself—that is, to benefit his secret, shrewder "self." Harold's son, Jess Clark, represents an even more extreme example of the divide between appearance and reality. Jess spends most of his adult life "trying on" different careers and, with each career, a different personality. Whenever Jess tires of the external elements of his life, such as his job, his home, or his friends, he just moves on to somewhere else. Jess can do so because, beneath his kind, charismatic façade, he's cold-hearted and selfish—Jess is so good at affecting the appearance of kindness that we don't realize how cruel he really is until the end of the book.By manipulating their own appearances, affects, and reputations, many of the characters in the novel achieve a kind of freedom. But of course, there's a limit to how often the characters can get away with such manipulations; furthermore, many characters, particularly female characters, are forced to adhere to a certain public image instead of crafting one for themselves. While Jess Clark has the freedom to start over again and again, Ginny and Rose are "locked into" the same sexist roles year after year. They're expected to be obedient children, to cook and care for their aging father, and to marry and have kids.Ginny and Rose struggle to "be themselves" in private while adhering to the image that's expected of them. Their public image doesn't offer them freedom; on the contrary, it burdens them, to the point where, on some level, they start to believe that their public image is the truth. Ginny and Rose also have a horrible secret: Larry raped them when they were teenagers. The novel never explicitly explains why the two women never tell other people what happened. Smiley implies, however, that Ginny and Rose remain silent about their father's horrible crimes at least in part because they're afraid of disrupting appearances. In other words, they're afraid of challenging Larry's image as a pillar of the community, their own images as obedient daughters, and even their community's "image" as a tranquil, ordinary place. In short, Smiley shows a basic disagreement between her characters' appearances and their true natures. While some of the characters succeed in manipulating their own appearances, many of the women in the novel suffer because they internalize the image that other characters have imposed upon them. - Climax: Climax:The hearing - Summary: Larry Cook is a prominent Midwestern farmer with three daughters, Ginny (the eldest, and the narrator of the novel), Rose, and Caroline, the youngest. Ginny is married to Ty, a farmer, Rose is married to Pete, a musician from another state, and Caroline, the only one of the three daughters who attended college, is soon to be married to Frank. Rose and Ginny live on their father's land, while Caroline lives in the city of Des Moines. Rose has been in and out of the hospital for breast cancer treatment, and will have to go undergo regular tests for the rest of her life. As he gets older, Larry comes up with a plan to avoid paying death taxes or property taxes on his land: he'll pass on his land to his three daughters while he's still alive. When Larry announces his plan, Ginny and Rose are in favor of the idea, while Caroline is skeptical of it. Larry, a drunk, taciturn man, spitefully tells Caroline to get out of his house. He cuts Caroline out of the will, leaving Rose and Ginny in control of his hugely valuable farmland. Around the time that Larry divides up his land, Jess Clark, the son of Harold Clark, Larry's friend and rival, comes back to town after years spent traveling the world. Jess, the child of Harold and the brother of Loren Clark, is a magnetic, charismatic young man, who fled to Canada rather than fight in the Vietnam War. He immediately charms Ginny. With Larry's property now in the hands of Ginny and Rose, and with Caroline married to Frank and practicing law in Des Moines, life moves on. Ginny and Rose have big plans for their land; they want to convert it into a modern, up-to-date farm. Ginny and Rose take turns cooking meals for their aging father. As time goes on, though, Larry becomes increasingly morose, to the point where he ignores his children altogether. Ginny is reminded that Caroline was always Larry's favorite child. Jess ingratiates himself with Ty, Pete, Rose, and Ginny, and before long the family has established a fun tradition: Monopoly night. However, Ginny and Rose continue to worry about Larry, who increasingly keeps to himself and seems bitter at his children. Tension builds as word of Larry's increasingly volatile behavior reaches Rose and Ginny. Larry drinks heavily, and on one occasion drives all the way to Des Moines and back. Rose, who's tougher on her father than Ginny, suggests that Larry has Alzheimer's disease. After months of silence, Ginny calls Caroline, who accuses her of stealing Larry's property and only pretending to be reluctant to take it off his hands. Jess takes long walks with Ginny, and Ginny finds herself falling in love with him. Ginny opens up to Jess about her inability to have children: she's had five miscarriages in the past, though Ty only knows about three of them. The family learns that Larry has been in a car accident: he was driving while drunk, and hurt himself. After the accident, Larry becomes even more morose and unwilling to talk to his children. Soon after the accident, Ginny finds herself fantasizing about Jess, and eventually they have sex. One night, Pete discovers that his pickup truck is missing, and deduces that Larry has driven off with it. He and Ty track down Larry—when they bring Larry back home (in the middle of a storm), Larry calls Rose and Ginny "whores" and accuses them of stealing his property and not taking care of him. He then stubbornly walks away from them, out into the rain. Late that night, Rose opens up to Ginny about her past: after their mother (Mrs. Cook) died, when Rose was a teenager, Larry raped her repeatedly. Ginny can't remember anything of the kind happening to her. Ginny and Rose proceed with their farming, borrowing lots of money to expand their land's capability. Ginny and Rose try to confront Larry about his abuse at the annual church potluck, but at the potluck Larry and Harold (with whom Larry's been staying) criticize Rose and Ginny for being bad daughters, and the entire community begins to turn against Rose and Ginny. Soon after the potluck, Ginny returns to Larry's house, which is now empty, and remembers being raped by Larry—a memory she's repressed for most of her adult life. She realizes that she and Rose always protected Caroline from Larry's advances: by offering themselves up, they ensured that Larry never tried to rape his youngest daughter. Jess becomes increasingly distant from Ginny, and Harold has a bad accident: he sprays himself with ammonia and ends up blinding himself. Soon after, Rose and Ginny receive word that Larry (with help from Caroline) is suing them to reclaim his property. Rose and Ginny, along with their husbands Pete and Ty, hire a lawyer, Jean Cartier, who advises them to be "perfect" in the way they run their farmland. Meanwhile, Ty discovers that Ginny had a miscarriage that she hid from him, and a distance grows between them. Soon after, Pete has a drunken argument with Harold Clark, drives off into the night, and ends up crashing into a pond and drowning. In the following days, Ginny learns from Rose why Pete was arguing with Harold: he'd learned from Rose that Rose is having an affair with Jess. Ginny is jealous and offended that Rose would "steal" Jess from her. Secretly, she finds hemlock, a powerful poison, and prepares a jar of poisoned sausages, which she gives to Rose in the hopes that she'll poison herself. The hearing regarding Larry's land proceeds, and Larry is put on the witness stand. He's clearly senile, and fails to convince the judge that his case has any grounds. The judge sides with Rose and Ginny: their contract is valid, and they own Larry's land. After the hearing, Ginny is afraid that her family has been torn apart forever. Impulsively, she tells Ty she's leaving him and moves to Saint Paul, where she takes a job as a waitress and never moves back to her home. Years pass, with Ginny receiving occasional letters from Rose (who, to her confusion, hasn't died from the sausages yet). One day, years later, Ginny receives a visit from Ty, who, he explains, is moving to Texas. Farming the land has been hard work, and the farm has fallen deep into debt. Ty comes to ask Ginny for a divorce, but she never explicitly agrees to it. Then, years later, Ginny learns that Rose is back in the hospital, very sick. She visits Rose and learns that Rose will die of cancer soon. After Ty's move to Texas, Rose has become the sole owner of Larry's old farmland. Ginny takes care of Rose's daughters, Linda and Pamela, but she refuses to reconcile with Rose, even on Rose's deathbed. She does, however, tell Rose about her plan to poison her. Rose is oddly uninterested in the plan—she tells Ginny that Jess left her long ago, and that Jess isn't the good, charismatic man Ginny thinks he is. Rose dies, leaving her property to Caroline and Ginny. Ginny and Caroline reunite in their father's old house, and Ginny considers telling Caroline about how Larry used to rape her and Rose, but chooses not to. As the novel comes to an end, Ginny finds the jar of sausages, still in Rose's cellar, and throws it away. She takes care of Linda and Pamela after their mother's death, but continues to feel a profound sense of loneliness.

- Genre: Novel - Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns - Point of view: The story is told in the third person, alternating between Laila's and Mariam's point of view—the section and chapter divisions specify which one. The narrator never deviates from the perspective of each woman, but at times provides foreshadowing hints to the reader concerning what awaits the characters. - Setting: Herat and Kabul, Afghanistan - Character: Mariam. Description: One of the novel's protagonists, Mariam is the illegitimate daughter of one of the most successful businessmen in the city of Herat, Jalil. She grows up in a small hut several kilometers outside the city with her mother, Nana, before being married off at the age of fifteen to Rasheed and moving to Kabul. Throughout her life, Mariam is plagued by the shame of being a harami, or bastard (illegitimate child)—in addition to the greater shame of believing she contributed to her mother's suicide. After feeling unwanted by and unimportant to Jalil, she is also shunned by her husband when she is unable to bear him a child. This lack of love and belonging is a constant theme throughout Mariam's life, but she has a remarkable ability to endure and persevere through suffering—often with the help of the Koran verses that she spent her childhood memorizing. After finally finding a sense of belonging with Laila and her daughter, Mariam makes the ultimate sacrifice, giving up her own life so that those she loves can be free. She is the novel's most powerful example of both the suffering and strength of women in Afghanistan. - Character: Laila. Description: Unlike Mariam, Laila is a beautiful young girl from an educated family in Kabul whose father is committed to giving her an education and preparing her for life as an independent woman. However, Laila suffers in her own way from the coldness of her mother, who seems to have abandoned her in favor of her two sons, who have gone off to battle and are eventually killed. Laila is curious and intelligent: she retains a strong sense of Afghanistan's culture and is hopeful for its future. She is also bold and prone to risk-taking, as evidenced by her love affair with Tariq as a teenager, by her plot to escape Rasheed, and by her constant commitment to make it to the orphanage to visit her daughter Aziza despite the possibility of beatings by the Taliban. Ultimately, however, Laila is not as tough or world-weary as Mariam—though she remains forever cognizant of the tremendous sacrifice Mariam has made for her. It is this sense of debt, to Mariam, to her family, and to Afghanistan, that will determine her return to Afghanistan from exile in Pakistsan. - Character: Rasheed. Description: The undeniable villain of the novel. Rasheed owns a shoe shop in Kabul, and is initially a successful businessman, though as things unravel in Afghanistan, he ends up struggling and eventually losing his business. Before marrying Mariam, he had already been married once before, but his wife and son had died—his son drowned while Rasheed was drunk and passed out. He is initially kind and solicitous to Mariam but soon becomes a grunting, hostile bundle of nerves, who treats Mariam with scorn and beats her. The same process is repeated when he marries Laila after her parents' deaths—Rasheed becomes increasingly violent to both his wives up until the book's climax. Rasheed doesn't mind the Taliban, and indeed his character is meant to reveal the worst of men's treatment of women in Afghanistan during the time span of the novel. - Character: Tariq. Description: Laila's childhood friend and eventually lover and husband. Tariq wears a prosthetic leg since he stepped on a land mine at the age of five. He can be mischievous and goofy, and he is always eager to prove his strength by joining in any fight and by defending Laila against other neighborhood boys. Tariq adores Laila and is unfailingly loyal to her, returning to Kabul to find her after years of imprisonment and exile in Pakistan. - Character: Nana. Description: Mariam's mother, once a maid in Jalil's household until she became pregnant with his child. Banished to the kolba (a hut on a hill) after her father disowned her, Nana is bitter and unhappy. She constantly complains about Jalil to Mariam and admonishes her not to trust any man. Though she can be at times a stifling presence for Mariam, Nana adores her and won't even let her attend school so as to keep her close. Nana's suicide, after Mariam has gone in search of Jalil, will make Mariam feel guilty and ashamed for the rest of her life, and harbor regrets about the way she dismissed Nana's warnings. - Character: Jalil. Description: Mariam's father, a successful cinema owner in Herat, who has three wives and nine legitimate children in addition to Mariam. Jalil comes to see Mariam every week when she is a child, but he never allows her to visit him in Herat or join the rest of his family there. Jalil does seem conflicted about Mariam, but he refuses to see her when she comes on her own. Though he seems regretful, he also allows his wives to arrange the marriage between Mariam and Rasheed. For the rest of the novel, there are hints that Jalil deeply regrets the way he acted with Mariam, though it is only at the very end that we learn the extent of this regret and shame. - Character: Mullah Faizullah. Description: The village Koran tutor that teaches Mariam to recite the Koran and memorize the daily prayers. Mariam trusts and looks up to Mullah Faizullah. Though he cannot fully comfort her following Nana's suicide, and though Mariam never sees him again after she leaves for Kabul, for the rest of the novel his teachings serve as a guide for her. She often calls upon what he has taught her as she endures further suffering. - Character: Fariba (Mammy). Description: Laila's mother. She was originally a curious, joyful woman but, by the time Laila is growing up, she is increasingly depressed at the departure of her two sons to fight in the Mujahideen. Their death drives her into further desperation, and she remains in her room for most of the time, unable to take care of Laila and not able to function fully. Mammy blames Babi for his inability to stop their sons from leaving, and for his bookishness and lack of practical savvy, though Laila comes to understand that these accusations stem from her grief and desperation. - Character: Hakim (Babi). Description: Laila's father, and a high school teacher in Kabul before being fired by the communists. Nevertheless, Hakim supports the communist regime's policy of equality between men and women, and strongly supports Laila's education, even tutoring her himself after it becomes too dangerous for her to go to school. Despite Mammy's dismissal of his intellectual leanings, Laila admires Babi for his unwavering commitment to his wife. - Character: Zalmai. Description: Laila's son with Rasheed, whom she nearly aborts, but whom she ends up loving just as much as she loves Aziza. When Zalmai is with his father, however, he becomes cranky and difficult to handle. He misses his father desperately after his death, which leads Laila to understand one of the many costs of her happiness. - Theme: History and Memory in Afghanistan. Description: As Laila, Babi, and Tariq drive out on a day trip from Afghanistan, their taxi driver tells of the tumultuous history of the region. He concludes, "And that my friends, is the story of our country, one invader after another." The novel deals with a thirty-year swath of Afghan history. It begins with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan up until their withdrawal in 1989, and continues through the infighting among the Mujahideen throughout the 1990s. The book ends shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, which introduced many Americans to Afghanistan for the first time. Many events in the characters' personal lives, in fact, are tightly bound to political events, and the narrator uses history as a reference for the novel's action. Through it all, the main characters retain a hold on what they consider the "true" Afghanistan, distinct from those "invaders" who may hold power over the country at any one time. There are often competing notions of the "true" Afghanistan, depending on the characters' political opinions and beliefs. Babi, for instance, is distraught by an Afghanistan where women cannot participate equally, while for Rasheed such inequality epitomizes the type of country that Afghanistan should be. The reader, however, is clearly meant to take Babi's side. The narrator also often stresses the natural beauty and ancient history of Afghanistan, which help to define it. The Taliban's destruction of the ancient Buddhas visited by Laila, for instance, is portrayed as a devastating attack against the nation itself. Despite the multiple invasions, bombings, and massacres, Laila and Mariam are able to keep their notion of Afghanistan intact through their own memories—for Laila, the happier times of her childhood, and for Mariam, the joy she gained from building a bond with Laila and her children. It is Laila's continued memory of Afghanistan that compels her to return, despite the violence, at the end of the novel. - Theme: Suffering and Perseverance. Description: None of the characters in the novel is a stranger to pain and suffering, either physical or emotional. However, this suffering takes different forms. The loss of loved ones brings its own kind of acute pain—often in a way that seems to lack any kind of redemption. On the other hand, there are other types of suffering that the characters willingly endure in the service of others. A Thousand Splendid Suns seems to grapple with how to create a hierarchy of grief and suffering: is the loss of Laila's brothers, after Babi (or so Mammy accuses him) allowed them to fight the Mujahideen, somehow worse than the random rocket that killed Laila's friend Giti? The characters grapple with such suffering in different ways. Mammy takes refuge in her dark bedroom following her sons' deaths and never quite seems to be able to overcome her grief. Laila is more pragmatic: she marries Rasheed not despite but because of her parents' death, which she sees as her only option. The novel seems to promote this kind of perseverance over the immobilization that can stem from suffering. Though the suffering that the characters have experienced might be impossible to undo, there is value and strength to be drawn from their ability to endure.This is especially the case when the characters choose willingly to suffer. Laila, for instance, willingly submits to beatings by the Taliban for traveling as a woman alone, just so that she has the chance of seeing and spending time with her daughter Aziza at the orphanage. Mariam, of course, chooses to kill Rasheed so as to give Laila a chance of a better life, knowing all the same that she will be convicted and executed by the Taliban as a result. This ability to suffer willingly for the benefit of others is portrayed as something women in particular excel at. From Laila's horrifically painful childbirth to Mariam's sacrifice, women endure their own suffering and even add to it themselves. - Theme: Shame and Reputation. Description: A particular kind of suffering in the novel has to do with shame, which comes up again and again as both a pain to be endured and as a tool to inflict on others. In the first case, shame is linked to responsibility and ensuing guilt for an incident in a character's past. Mariam's mother's suicide, after Mariam runs away to Jalil, is one example of such shame. Laila feels her own sense of shame for having survived the bombing that killed her parents, purely by luck. Another type of shame is intimately linked to social standing and reputation, and that particular type of shame has the power to inflict deep psychological damage. As a harami (bastard), Mariam is made to feel deeply ashamed by her father Jalil's family, by others in the village, and by her husband Rasheed. She becomes convinced as a result that she does not deserve to be loved, and will never find a place where she belongs. By beating both Mariam and Laila, Rasheed combines psychological and physical harm, making them feel pain but also shaming them and asserting his own power over them. We see, then, how shame is both intimately personal and extremely political. Many of the Taliban's laws, particularly regarding the status of women, consider women as shameful (though extraordinarily powerful) creatures that must be barred from the public sphere. These standards are often couched in terms of "protecting" a woman's "honor," though honor in the novel is quite often used as the counterpart to shame. - Theme: Love, Loyalty, and Belonging. Description: In A Thousand Splendid Suns, love may not conquer all, but it is a stronger tie than many other social bonds, from social class to ethnic status. Love makes the novel's characters act in sometimes irrational ways, and their erratic behavior can often be explained by the strong loyalty that stems from love. Mariam's love for her father Jalil remains constant despite hints that he is ashamed of her harami—she ultimately turns her back on him only out of love for her own mother. The poignant scene at the end of the novel when Laila receives a letter from Jalil meant for Mariam makes clear that his love for her was never entirely stamped out. Laila, in turn, believes that by marrying Rasheed and thus saving her and Tariq's baby, she is remaining loyal to Tariq, even after his death. Laila's love for Tariq also transcends ethnic boundaries—often a source of tension and violence in Afghanistan—as she is Tajik and he Pashtun. Though love can cross social boundaries in the novel, it is also a way to create a territory of belonging. Tariq and Laila band together in love against the destruction and suffering around them, while Mariam initially believes to find in her marriage to Rasheed a place where she can finally belong. Mariam's final dramatic act of killing Rasheed is, paradoxically, based on her close relationship with Laila. The novel portrays such an act, though morally complex, as a powerful statement of love. - Theme: Gender Relations. Description: By telling the story of A Thousand Splendid Suns through the perspective of two Afghan women, Hosseini can emphasize certain aspects of Afghan life and history that differ from the established historical narrative. The novel, in fact, draws on the limitations imposed on women in Afghan life in order to explore how women have lived, endured, and subverted these constraints.Gender relations differ throughout the novel depending on the occupying forces and the laws that accompany them. Under communist rule, for instance, girls are permitted to attend school and work outside the home. Babi celebrates this status and encourages Laila to take advantage of it. At the same time, however, girls are discouraged from spending too much time with members of the opposite sex before they're married. Gender relations can also depend on specific traditional or regional norms—Mariam, for instance, is required by her husband to wear a burqa long before this becomes law. Men, like Laila's brothers, are the ones who go off to fight, while the women stay home and often must deal with the repercussions of war. The relatively progressive gender norms under communism change drastically with the arrival of the Mujahideen and, eventually, the Taliban. For Laila, the restrictions have the effect of taking Kabul, the city that she always thought of as hers, away from her, limiting her freedom of speech and movement. Even so, the characters find ways to subvert these norms: Laila sneaks across town to the orphanage, and with Mariam she plans an escape (though ultimately a thwarted one) from Rasheed. The Taliban may have legally sanctioned Rasheed's violent beatings, but Hosseini is clearly on the side of greater freedoms for women, and the reader is meant to cheer on Laila and Mariam as they struggle against these inequalities. - Theme: Female Friendship. Description: Though gender norms shift throughout the course of the novel as a result of changing occupations and laws, one constant theme is friendship between women. The relationship between Mariam and Laila rests at the heart of the novel, as even its structure reveals: Part I takes Mariam's perspective, Part II takes Laila's, and Part III alternates between them. Laila also treasures her friendship with her classmates Giti and Hasina, with whom she shares laughs, games, and secrets about boys—forgetting for a time about the violence and dangers of their adolescence. By the time the Mujahideen impose their own restrictions on the place of women in Afghanistan, female friendship becomes one way to subvert these restrictions from within. Mariam and Laila, for instance, band together against Rasheed, the husband of both and the source of much of their suffering. Most drastically, this takes the form of their plot to escape. But in more subtle ways, the time they spend together drinking tea, joking, and laughing allows them to draw strength from each other and endure their oppression. Even in a society where women cannot participate in the public sphere, the book suggests, relationships between women serve not only as a source of escape but as a means to assert their own legitimacy and dignity. - Climax: As Rasheed is preparing to choke Laila to death, Mariam kills him with a shovel—thus ensuring both her own death, but also a hopeful future for Laila and her family. - Summary: Part I of A Thousand Splendid Suns begins in the early 1970s, when Mariam is a teenager living with her mother, Nana, in a kolba or small hut outside of the city of Herat. We learn that Mariam is the illegitimate child or harami ("bastard") of Nana and Jalil, a wealthy cinema owner in Herat. Mariam is taught to recite verses from the Koran by Mullah Faizullah, whom she looks up to and admires. Jalil comes to visit Mariam every week, and though Nana tries to convince Mariam that Jalil is embarrassed by her and refuses to consider her a true member of his family, to Mariam, he can do no wrong. One day, against Jalil's wishes, Mariam descends the hill into Herat for the very first time in order to see him. She is told he isn't there, and after spending the entire night sleeping on his stoop, his chauffeur brings her back to the kolba, though not before she has a glimpse of Jalil looking down at her from the window. Upon their return, Mariam sees her mother hanging from a rope. She feels desperately guilty, especially now that she knows Nana was right about Jalil. She loathes him even more once he marries her off to Rasheed, a shoe shop owner in Kabul thirty years her senior. In Kabul, Mariam is astounded by the cosmopolitan atmosphere, though Rasheed makes her wear a burqa and mainly stay within the home. Rasheed initially shows Mariam around the city and buys her gifts, but after she suffers multiple miscarriages he grows sullen and hostile, yelling at her and beating her. Part II shifts to the perspective of Laila, who is growing up in Kabul not far from Rasheed and Mariam's house, but who is getting an education thanks to her progressive father, Babi. But Mammy, her mother, is depressed and unable to take care of Laila because she so misses her two sons, Ahmad and Noor, who have gone to fight with the Mujahideen against the Soviets. Mammy's depression worsens even more after the two boys are killed. However, Laila has far more happy childhood moments than Mariam, from her walks home from school with her friends Giti and Hasina, to her lessons with Babi and, above all, her friendship with the mischievous Tariq, who lost one leg in a land mine accident when he was five. Tariq and Laila together witness the departure of the Soviets from Afghanistan. Their relationship turns romantic just as the Mujahideen's infighting begins, and they sleep together for the first time just before Tariq's family flees for Pakistan. Not long after that, Laila's family is preparing to leave as well when a rocket hits their home and kills both her parents. Part III alternates between Mariam's and Laila's point of view with each chapter. Rasheed digs Laila out of the rubble of their home, and Mariam slowly nurses him back to health. However, it soon becomes clear that Rasheed's apparent kindness has hidden his true goal—to take Laila as his second wife. Mariam begs him not to, but Rasheed threatens to turn Laila out onto the streets. Laila agrees to wed Rasheed—she has become pregnant with Tariq's child, and knows this is the only way to save the baby and herself. Mariam despises Laila, and the two live together in constant tension and low-simmering hostility. Not long afterward, a man named Abdul Sharif comes to the house and says he was in a hospital with Tariq, whose lorry (truck) had been caught in crossfire on the way to Pakistan and who was gravely wounded and, Abdul Sharif says, died. Rasheed is initially solicitous and adoring of Laila. After Laila gives birth to a baby girl, Aziza, however, he grows once again irritable and even violent, angry it was not a boy. At one point, Laila tries to stop Rasheed from beating Mariam. This small act leads the tensions between the two women to cool, and after drinking several cups of chai together, they start to become close friends and allies rather than adversaries. Laila confides to Mariam that she has been stealing bit by bit from Rasheed and plans to escape to Pakistan in the spring. Together with Aziza, the two of them depart for the Kabul bus station and ask a kind-looking man to pretend he's their cousin accompanying them out of the city—the Mujahideen prevent women from travelling alone. But the man betrays them, and Laila and Mariam are questioned before being taken back to Rasheed's, where they are both beaten severely and locked into separate rooms. The Taliban take control of Afghanistan shortly afterward, and begin to implement strict Shari'a, a strict set of religious laws that prevent women from working and severely restrict their freedom and mobility. Around the same time, Laila realizes she is pregnant with Rasheed's child. She comes close to aborting the child on her own, but ends up deciding that she cannot accept what the Mujahideen had accepted—that sometimes in war innocent life must be taken. She gives birth to a boy, Zalmai, in a harrowing caesarian at the only women's hospital still open in Kabul, which no longer has any anesthetic. Zalmai is cheerful and playful, but he has a malicious streak that comes out when he's with his father, who spoils him while largely ignoring Aziza. Several years later, during a massive drought, Rasheed loses his business in a fire and the family begins to go hungry. Mariam tries to call Herat to speak with Jalil, but learns that he died back in 1987—not long after he came to Kabul to see Mariam, but she refused to see him. Rasheed forces Laila to send Aziza into an orphanage. He rarely agrees to accompany her and Mariam to see Aziza, though when he doesn't, Laila leaves on her own and endures frequent beatings by the Taliban for being a woman on the street alone. One day, Laila, Mariam, and Zalmai are returning from the orphanage when Zalmai calls out that there's a strange man outside the house. It's Tariq—it turns out that Rasheed had hired Abdul Sharif to concoct the story of Tariq's death in order to force Laila to accept her marriage to Rasheed. Instead, Tariq had made it to a refugee camp. There he attempted to make money for his family by transporting coats across the Pakistani border, but the police found drugs inside the coats. He had been imprisoned for seven years before leaving for Murree, Pakistan and saving up money by working at a hotel. Laila tells him about Aziza and they make plans for him to meet her. That night, however, Zalmai tells Rasheed about the strange man Laila was talking to. Rasheed sends him upstairs and begins to beat Laila and Mariam. When Laila hits him back, Rasheed flies on top of her and begins choking her. Mariam, seeing he means to kill her, takes a shovel from the toolshed and breaks it over Rasheed's head, killing him. Mariam initially comforts Laila by convincing her they will run away together and lead a quiet peaceful life in a small village somewhere. The next day, however, Mariam tells her that she cannot allow Laila and her family to suffer for Mariam's actions. She says she could never have hoped for the love and sense of belonging she experienced through her friendship with Laila. Mariam turns herself in to the Taliban. After a brief trial, she is imprisoned and then sent to Ghazi stadium to be executed. Part IV opens with Laila and Tariq living in Murree and working at a hotel. Though Laila enjoys her life in Pakistan, she knows that Mariam did not sacrifice herself so that she could be a maid in a foreign country. The family returns to Afghanistan, first stopping at Herat. Laila meets Mullah Faizullah's son, Hamza, and sees where Mariam grew up. Hamza gives her a box that Jalil had left for Mariam, which includes a letter in which Jalil asks for Mariam's forgiveness and encloses her part of the inheritance—a token arriving too late for Mariam. The novel closes with Laila working at the same orphanage where she had sent Aziza, teaching and working to renovate the building. She is pregnant with her third child, and knows that if it's a girl, the baby will be named Mariam.

- Genre: Short Story, Asian American Fiction - Title: A Thousand Years of Good Prayers - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: A Midwest college town - Character: Mr. Shi. Description: Mr. Shi is, according to himself, a retired rocket scientist. He lives in China, but is visiting his daughter in the United States to help console her after her divorce. When he arrives in the U.S., he discovers that she does not want to spend much time with him and is very quiet when they are together. He tries to take care of her by cooking for her, but she is reluctant to eat. Over the course of the story, Mr. Shi becomes increasingly aware that he made mistakes in the way he raised his daughter, and did not spend enough time talking to her or to his wife, which he feels guilty about. He blames his work, which he says was required to be kept secret from his family. At the end of the story, it is revealed that Mr. Shi has been lying about being a rocket scientist, which his daughter and wife knew, and which explains his emotional distance from them. He had had an emotional affair with his colleague, Yilan, and was demoted when he refused to admit it. At the end of the story, he is left wondering whether he made the right choice to give up his relationship with Yilan. Mr. Shi knows that his daughter, who also had an affair, is like him in many ways, which he finds complicated because he holds her to different standards as a woman. Mr. Shi also has a close friendship with Madam, even though they do not share a common language. Over the course of the story, Mr. Shi comes to realize the importance of communication, as represented by the juxtaposition of his relationships with his daughter, Madam, Yilan, and his wife. - Character: Mr. Shi's Daughter. Description: Mr. Shi's daughter moved from China to the United States, where she works as a librarian in the East Asian department of a college. After seven years of marriage to a Chinese man, she is newly divorced. She reveals to her father that she was divorced because of an affair with a Romanian-American man with whom she feels she can communicate better than with her husband, because she was not raised to express her feelings comfortably in Chinese. Mr. Shi's daughter is reluctant to talk to her father both because of her discomfort speaking in Chinese and her knowledge of the lie he had told her and her mother for many years about his work. She does not like answering his questions about her work, her friends, and her life, and often refuses his company when she leaves the house. She feels there is a chasm of miscommunication between them and that they do not know how to speak to each other. At the end of the story, it does not seem that her relationship with her father has been repaired, because she sends him away to do a tour of the United States instead of letting him stay with her. - Character: Madam. Description: Madam is an Iranian immigrant to the United States who lives in a retirement home in the same town where Mr. Shi's daughter lives. She is 77 years old, two years older than Mr. Shi. She speaks little English, but develops a friendship with Mr. Shi based on their mutual connection. She wears bright colors and patterns that bring joy to Mr. Shi. They sit together on a park bench most mornings and tell each other stories, she in Persian and Mr. Shi in Chinese. They exchange some words in English, and she tells him that she believes America is a good country. Mr. Shi imagines her background and her life in Iran and believes that she must have been protected from misfortune by the men in her life. Mr. Shi, however, may be unaware of the turmoil in recent Iranian history that imposed strict rules regarding women's behavior and may have prompted her to leave. At the end of the story, Mr. Shi sits on the park bench with Madam and feels grateful for their friendship. He appreciates the joy and vibrancy she has brought to his life, and the story concludes with him feeling like he can see the world in detail for the first time in his life thanks to her. - Character: Mr. Shi's Wife. Description: Mr. Shi's wife is never present in the story—she has died— but both Mr. Shi and his daughter speak about her regularly. They reveal no details about her, but it becomes clear that even though Mr. Shi believed her to be a good woman and a good wife, they had a strained relationship because he was always so quiet about his work. He maintained the lie that this was because his job as a rocket scientist required confidentiality, but in actuality it was because he had been demoted to a menial position after his alleged affair with Yilan. He had refused to tell his wife, believing it was out of loyalty to her, but she found out anyway through the rumors that other people spread about him. Mr. Shi's wife was closer with their daughter than he had been, and he believes that his wife would have been better at helping their daughter recover after her divorce. - Character: Yilan. Description: Yilan was the card puncher with whom Mr. Shi had an emotional affair when he was still a rocket scientist. They never had romantic or physical contact, but they communicated freely and developed intimacy through their long conversations at their workplace. Mr. Shi realizes through telling the story of their relationship to Madam that he was in love with Yilan. Mr. Shi felt like he could connect with Yilan, unlike his wife, because he had to keep the details of his work as a rocket scientist secret from his family. His intimacy with Yilan was related to their shared passion for the mission of their work and their excitement about communism. After he refused to admit their affair to his superiors, she was sent away to a provincial town and Mr. Shi never saw her or heard from her again. - Theme: Language, Communication, and Understanding. Description: The characters in "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" spend much of the story finding ways to communicate with each other across various barriers—linguistic, emotional, and cultural. The story suggests that while such barriers can prevent people from communicating with one another, true understanding ultimately transcends language. Mr. Shi's relationships demonstrate that speaking a common language, especially when emotional and cultural barriers interfere, does not mean that people always understand each other. With his daughter in particular, Mr. Shi struggles to make himself understood and to understand her because she grew up accustomed to his silence as a way of concealing the truth about his work, which makes her distrust his words. Words spoken in a shared language are not enough to make oneself understood; trust and willingness to listen are also necessary. Lack of a shared language can also prevent understanding. For example, Mr. Shi's daughter does not know how to speak to him about her feelings in Chinese, which prevents them from feeling close to each other. Additionally, Mr. Shi makes numerous assumptions about Madam because he cannot understand many of the words she speaks to him. At the same time, lack of a shared language does not necessarily hinder understanding: Mr. Shi feels he has an intimate friendship with Madam despite the fact that they both speak only limited English. Even if they cannot understand what the other person is saying, they become close companions because of their shared joy in spending time with each other. Understanding through communication—even nonverbal communication—is therefore crucial for intimacy. This ability to understand without a common language suggests that, sometimes, nonverbal communication can say more than words. - Theme: Love, Marriage, and Intimacy. Description: For both Mr. Shi and his daughter, intimacy with and love for a person who is not their spouse come into conflict with their marriages. Intimacy is inherently tied to communication: only characters who can talk to each other freely and feel that they understand each other in the story achieve true intimacy. Mr. Shi's daughter, for example, feels intimate with her lover because they can speak English together, while she never wanted to talk to her ex-husband. Likewise, Mr. Shi felt intimacy with coworker Yilan because they could speak freely with each other, while the government prevented him from speaking about his work, which took up most of his life, with his wife. Communication itself therefore becomes a form of love and intimacy that transcends physical bonds. Despite this overlap in their respective experiences of intimacy, Mr. Shi and his daughter have different values about marriage, his more traditional and hers more modern: Mr. Shi considers marriage to be a bond one must maintain because of duty, even when he felt more intimate with—and loved—a woman who was not his wife. Even as he upholds this view of marriage, Mr. Shi lives with regret, missing Yilan and wondering whether his sacrifice was worth it. At the same time, Mr. Shi is angry at his daughter for ending her marriage and assumes that it must have been her fault. Mr. Shi's daughter, who is of a later generation and has been influenced by American cultural norms, prioritizes intimacy over the structure of marriage, and leaves her husband for her lover with whom she feels she can communicate. Li therefore suggests that it is perhaps more important to find meaningful love and intimacy with someone than to adhere to the bonds of marriage out of duty. - Theme: Fathers and Daughters. Description: Mr. Shi has complicated feelings about the ways in which his daughter has grown up to be like him: they both had similar extramarital affairs, both feel very dedicated to their work, and both accuse each other of being too quiet when they are trying to conceal their feelings. Mr. Shi is particularly upset with her not only because she is his child and because he is angry at himself for the same behavior, but also because she is a woman and therefore he holds her to different standards. Li demonstrates that while fathers can become angry at any child for the ways they replicate their mistakes, in the case of a daughter, a father's disappointment can be inflected with the rigid expectations applied to women's conduct. For example, Mr. Shi sees marriage as the ultimate goal for his daughter, describing her as a lychee that is past its prime. He believes that her divorce must be her fault because she was a bad wife, and believes that when she asks him questions she is too direct and ought to be more deferential. Mr. Shi therefore struggles to come to terms with his influence on his daughter because his judgment is clouded by his traditional ideas of how a daughter, wife, and woman is supposed to behave. He is not able to see the contradictions in how he understands his own behavior because of these double standards. Mr. Shi tells Madam that good relationships between fathers and daughters are especially difficult to achieve, believing that they require a thousand years of good prayers. But he explains his strained relationship with his daughter by blaming her, suggesting that she considers him a "nuisance" and prefers that he remain silent. This inability to understand his daughter's feelings indicates Mr. Shi's double standards: he cannot clearly investigate how his own conduct has harmed their relationship. At the end of the story, when Mr. Shi leaves to go on a tour, while he and his daughter have finally been honest with each other, they have not resolved their conflict. This conclusion suggests that fathers will always struggle to understand their daughters and their own impacts on them as long as gendered double standards are in place. - Theme: History, Culture, and Migration. Description: The three main characters in "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers"—Mr. Shi, his daughter, and Madam—are all either visitors or immigrants to America: Mr. Shi is only there to see his daughter, while his daughter and Madam have moved there permanently. As the story demonstrates, America is a place where immigrants and visitors are subjected to conflicting pressures and desires: both to assimilate and to maintain their native languages, customs, and traditions. Mr. Shi describes the importance for him and his daughter of living and growing up in a communist country, in particular his excitement and hope as a young rocket scientist in helping his country advance. Yet as an older man visiting America, he describes loving America, a capitalist country, and the opportunities it brings, especially regarding money: he explains that his daughter earns more in a year than he earned in twenty. This shift suggests a profound change of values inspired by traveling across borders. Many of Mr. Shi's traditions from his life in China are tested when he comes to America, particularly his ideas about marriage and a woman's role in society. He clings to the belief that his daughter must feel shame about her divorce and insists that she must be miserable, unable to see the freedom and happiness that her divorce has given her. However, he finds solace in knowing that while his daughter's lover is not Chinese, he also comes from a communist country and so he can understand aspects of her culture and history. More generally, Mr. Shi struggles with his relationship to the past and to history: he both wants to hold onto traditional values and at the same time he wants to forget his wrongdoings in China and to refuse to dwell on old stories. At the end of the story, he remembers how he was told in his training in China that "It is what we sacrifice that makes life meaningful," but now he doubts the statement's value. However, he dismisses this instinct as a "foreign thought," demonstrating how he feels stuck between living in the moment and valuing the past. - Climax: Mr. Shi's daughter reveals to her father that she knew he was not a rocket scientist. - Summary: Mr. Shi, supposedly a retired rocket scientist, comes to the United States to visit his recently-divorced daughter in a small town in the Midwest. She is hesitant to let him visit, but he convinces her that he wants to see the U.S. for his 75th birthday. Mr. Shi is enjoying his visit despite the fact that his daughter does not seem to want to spend time with him. He spends time alone while she is at work, and makes a friend: an Iranian woman whom he calls "Madam." Despite the fact that they both only speak minimal English, he feels that they can understand each other and they meet regularly in the mornings on a park bench. However, Mr. Shi struggles to communicate with his daughter. They have dinner together after work, and he always cooks for her, but she usually eats little and does not want to have conversations with him. Mr. Shi worries that his daughter's divorce, from another Chinese man, was her fault. Mr. Shi worries that his daughter is getting too old to find another husband. He worries that she is unhappy because of her quietness, and she reminds him that he had been quiet for much of his life despite seeming happy. Mr. Shi tells Madam of his daughter's unhappiness and her divorce, and explains that every good relationship is the result of hundreds or thousands of years of good prayers. Mr. Shi believes that Madam's vibrancy could help his daughter improve her situation, but his daughter still denies that she is unhappy. Mr. Shi believes that his daughter asks him too many direct questions and says that good women, like his wife had been, are more deferential. He believes that his wife would have been better at helping their daughter heal. The next night at dinner, Mr. Shi's daughter informs him that she wants him to go on a tour of the U.S. with a Chinese-speaking travel agency. The daughter answers a phone call, and Mr. Shi hears her speaking loudly and enthusiastically in English and laughing often, which makes him uncomfortable. His daughter admits that she was speaking to a lover, who was the reason her marriage ended. She explains that she feels good speaking to him in English, and that she never felt comfortable speaking to her ex-husband about her feelings in Chinese. As their argument escalates, Mr. Shi's daughter tells him that she and her mother knew that he was lying about being a rocket scientist. She tells him she will book a tour for him. The next morning, Mr. Shi goes to say goodbye to Madam. He admits to Madam that he had not been a rocket scientist for a long time: early in his career, he had developed an emotionally intimate relationship with a woman who was his card puncher, Yilan. His superiors believed that they were having a romantic affair, and they forced him either to admit the relationship or lose his job. He refused to admit it and was demoted. He never told his wife out of loyalty to her, but she found out through gossip. He realizes through recounting the story to Madam that even though nothing physical happened in his relationship with Yilan, he was in love with her. He tells Madam that sacrifice is what makes life meaningful.

- Genre: Short Fiction / Magic Realism - Title: A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings - Point of view: Third person omniscient - Setting: A small, nondescript town on the coast of South America - Character: The Old Man (the Angel). Description: The protagonist of the story, the angel is an old, disheveled man with enormous wings who finds himself facedown in the mud of Pelayo's courtyard at the beginning of the story. Presumably coming to take Pelayo's sick child to heaven, the angel is knocked down in the storm and then held captive in Pelayo's chicken coop for years. The angel speaks a strange dialect, so he can't explain himself to the locals, and his pathetic, mangy appearance makes him a target for their derision. He's treated like a "circus animal," as Pelayo and his wife Elisenda keep him captive and charge admission for locals to see him. Since everyone expects the angel to perform traditional miracles, the strange miracles he does perform don't impress anyone: the blind man grows three new teeth instead of regaining his sight, and the paralytic "nearly" wins the lottery instead of becoming able to walk. However, the story obliquely implies that the angel's presence was responsible for the sick child being healed, which raises the question of whether the angel is deliberately not performing the miracles that the cruel townspeople expect. Once the locals are tired of the angel, he lives a sorry existence, maltreated, ignored, and considered only a nuisance. Despite his terrible treatment, the old man never lashes out at anyone; he bears his suffering with patience and grace from start to finish. In the end, he regains his strength and flies away without anybody in the town ever recognizing that his presence was a miracle. That the angel's appearance—besides his wings—was so banal and pathetic suggests that the sacred and mundane coexist seamlessly, and that miracles are embedded in the fabric of everyday life, if only people had the attention and openness to notice. - Character: Pelayo. Description: Pelayo, a married man with a newborn son who lives in a rundown seaside town, finds the old man with enormous wings in his courtyard. Instead of finding the man's presence miraculous, Pelayo assumes that he's a shipwrecked sailor. Once the neighbor corrects him, he locks the angel in his chicken coop, abusing the man and charging locals admission to gawk at and even physically abuse him. From the admission fees, Pelayo experiences a change in economic fortune: he quits his job as a bailiff in order to set up a rabbit warren and he and Elisenda build a two-story mansion. Despite this change in status, Pelayo doesn't meaningfully change as a person: he is the same, simple, bitter man at the end that he was at the beginning. Although he does not have many redeeming features, Pelayo does provide the necessities of life for his wife and child, and (in a way that is not especially caring or charitable) to the old man. - Character: Elisenda. Description: Elisenda is Pelayo's wife. She is ordinary and concerned primarily with getting by. When Pelayo finds the old man in the courtyard, Elisenda is the one who comes up with the idea to charge admission to see the angel, and she's not contented with their new wealth, even when she and Pelayo make enough money for a new house. In fact, she sees the old man/angel as a nuisance, letting out "a sigh of relief, for her and for him" when he eventually regains his strength enough to fly away. Elisenda shows herself to be shallow: she never shows the angel any respect nor seems particularly bothered about the health of her child. In fact, her happiest moment in the story is probably when the admission money she and Pelayo have accumulated allows her to buy "some satin pumps with high heels and many dresses of iridescent silk, the kind worn on Sunday by the most desirable women in those times." - Character: The Neighbor Woman. Description: When Elisenda and Pelayo find the old man, they go to the old lady next door for advice. While she has a reputation for being wise, she comes across cruel and petty and somewhat silly in her beliefs. She does recognize that the old man might be an angel, but she says that angels are "fugitive survivors of a celestial conspiracy" and therefore they should "club him to death." - Character: The Child. Description: Pelayo and Elisenda's newborn son is very ill before the angel arrives, but he makes a full recovery by the end of the story. He is the only character who doesn't treat the angel with disdain, because he is too young and innocent to take social cues from his cruel community. In fact, he is quite happy to go inside the chicken coop to play. It seems like the child and the angel are somehow linked, as shown by them contracting chicken pox together. The child has no voice in the story, but the reader must consider to what extent his recovery to full strength is related to the angel's visit. - Character: Father Gonzaga. Description: Father Gonzaga is the hapless priest who is brought in to examine the angel. The priest, as a religious figure, should be charitable and empathetic towards the wretched angel, but he instead warns the townspeople against recognizing the old man as angel. Through the character of Father Gonzaga, Márquez satirizes of the Catholic church, suggesting that the church is more occupied with bureaucracy and internal wrangling than with the work of charity and spreading empathy: "They spent their time finding out if the prisoner had a navel," Márquez writes of church officials, "if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn't just a Norwegian with wings." Instead of doing his duty towards the angel, Father Gonzaga is relieved when the attention dies down and he no longer has to think about the angel at all. - Character: The Spider Woman. Description: This minor character has the body of a (very large) tarantula and the head of a fair maiden. She has a simple tale to tell of family tragedy, and because the townspeople recognize themselves in her more than in the angel, she becomes by far the more popular attraction in town. Even though she is physically less humanlike than the angel, her moral tale is easily digestible: "A spectacle like that, full of so much human truth and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even trying that of a haughty angel who scarcely deigned to look at mortals." This shows that the townspeople prefer what is familiar but outwardly exotic (the spider woman) to what is truly otherworldly and mysterious (the angel). - Theme: The Sacred and the Mundane. Description: "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" is the story of a decaying angel who falls to earth and is kept in a backyard chicken coop by a family who is annoyed by his presence. Márquez's characters do not consider the angel's arrival to be miraculous or even remarkable. Instead, they accept the supernatural aspect of the angel's presence without question, focusing instead on what the angel can do for them and concluding, ultimately, that he is unimpressive. Márquez's portrayal of an angel as an utterly mundane aspect of everyday life—a being the characters mistreat and disregard due to their perception that his strangeness is banal—suggests that the sacred is inseparable from the mundane, and that failures of human perception are to blame for everyday life not seeming miraculous. From the beginning of the story, Márquez gives the sense that the townspeople perceive their everyday lives as being dreary. For example, he immediately describes the stench of rotting crabs pervading the town and the relentless rains they're experiencing. From the rains, Márquez extrapolates that the "world had been sad," which suggests that the dreary conditions have permeated the townspeople's sense of their entire world. While the townspeople seem desperate for an interruption to their mundane lives, the angel's arrival—despite being mysterious and supernatural—is not the interruption they wanted. The townspeople find the angel a disappointment because he is "much too human." Instead of resembling exalted depictions of angels in religious art, this angel is dressed "like a ragpicker" and his "pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away any sense of grandeur he might have had." Furthermore, the angel has parasites, his wings are fraying, and he smells bad—he doesn't distract the townspeople from their everyday lives, but rather reminds them of the very tedium and shabbiness they wish to forget. The more the angel has in common with the townspeople, therefore, the less they are able to treat him with compassion or reverence. Because of this, they relegate him to a dreadful existence of living in filth in the chicken coop and subsisting on scraps. In spite of the townspeople's conviction that the angel is nothing special, Márquez hints that this visiting creature is sacred and sublime. His apparent ability to perform miracles is what most distinguishes him from humans, but the miracles that he performs either go unnoticed or unappreciated by the townspeople. "The few miracles attributed to the angel showed a certain mental disorder," Márquez writes in the sneering voice of the townspeople, "like the blind man who didn't recover his sight but grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who didn't get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers." While the townspeople wanted miracles that would change their lives, the angel's miracles seem simply to remind them that their lives are already extraordinary. Márquez suggests that rather than feeling awed by their proximity to a miracle, the townspeople felt mocked by these "consolation miracles," since they were not the miracles that the people wanted or expected. Even the angel's sole traditional miracle goes unappreciated. Pelayo and Elisenda's child is gripped by a dire fever at the story's opening. While the couple had assumed at first that the angel was coming to take the ailing child (presumably to the afterlife), the angel's arrival coincides with the child's sudden recovery. Instead of connecting the two events, however, Pelayo and Elisenda assume that the angel is utterly ineffectual, which hints that it's their inability to perceive miracles—rather than the absence of the miraculous in their lives—that plagues them. Since the angel isn't giving the townspeople what they want, they quickly move on to a more interesting distraction: the spider woman. Ironically, though, the spider woman is much more mundane than the angel; the townspeople seem to like her better simply because her miraculousness is easier to comprehend. For example, she combines traditionally frightening elements (a spider body) with beautiful ones (the head of a maiden), which makes her presence titillating and sensational, rather than confounding and pathetic. She also speaks the same language as the townspeople (unlike the angel, whose speech is utterly foreign), which makes her more accessible to them. Furthermore, the meaning of her existence is clear, since it fits tidily into human moral narratives. This contrasts the mysterious angel, whose existence cannot be explained and whose value the townspeople find difficult to locate. The fact that the townspeople love the spider woman but find the angel revolting and disappointing indicates that, even though they profess to find their lives mundane (and even though they profess to be disappointed in the angel because he is too human), they are not imaginative or perceptive enough to appreciate what is truly extraordinary. When confronted with a being that is mysterious, supernatural, and exotic, they are not excited or awed; instead, they seem to prefer the spider woman, who is a dressed-up version of the lives they already have. In this way, the story suggests that recognizing the miraculous in the everyday is a matter of perception and imagination, but most people simply lack the ability to see extraordinary things, even—and especially—when those things are right in front of them. - Theme: Patience, Empathy, and Cruelty. Description: Instead of treating the angel with reverence or sympathy, the townspeople are cruel to him; they keep him in wretched conditions, hurt him in order to rouse him into more entertaining behavior, and exploit his suffering by turning him into a ticketed spectacle. While the townspeople's behavior towards the angel is unambiguously cruel, Márquez does not suggest that this is because they are singularly bad people. Instead, he shows how an accumulation of small transgressions—beginning with a failure to empathize—can precipitate a once unthinkable moral decline. From the beginning of the story, the townspeople "other" the angel, or perceive him as being fundamentally different from them, which shows their lack of empathy. Pelayo and Elisanda initially believe that he is a foreign sailor, for example, which (at least in their mind) justifies Pelayo keeping the angel under armed guard in the filth of the chicken coop. As the story progresses, the characters' lack of empathy leads to outright violence. For instance, the townspeople, who have flocked to the chicken coop wanting to see something miraculous, provoke the angel cruelly: they pluck feathers from his wings, throw stones, and even burn him with an iron in order to make him do something exciting. This behavior, which would be obviously abhorrent if done to a human, demonstrates the extent to which they have othered the angel, and it also shows how group psychology can normalize behaviors that would usually be considered immoral. The townspeople's othering of the angel leads them not just to violence, but also to exploitation when Elisenda begins charging admission to see the angel's wretched existence in the chicken coop. At first, the angel is a popular attraction: "in less than a week [Pelayo and Elisenda] had crammed their rooms with money and the line of pilgrims waiting their turn to enter still reached beyond the horizon." However, none of these people ever raises questions about whether it's appropriate to profit off of or be entertained by the angel's suffering, or whether his terrible conditions are cruel. Instead, they see him "as if he weren't a supernatural creature but a circus animal." This is true even of the priest, Father Gonzaga, who should be the angel's protector. Indeed, the spectacle comes to an end not because anybody stands up for the angel, but rather because a new spectacle—the spider woman—is deemed more exciting, and the townspeople no longer want to pay to see the angel. "A spectacle like that," Márquez writes of the spider woman, "full of so much human truth and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even trying that of a haughty angel who scarcely deigned to look at mortals." This quote suggests that the townspeople justify their exploitation and subsequent abandonment of the angel on the grounds that it's the "haughty" angel, not them, who is behaving immorally. Again, this shows a lack of empathy, as the angel is clearly not haughty; instead, he seems pathetic and wretched. Furthermore, it's absurd to suggest that he should respect the people torturing him, and it's not even clear that he knows that's what they want from him. Although the townspeople sarcastically believe that the angel's "only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience," the angel's patience actually makes him the most virtuous character in the story. The angel never lashes out at Pelayo, Elisanda, or the public, even though they treat him so terribly—he bears their maltreatment with stoic grace, while they can't even be bothered to continue exploiting him once a more exciting spectacle comes to town. Márquez, then, seems to connect patience with the miraculous, suggesting that it is the impatience of modern life that disables people's ability to perceive the extraordinary in the everyday. The Bible notes that "lack of patience can cause you to miss blessings," and Márquez shows this to be literally true. Not only does the impatience of the townspeople cause them to miss the lessons that the angel could teach them about the extraordinary nature of their lives, but also the angel's patience is what gives him the ultimate blessing: after suffering patiently, the angel finally regains his strength and flies away. - Theme: Faith, Religion, and Morality. Description: In "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings," religion is a hollow set of habits, rather than a genuine moral framework. When the angel falls to earth, he finds himself among Christians who should be delighted by the heavenly miracle of his existence. However, since the angel does not match their preconceptions of what an angel should look like or do, nobody treats him with either reverence or kindness. Instead of taking care of him or even having sympathy for his wretched condition, the townspeople either want something from him or see him as a curiosity. Even Father Gonzaga, the priest, fails to help the angel or recognize that he is sacred; instead, the priest gets distracted by sending letters to church authorities. In this way, Márquez suggests that genuine faith is easily perverted. While these characters are superficially religious, they lack actual faith, hope, or charity. The angel is obviously a religious figure; though his wings are not in their best condition, he is still a supernatural creature that should amaze the townspeople and earn their respect. However, even though the townspeople understand that he is an angel, his pitiful appearance and odd behavior put off everyone who meets him. While the angel embodies the very wretchedness and destitution that Jesus says should be met with kindness and charity, the townspeople are so out of touch with their religion that they fail to carry out its basic principles. Furthermore, the angel's presence also clearly evokes Hebrews 13:2: "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." That is, practice the virtues of charity and kindness to everyone you encounter, because some of those people may be angels. The townspeople are in a situation in which they know that they are entertaining an angel—he's not even in disguise—and they still fail to display any generosity of spirit. This shows how ineffective and shallow religion has become in this town. People consider themselves faithful, while behaving selfishly and even cruelly towards an angel. Márquez suggests that the townspeople's lack of genuine faith might be due to the Catholic church setting a poor example, as he satirizes the Church's greed and pettiness. The exploitation of the angel is a clear comment on the money-making side of organized religion, as charging admission to see an angel is like charging to witness a holy relic or the discredited practice of selling indulgences (false promises to spare the purchaser time in purgatory in exchange for financial contributions to the Church). Furthermore, Márquez depicts Church officials as being too concerned with petty technical issues to understand that the angel is a genuine divine miracle who needs protection. Rather than helping (or even sympathizing with) the angel, the local priest, Father Gonzaga, examines the angel and determines (bizarrely, considering that this is a winged man) that the angel couldn't possibly be divine. His criteria for this determination are strange: the angel's failure to speak Latin or know how to properly greet a minister raise Gonzaga's suspicions, and the angel's "much too human" appearance confirms that he does not "measure up to the proud dignity of angels." In light of the verse from Hebrews, which suggests that angels might often hide among humans, these do not seem like Biblically-coherent reasons to discredit the angel. Furthermore, Gonzaga suggests that the angel might actually be a "carnival trick" that the devil was using to "confuse the unwary," and he notes that the wings are meaningless in determining the angel's nature, since both hawks and airplanes have wings. Considering that this is a man with huge wings—one widely accepted to be an angel—these arguments seem like sophistry. Father Gonzaga's failure to understand the angel or treat him kindly does not make him a rogue representative of a Church that is respectable and faithful overall; when he writes to Church officials for a second opinion, their reaction is equally flummoxing. While Father Gonzaga hopes that the Vatican will tell them once and for all whether this is really an angel, the letters he receives from Rome "showed no sense of urgency. They spent their time finding out if the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn't just a Norwegian with wings." Clearly, Church officials are missing the forest for the trees: instead of delighting in the appearance of an angel, they have found themselves mired in arcane scholarly and taxonomical questions that have no relation to genuine faith. No wonder the townspeople have no sense of charity or empathy—their religious leaders are petty and insular, unable to recognize clear miracles or condemn the cruel treatment of the angel. The Vatican's inability to act in the face of the townspeople's injustice towards the angel parallels the Church's frequently slow response to social change in the real world: on issues of gender equality, for example, the Catholic church has remained more traditional than many other religious institutions that opened leadership positions to women. Márquez, therefore, depicts the Catholic church as being out of touch with the problems of its followers and indifferent to the morality it ostensibly espouses, while the story's Catholics—without role models in their religious leaders—are shown to be cruel and selfish, despite their professed faith. - Climax: The old man eventually regains strength and flies away - Summary: During a nasty storm, Pelayo finds a weak and straggly old man in his courtyard. The man has enormous wings, but he speaks an incomprehensible dialect and looks pathetic, so Pelayo and his wife, Elisenda, assume that the man is a shipwrecked sailor. To confirm their hunch, they ask the seemingly wise old neighbor lady about the man, and she tells them he's an angel and suggests that they club him to death. Instead, Pelayo imprisons the angel in the chicken coop. Pelayo and Elisenda's child is sick with a fever, but he begins to improve now that the angel is there. Word quickly gets out about the angelic old man, and the townspeople gather to satisfy their curiosity and perhaps receive a miracle. They do not know quite what to think. Father Gonzaga, the local priest, arrives to try to solve the mystery, but because the angel is dirty and does not speak Latin (the official "language of God"), Father Gonzaga does not believe him to be a proper angel. He warns the townspeople against "carnival tricks" and writes to the Catholic authorities for advice. Despite the priest's warnings, more and more people come to see the angel, and Elisenda has the idea to start charging them admission. The angel is such a popular attraction that he makes Pelayo and Elisenda wealthy. The angel, meanwhile, festers in his own filth. The people gawp at him, taunt him, and pull his feathers, but he only responds with supernatural patience, not once lashing out at them. They even brand him with a hot iron to see if he is still alive. Meanwhile, the church authorities replying to Father Gonzaga are more concerned with superficial questions like how many times the angel might fit on the head of a pin. Before long, a new attraction arrives in town: "a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of a sad maiden." The townspeople find the spider woman more relatable than the old man because she speaks the same language as they do, so she can tell a recognizable and moralistic story about who she is and how she became so odd. Her popularity quickly eclipses the angel, whose odd miracles—helping a blind man grow new teeth, or making sunflowers sprout from a leper's wounds—are simply not miraculous enough for the townspeople. Father Gonzaga is able to let go of the issue now that the general populace is no longer interested. By this point, Pelayo and Elisenda have amassed enough money to buy a much bigger house. Pelayo quits his job, and Elisenda buys herself some fancy clothes. The child's health continues to improve, and he sometimes goes into the chicken coop to play near the angel. A doctor comes, but he also cannot explain the angel's nature. The child is now strong enough to go to school. The angel goes "dragging" himself about the house like "a stray dying man," much to the annoyance of Pelayo and Elisenda. His wings are balding and thin. As time passes, the old man's condition improves and his feathers return. One day, Elisenda is cooking in the kitchen and notices him trying to fly. Though his attempts are clumsy, eventually he manages to gain altitude and soars over the horizon. Elisenda lets out a sigh of relief, partly for the angel, but mostly for herself—he is "no longer an annoyance in her life."

- Genre: Literary Fiction, Contemporary Novel - Title: A Visit from the Goon Squad - Point of view: A blend of first, second, third, and other non-traditional points of view - Setting: Most of the stories take place in and around New York City, although some stories are set in California, Italy, and Kenya - Character: Sasha Blake. Description: One of the novel's main characters, Sasha appears in several of the novel's stories as both a major and minor character. Sasha struggles with her identity, and lives a wild life as she attempts to find her authentic self. She fears the future, and as the novel progresses, despairs that she is aging and has not accomplished the things she wanted. Throughout the novel, Sasha deals with an addiction to stealing, which ultimately leads to the loss of her job as Bennie Salazar's assistant. Eventually, Sasha gives up her ruinous lifestyle and finds a kind of redemption. She marries her college friend Drew and settles down. They have two children, Alison and Lincoln, and Sasha transforms her addiction to stealing into a passion for art made of found objects. - Character: Bennie Salazar. Description: Another main character in the novel, Bennie is a record executive. His mentor, Lou Kline, introduces him to the music industry as a teenager, and he becomes very successful. His success, however, leaves him disconnected from the people he loves, including his son Christopher. When it comes to music, Bennie is a purist and hates producing music he doesn't believe in. Ultimately, his devotion to music that he considers pure ruins his credibility in the music industry, as he refuses to stand behind the overproduced and soulless pop groups that companies want him to produce. Though Bennie is intelligent and charismatic, he struggles internally with his Hispanic identity and often feels like an outsider. Like Sasha, he also worries about aging, and suffers from sexual impotence that stems from the shame around his failures. By the end of the novel, however, Benny reclaims his status in the music industry and finds self-acceptance. - Character: Lou Kline. Description: Lou Kline is a powerful and charismatic music producer who lives a decadent lifestyle that includes eating at fancy restaurants, doing cocaine, and seducing young women. Early in the novel, he has a relationship with a seventeen-year-old girl named Jocelyn. He has six children with a number of different wives. One of those children, named Rolph, commits suicide after a long period of estrangement from Lou. Lou refuses to confront the fact that he is aging, and lives his fast lifestyle accordingly. Eventually, however, Lou suffers a stroke as the result of his unhealthy lifestyle, and is left physically impaired and alone. - Character: Scotty Hausman. Description: Guitarist of the Flaming Dildos, Scotty is an eccentric musician. Bennie's good friend as a teenager, Scotty and Bennie stop hanging out after Scotty begins dating Alice, whom Bennie has a crush on. Though Bennie goes on to find success in the music industry, Scotty gets divorced and recedes into a life of seclusion, resentment, and delusional theories about his situation. He ends up working as a janitor and fishing in the East River in his free time. Scotty resents Bennie's success, and even visits his office once, leaving a dead fish behind when he exits. Scotty continues to love music and write songs on the lap steel guitar, and after rekindling his friendship with Bennie, goes on to play a redemptive, history-making concert in New York City. - Character: Dolly Peale (La Doll). Description: Also known as La Doll, Dolly is a famous PR consultant and celebrity in New York City. Dolly's reputation is ruined after she organizes an event where a malfunction burns many of the party's famous attendees, leaving them with awful scars. Dolly cannot find PR work after this, and worries about providing for her daughter Lulu, whom she struggles to connect with. Eventually, Dolly takes a high paying job trying to redeem the image of a genocidal dictator named the General. After this project, she moves out of the city and opens a gourmet shop. Though nobody recognizes her as a formerly famous person, Dolly is happier after the change. - Character: Bosco. Description: Bosco, the former guitarist of the Conduits, has fallen from fame and become fat, alcoholic, and sick with cancer. In an attempt to regain his fame, Bosco decides to go on a suicide tour, during which he plans to create a documentary, and eventually die on stage. This plan does not come to fruition. Instead, Bosco ends up recovering and running a dairy farm. - Character: Rhea. Description: A punk rocker in her youth, Rhea dyes her hair green to assume a punk identity, but feels self conscious about her freckles. Rhea is in love with Bennie, but feels left out because Bennie likes Alice. Lou considers her, along with Jocelyn, as one of "his girls," and later in life she visits him as he is dying. Though she doesn't have a sexual relationship with Lou, she feels both left out and disgusted by Lou's relationship with Jocelyn. Rhea ends up settling into a more traditional life as an adult. She gets married and has three children. - Character: Jocelyn. Description: A childhood friend of Rhea, Bennie and Scotty, Jocelyn begins a sexual relationship with Lou Kline at the age of seventeen. Jocelyn spends much of her adult life in and out of rehab, but eventually finds recovery. By the end of the book, she is living with her mother and pursuing a college degree. Like many other characters, Jocelyn struggles with aging and the feeling that she has wasted her time and not created the life she wants. - Character: Alex. Description: Early in the novel, Alex is new to New York City, and enamored by the novel environment. He goes on a date with Sasha, during which she steals a woman's wallet. Alex has strong morals, and stands up to the hotel workers, whom he feels are not doing a sufficient job helping the woman find her wallet. Alex returns later in the novel as a divorced and remarried father of a toddler. He is disillusioned and disconnected from his new wife, Rebecca. He takes a job with Bennie doing social media marketing to promote a concert played by Scotty. He works alongside Lulu, and feels insecure about his work, but ultimately goes on to promote a show that goes down in history. - Character: Lulu. Description: Dolly's daughter, Lulu is a sociable young girl who often seems ashamed of and unable to relate to her mother. She travels with Dolly to an unnamed location to do PR work for the General. As an adult, Lulu works with Alex as a social media marketer, and prefers to communicate through text messaging. Lulu is intelligent and sensitive; traits she uses to help Alex promote a history-making concert. - Character: Stephanie. Description: Christopher's mother and Bennie's wife and business associate, Stephanie moves from New York City to the wealthy community of Crandale with her family. A tattooed woman and recovering drug addict, Stephanie feels out of place in Crandale and struggles to connect with the residents. She feels ridiculous because of the energy she puts into trying to connect the women she doesn't identify with. Stephanie loves Bennie, but after Bennie's past infidelities, she worries constantly that he is cheating on her. Her fears eventually become reality, and she and Bennie divorce. - Character: Kitty Jackson. Description: A famous actress who is assaulted by Jules Jones after an interview, during which he notes the power of her fame over those around her. A compassionate person, Kitty forgives Jules' crime, and goes on to advocate for him in court. Later Dolly uses Kitty's stardom in an attempt to save the General's image. Kitty is idealistic and strong willed, which leads to her being kidnapped by The General. - Character: Rob. Description: A suicidal college student, Rob pretends to be Sasha's boyfriend so that Sasha's father will finally think Sasha is dating a "nice" boy. Rob has depression, is possibly gay, and feels disconnected from himself and others. He knows Sasha's secrets, and after revealing them to a mutual friend, Drew, he drowns in the East River. - Character: Alison Blake. Description: The daughter of Sasha and Drew, Alison is a stubborn young woman who keeps a journal compiled of PowerPoint slides. She has tremendous love for her brother, Lincoln, and her father, but struggles to identify with her mother. She keeps notes of all of her mother's annoying habits, and believes it is her job to torture Sasha. She worries that things in her life are falling apart. - Character: Ted Hollander. Description: Sasha's uncle, Ted Hollander is a frustrated art scholar who goes to Naples to tried to locate Sasha. He is pleased that Sasha's father funds the trip, and spends time viewing art, as opposed to finding Sasha. The trip is a chance for him to get away from his family, whom he feels don't understand him. - Character: Charlene (Charlie). Description: Also known as Charlie, Charlene is Lou's daughter. On a trip to Africa with her father, she misses her mother and tries to connect to her younger brother, Rolph. She is defiant in her youth, and as an adult, joins a cult in Mexico run by a charismatic leader who promotes a diet of raw eggs. After almost dying of Salmonella, Charlie returns to the U.S., struggles with a cocaine addiction, and becomes estranged from her father. - Character: Mindy. Description: A Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Berkley, Mindy is Lou's girlfriend who travels to Africa with Lou and his children. An intelligent and motivated woman, Mindy has an inclination to analyze the interactions she sees through a structural lens. She sleeps with Albert, the safari tour guide, but later marries Lou and has two children before they divorce. After the divorce she works as a travel agent before returning to her studies at UCLA. - Theme: Time and Memory. Description: A Visit from the Goon Squad serves as an in depth exploration of the passage of time, the effects of aging on individual lives, and the longing for the past through memory. The novel's title even speaks directly to the theme of time. Bosco, the former guitarist of The Conduits, who has become fat, alcoholic, and suicidal, states, "Time's a goon, right?" Traditionally, a goon was an individual who inflicts fear and violence on others to achieve a desired end. Utilizing the word "goon" illuminates Egan's understanding of time as an unforgiving force that shapes the novel's characters in various, and often unpleasant, ways.The novel's exploration of time and memory occurs in the overarching structure of the novel, and also within the individual stories. Structurally, the stories move back and forth through time. This movement offers clear depictions of the way in which people, places, and cultures change over time. Likewise, within the individual stories, there are often sudden jumps into the future, which offer immediate and powerful juxtapositions between the present, past, and future. For example, in the story "Safari," Charlie and Rolph, who are siblings, are depicted dancing in a moment of true connection. During this moment, however, the story jumps suddenly forward, and the reader finds out that at the age of 28 Rolph will commit suicide. The leap forward puts this moment of connection in conversation with the tragedy these characters will experience later in life. This kind of narrative gesture is common throughout the novel. The merciless effect of time on the lives of the novel's characters often leaves them searching memory for better times. The novel's characters are haunted by their mistakes, but also by their past successes. They often turn to memory, longing for a past in which their lives were exciting, their careers were fruitful, and their health was stable. Though not all of the novel's characters are completely ravaged by the passing of time, all of them must grapple with their powerlessness over it, their inability to stop or slow the passage of their lives, and the changes that come with it. Memory often serves as a respite for these characters, but ultimately, their lives are propelled forward and they have no choice but to go for the ride. - Theme: Identity, Authenticity, and Meaning. Description: The issue of identity is a prominent theme in A Visit from the Goon Squad, as Egan explores the extent to which identity is inherent and the ways in which it is assumed. The novel's characters struggle to find meaning and authenticity in their lives, and they use different methods to discover, create, and escape their identities. The novel's two primary characters, Sasha and Bennie, are two examples of characters that face challenges with identity. Sasha, who feels empty of a true identity, steals items that reflect the identities of the items' owners in an attempt to establish her own identity. Benny, who is ashamed of his racial and class identities, experiences shame after moving to a wealthy white community called Crandale. Through Sasha, Benny, and other characters, Egan works to highlight the instability of identity, and the ways in which created or assumed identities lead to a feeling of inauthenticity. Identity, assumed through certain cultural markers, is fluid. For example, in the story "Selling the General" the reader learns about The Party, which refers to a notorious and exclusive event thrown by Dolly. Dolly attempts to create an artistic display of lights by placing colored oil in plastic pans beneath the bulbs. Tragically, the pans melt, and oil ends up burning the party's guests. The incident ruins Dolly's career, changing her identity from a beloved scenester to a social outcast. Later, however, the party becomes an infamous event, and it is revealed that individuals who were not in attendance purposely mutilate their bodies in an attempt to claim they were there. These individuals, through self-mutilation, attempt to claim an identity of importance by lying about their involvement at the party. This ironic situation depicts clearly the changing meaning of identity markers. The novel ultimately shows the challenges and dangers of attempting to create identities that are not authentic. Sasha and Benny both create significant wreckage in their lives in their attempts to create, maintain, or reject certain identities. The more they deny their true identities, the deeper their feeling of inauthenticity grows. In the end, both of these characters arrive in a place of authenticity, but this is only reached once they quit trying to forge their identities, and accept themselves, good and bad, for who they are. - Theme: Connection, Disconnection, and Technology. Description: The theme of Connection and Disconnection is finely balanced in Egan's novel. Structurally, the novel highlights the way in which the characters' lives are woven together. Characters from one story emerge in later stories as background characters, and background characters in some stories take center stage at other points in the novel. For example, the story "Ask Me if I Care" is narrated by Rhea and includes Jocelyn as a side character. Later in the novel, in the story "You (Plural)", the roles switch, and we receive Jocelyn's narration with Rhea as the sidekick. The ways in which these characters' lives are connected, and the ways in which these connections become traumatic for these characters, comes through the juxtaposition of these two stories. Though the novel's stories depict the ways in which the characters' lives are interconnected, the novel's characters often struggle with a feeling of disconnection from self, family, and community. One striking example is the story "Out of Body," which is told by a depressed college student, Rob, who has recently attempted suicide. The second-person narrative technique depicts the sense of disconnection Rob feels from himself. Instead of referring to himself with "I" he refers to himself as "you." Interestingly, by using the pronoun "you" he also attempts to put the reader in his place, which can be read as a reach towards connection.The idea of connectedness is also explored through the role of technology in the lives of the characters. The novel examines the ways in which technology is potentially leading to a greater sense of both connection and disconnection in our culture. In "Pure Language," Alex takes a job with Bennie doing Social Network Marketing, but he is concerned about sharing his new job with his wife because of the stigma attached to this form of marketing. Tension also develops in the story around Alex's daughter, who is a toddler and desires to play with Alex's phone. In this way, technology serves as an issue that leads to disconnection between Alex and his wife. At the end of the story, however, Alex uses his phone to locate his wife and daughter in the crowd, and texts her, leading to a moment of connection. Though the novel depicts many characters that feel isolated, the narrative ends with a gesture toward hope. In the final moments of the novel, characters come together to watch Scotty Hausman perform live in New York City. The moment is one of deep connection for the characters present at the concert. Whether through the use of technology or the communal act of experiencing live music, the novel maintains its hope for a future where humans find community and connection. - Theme: Fame, Art, and Popular Culture. Description: A Visit from the Goon Squad offers a strong critique of popular culture. Egan accomplishes this criticism primarily through her exploration of the music industry, but film, photography, and journalism are also investigated in her novel. Egan draws attention to the way in which trends come and go, and the effects of these cultural shifts. What is popular in one moment—for example, punk rock—is replaced by another trend soon after—such as overproduced pop music or music for preverbal infants. These shifts in culture often leave individuals who were once successful and famous in the dust. This is true in the experience of several of the novel's characters. Bosco, for example—the guitarist from the hugely successful band, The Conduits—finds himself fat, alcoholic, and forgotten. Having fallen from fame, he desires so much to be remembered he decides to promote his new album with a "suicide tour" in which he plans to die at some point while on stage. Egan often writes with intense irony about the ways we respond culturally to popular trends and famous individuals. She recognizes the power that fame holds in our culture. In the story "Selling the General," Dolly uses actress Kitty Jackson's fame in an attempt to redeem the image of a brutal dictator. In another story, Jules expounds on the way in which people respond to Kitty, showing the immense power she possesses as an actress. The absurdity of these depictions of fame points the reader to the true power popular culture and fame hold in modern society. "Selling the General," in particular, depicts the way in which fame can be used to manipulate individuals toward unethical ends. The novel does, however, have a respect for art aside from the fame and popularity of artists. While fame and popular culture are critiqued in the novel, several characters are depicted in a positive light because of their true love and appreciation for art and music. Though Benny and Scotty both have difficult moments in their careers, they do have comebacks that leave them more authentically connected to their art forms. Sasha also ends up establishing a good life, putting the fast rock-and-roll lifestyle she lived as a younger woman behind her. She begins making art out of found objects, which is a new and healthier outlet that replaces her obsession with stealing. While the novel critiques popular culture and fame, showing the negative power of fame and the sad outcomes of individuals who chase it, Egan maintains a respectful appreciation of art and artistry, and those characters that put aside the pursuit of money and fame often end up much better for it. - Theme: Ruin and Redemption. Description: The theme of ruin and redemption is present throughout Egan's novel. This theme fits nicely alongside the novel's other themes, as the characters find themselves crushed by time, by their self-centered and isolating ways of living, and by shifts in American culture. Throughout the novel, each of the major characters finds him- or herself at a low point. Sasha's story shows her slipping deeper into ruin as the result of her stealing, her isolation from family and friends, and her lack of self-love; Jocelyn becomes addicted to drugs and spends most of her adult life in and out of rehab; and Benny loses his record label and is seen as a failure by those still in the industry. The idea of ruin and redemption is also reflected alongside the characters in the spaces that they inhabit. New York City is an environment that reflects this theme in a particularly poignant way. These characters inhabit a post-9/11 NYC, where the towers have fallen, the rivers are polluted, and in later stories, the city exists in a heightened surveillance state. The same is true in other locations as well. In the story "Goodbye, My Love," Ted visits the ruins of Pompeii and notes the way in which the city of Naples is degrading. In "Safari," the killing of the lion reflects humans inflicting ruin on the environment. These images of ruin, as reflected through the consciousness of the characters, mirror the ruin they have experienced in their own lives. Despite the ruin many of these characters experience in their lives, the novel counterbalances the destruction with redemption. Two of the novel's main characters, Sasha and Benny, find their way out of the depths of their devastation and rebuild their lives. Benny, after losing his position at Sow's Ear records, turns back to his pure love of music, reconnects with his old friend Scotty, and goes on to promote a concert that goes down in history. Sasha finds herself by the end of the novel, and settles down with her family, turning her addiction to stealing in a more healthy direction through her found-object art. The picture painted of these characters is not one of perfection—both Benny and Sasha still face challenges in their lives and relationships—but ultimately, they find themselves living lives they can inhabit with some level of peace. For both of these characters, their redemption comes through confronting those things which they ran from as younger individuals and accepting themselves for who they are. In Egan's novel, redemption is an experience that happens within the individual, and only through self-acceptance and authenticity are these characters able to rebuild their lives. - Climax: - Summary: A Visit from the Goon Squad is unconventional in the way its narrative unfolds. Each chapter stands as a self-contained story, but as a whole, the individual episodes create connections that form a cohesive narrative. The stories, as they appear in the novel, do not follow a traditional chronology. Instead, they leap through time, showing slices of different time periods occurring between the late 1970s and the 2020s. The novel is also split into two parts—A and B—which echoes the two sides of an album. Several characters appear in more than one story, and through the ways in which they appear at different points in time, their narratives become clear. In the novel's first story, "Found Objects," Sasha meets with her therapist, Coz, with whom she is working to overcome an addiction to stealing. She recounts a date she went on with a man named Alex, during which she steals a wallet in the restaurant's bathroom. After a brief confrontation with the woman Sasha stole from, Sasha returns the wallet and admits she has a problem. Afterward, Sasha and Alex return to her apartment and have sex. Alex then takes a bath and Sasha goes through Alex's wallet. She finds a piece of paper that says, "I believe in you." She steals the paper and puts the wallet back before he returns. The next story is called "The Gold Cure." This introduces Bennie Salazar, a divorced record executive in his mid-forties, who struggles with anxiety and sexual impotency. He sprinkles gold flakes into his coffee to combat his sexual dysfunction. Benny and his son Christopher meet Sasha, who is now Bennie's secretary, at the home of one of the bands signed to his record label. The band is not selling albums, but as they play some new music for Bennie, he begins to feel sexually aroused by the music. His arousal, however, suddenly escapes him as a flood of shameful memories strikes him. He runs out of the house. Afterward, Bennie drops Christopher off at his mother's house, and drives Sasha home. As Bennie drops Sasha off at her building, he tries to tell her about his attraction to her. She stops him, saying, "We need each other." She then goes home. In the next story, "Ask Me If I Care," the narrative leaps back to the year 1979. Rhea, an insecure punk rocker with green hair, tells this story. Rhea feels undesirable and not "punk" enough because of her freckles. Rhea's friend Jocelyn begins sleeping with Lou, a powerful record executive and much older man. She convinces Lou to come see Bennie Salazar and Scotty Hausman's band, The Flaming Dildos. At the concert, Jocelyn gives Lou oral sex as the band plays. Lou has his arm around Rhea, and Rhea feels like she is a part of the sexual act in a way that disturbs her. After the concert, the group goes to Lou's house. Rhea and Lou share a conversation on the balcony in which Rhea scolds him for sleeping with Jocelyn, who is under age. Lou gets a kick out of her belligerence, and tells her never to change. Two weeks later, Jocelyn runs away with Lou. Lou promises to bring Jocelyn home when he returns to San Francisco. In the next story, "Safari," Lou, two of his children, and his new girlfriend, Mindy, go on an African safari. They are joined by a cast of other characters, including Chronos, the guitarist of a popular band, and Albert, the tour guide. During the story, Mindy feels tension with Lou's children, Charlie and Rolph, who miss their mother. Out on the safari, a lion attacks Chronos, but Albert saves him by shooting and killing the lion. Later, Mindy sleeps with Albert. When Lou realizes that something is going on between Mindy and Albert, he tells Rolph that all women are "cunts." Rolph condemns his father's reaction, but Lou, a fiercely competitive man, feels a newfound desire to conquer Mindy. Later that night, Rolph and Charlie dance together in the hotel restaurant—a moment of connection they have not experienced yet on the trip. In this moment, the narrative leaps forward, revealing the future. Mindy will marry Lou, and they will have two children together. After they divorce, she will work as a travel agent as she raises their children, and later will go on to continue her Ph.D. Charlie will go on to join a cult in Mexico. Rolph will become estranged from his father and commit suicide at the age of twenty-eight. The narrative jumps forward a quarter century for the next story, "You (Plural)." Jocelyn narrates, and she and Rhea return to Lou's house after his health has failed. In the years since the story "Ask Me if I Care" Jocelyn has been in and out of rehab for drug addiction. Rhea has gotten married and had children. They find Lou bedridden and alone. After they catch up for a while, Jocelyn and Rhea push Lou's bed outside and stand by the poolside. Jocelyn thinks of Lou's son, Rolph, who was her age, and remembers loving him. Jocelyn asks Lou about Rolph, forgetting that he committed suicide years earlier. Lou begins to weep. Rhea responds empathetically, thinking Jocelyn has said this to spite Lou. Jocelyn is struck with anger, and feels like pushing Lou's bed into the water. Jocelyn tells Lou he deserves to die. Lou then asks Rhea and Jocelyn to stand on either side of him and hold his hands. They take his hands and stand together, staring into the pool, just like old times. Scotty Hausman is the narrator of the next chapter, titled "X's and O's," which happens nine years before "The Gold Cure." Scotty is living a reclusive life in New York City, working as a janitor and spending his free time fishing in the East River. He decides to visit his old friend, Bennie. When he goes, he brings with him a dead bass he caught while fishing. Scotty is stunned by the glamour of Bennie's office, and notes how his life has gone in a different direction than Bennie's. As Scotty talks to Bennie, Scotty realizes that they are no longer friends. Bennie asks Scotty about his ex-wife, Alice, who appears in the story "Ask Me if I Care." Bennie had a crush on Alice, but Alice chose Scotty. Scotty realizes this is a point of insecurity for Bennie. As Scotty leaves, Bennie gives him a business card, and tells him to get in touch if he ever has any new music to show him. Scotty leaves the dead fish. The next day, Scotty gives the card to a young couple, one of whom is a musician. In the first story of part B, titled "A to B," the focus is on Bennie's wife Stephanie before they get divorced. The family moves to a wealthy community outside of New York City, called Crandale. They attempt to fit in, but Bennie is racially profiled because he is Hispanic, and Stephanie feels like an outsider because of her tattoos. Stephanie begins playing tennis with a woman named Kathy. One day, Stephanie goes to the city to meet with the guitarist Bosco, for whom she does PR work. Her brother, Jules, who has just been released from prison, volunteers to go with her. Jules mentions that Stephanie and Bennie seem jumpy, which makes Stephanie worry that Bennie is cheating on her again. When they arrive at Bosco's apartment, Bosco tells Stephanie that he wants to go on a suicide tour. The former guitarist for the Conduits, Bosco has become fat, alcoholic, and is dying of cancer. He wants to go out with a bang and die on stage. Stephanie thinks the idea is ludicrous, but Jules wants to write a book about the suicide tour. Later that night, Bennie comes home and while he showers, Stephanie finds a gold colored bobby pin on the floor. She realizes it belongs to Kathy, whom Bennie is having an affair with. Stephanie wanders downstairs, and goes out to the garden. She is surprised when Noreen, her reclusive neighbor, whispers to her from behind the fence. They share a brief interaction before Stephanie goes back inside. The next story in the novel, "Selling the General," features Dolly Peale. Dolly, formerly known as "La Doll," was a famous PR expert, but she ruined her name after a light display at one of her parties malfunctioned and burned the famous attendees. She begins doing work trying to save the image a military dictator called The General. She hires Kitty Jackson, an actress with a flagging reputation, and they travel to meet the general so Kitty can appear in a photograph with the dictator. Dolly also brings her daughter, Lulu, in hopes of repairing their relationship. When they meet The General, Dolly takes a photograph of Kitty's interaction with him, but things take a turn for the worse when Kitty begins asking the General about the genocide. The General's guards carry Kitty away into captivity. Dolly and Lulu leave immediately. Months later, the General's country has transitioned to democracy. Kitty is released and begins working on a new movie. Dolly and Lulu move out of the city, and Dolly opens a successful sandwich shop. The following story, titled "Forty-Minute Lunch: Kitty Jackson Opens Up About Love, Fame, and Nixon!" appears in the novel as a magazine article written by Jules Jones, Stephanie's brother. The article was written prior to his release from prison, and the style of the article, including rants and footnotes, shows Jules coming unhinged. As he talks with Kitty, he begins to conflate Kitty Jackson with his ex-girlfriend, who left him for a memoirist. Sensing his time with Kitty is almost up, Jules convinces her to go on a walk with him in Central Park. Once in the park, Jules pushes her down and tries to rape her. Kitty sprays him with pepper spray and stabs him in the leg with a Swiss Army knife. Later, Jules is convicted of attempted rape, and sent to prison. Kitty sends him a letter apologizing for whatever role she had in his mental breakdown. Her letter creates a media sensation, and Kitty is pegged as the Marilyn Monroe of her generation. The next story, "Out of Body," is told through the voice of Rob, and includes Sasha. This story is set before Sasha begins working for Bennie Salazar, while she is still in college at NYU. Rob has recently attempted suicide and his friends, including Sasha, are worried about him. Rob and Sasha met after she asked him to pose as her fake boyfriend. Sasha believes that her father has detectives watching her, and she wants to appear as if she is dating a nice boy. Rob resents the fact that Sasha seems interested in their mutual friend Drew. Sasha, Drew, and Rob go to a Conduits concert. As the band plays, Rob begins to fantasize about Drew, imagining that seeing Drew naked would give him a sense of relief. After the concert, Sasha goes to a party with Bennie Salazar, whom she has just met. Rob and Drew end up going to the East River together. Rob tells Drew that Sasha was a hooker in Naples. He immediately regrets betraying her. Drew decides to swim in the river. Rob follows Drew into the icy water, but gets caught in a current and drowns. Next comes the story titled "Good-bye, My Love," told from the perspective of Sasha's uncle Ted Hollander. Sasha is in Naples, and her stepfather has flown Ted to Naples to look for her, but Ted, who is an art scholar, takes the opportunity to escape his wife and kids and view famous pieces of art. As he walks the city and views different pieces of art, he remembers Sasha as a child, describing her as lovely and bewitching. When he accidently runs into Sasha on the street, he doesn't know what to say. They schedule dinner, and meet later that evening. As they eat, Sasha asks Ted about his family and his work. Ted is unhappy, and struggles to connect to his wife and family. Ted lies, telling Sasha he is not there for her. Later they go to a club where Sasha convinces Ted to dance with her. Sasha disappears on the dance floor, and Ted realizes she has stolen his wallet. The next day, Ted finds where Sasha lives, and waits outside her door until she gives him his wallet and lets him in. They watch the sun set, and Ted realizes how alone she is in this foreign country. The narrative then flashes forward, revealing that Sasha will have a family in the future. Ted will visit her, and they will reminisce about their time in Naples. The story "Great Rock and Roll Pauses" is told in the form of a PowerPoint presentation created by Sasha's daughter, Alison. It is some time in the 2020s, and Sasha has married Drew and started a family. Alison uses the slides to tell the story of the family's current situation. Alison's autistic brother Lincoln is interested in pauses in great rock and roll songs. He struggles to connect with his father, who is a doctor and rarely home. One night, Drew returns home from work in a bad mood. Drew becomes angry with Lincoln, and yells at him. Sasha comes to Lincoln's defense, but Lincoln runs to his room. Alison and her father go for a walk in the desert. Drew admits that he has trouble connecting with his son. Alison suggests Drew help him make graphs of the rock and roll pauses as a way to find connection. As they return to the house, Alison experiences tremendous anxiety, feeling as if she has traveled into the future, and their home may be gone. She is relieved to find it still there, and goes to bed. The chapter ends with slides of graphs created by Lincoln and Drew. The final chapter, "Pure Language," brings the novel full circle by returning to Alex, who appeared as Sasha's date in the novel's first story. The year is sometime in the 2020s, and Alex has taken a job with Bennie as a social networking marketer, promoting a performance by Scotty Hausman, who has had a comeback as a musician who plays music for toddlers. Alex is reluctant to tell his wife, Rebecca, about his new job due to the stigma around the kind of marketing he's doing. Alex works with Lulu, Dolly's daughter who appeared in "Selling the General." On the day of the concert, the venue is packed, and Alex feels proud. Before the concert Scotty has a panic attack, and refuses to play. Eventually, Lulu convinces Scotty to get on stage. On stage, Scotty plays his songs for children, but then switches to more personal material. Everyone is wowed, and the concert later becomes historic. As Alex and Bennie walk home after the show, they pass the building where Sasha used to live. They ring the doorbell, but nobody answers. Just as they leave, a woman approaches. For a moment they hope it is Sasha, but it is another woman.

- Genre: Short story - Title: A Wagner Matinée - Point of view: First person - Setting: Boston, Massachusetts - Character: Clark. Description: Clark, the narrator of the story, lives in a boarding-house on Newbury Street in Boston, though he was born in Vermont and spent a significant part of his youth living on Georgiana and Howard's Nebraska homestead. Clark reveres his Aunt Georgiana, who taught him Latin, Shakespeare, and most notably music, even after he had spent hard days tending the herds or husking corn for his uncle. Self-described as having been "a gangling farmer-boy … scourged with chilblains and bashfulness," Clark seems to have been a sensitive child, not particularly suited to farm labor; he recalls that Howard spoke sharply to him on occasion, and that he was "near dead of home-sickness" for Vermont. His primary consolations on the farm were Georgiana's company, her encouragement of his music, and her stories of concerts attended in her youth. Still a devoted nephew at the time of the story, he tries to repay his aunt for some of her kindnesses by treating her to a Wagner concert when she visits Boston. At first shocked by Georgiana's battered appearance and timid demeanor, he briefly regrets the idea, but upon arriving at the concert hall, he realizes he has judged his aunt superficially. He is puzzled initially by Georgiana's seeming detachment from the music, but later he is moved by her tears and realizes that her longing for music and culture persist underneath her worn-out, unsophisticated exterior. - Character: Georgiana Carpenter. Description: Georgiana, the protagonist of the story, is Clark's aunt and Howard's wife. In the 1860s she had been a music teacher at the Boston Conservatory and seemed to have a promising career ahead of her. Instead, she eloped with the penniless Howard and took up homesteading on the prairie of Red Willow County, Nebraska. Besides her work in managing the homestead, which included raising six children, she cared for Clark and even took the time to teach him music in the evenings. These duties meant that she was often up before six o'clock and working until midnight. Despite her apparently unstinting efforts on the farm, she continued to harbor a deep, if seldom expressed, love for music. When the story begins, Georgiana has not traveled more than fifty miles from the farm for thirty years; she now must visit Boston to settle a bachelor relative's estate. When she first arrives, she seems helplessly out of place—dazed, timid, distracted by farm duties, and dressed conspicuously in country clothes. However, when Clark takes her to the Wagner matinée, the concert hall brings Georgiana to life, and she displays an aloof dignity that belies her awkward appearance. As the concert goes on, she becomes more and more engaged, remembering a Wagnerian piano score and telling Clark about an opera-singing cowboy who once visited the farm. During the last few pieces, she begins to weep, finally sobbing to Clark, "I don't want to go!" as she faces the prospect of returning to Nebraska. This makes clear that the cultured woman of her youth never died, and the loss of her musical aspirations has been a devastating sacrifice. - Character: Howard Carpenter. Description: Howard is Georgiana's husband and Clark's uncle by marriage. He does not appear directly in the story. Howard and Georgiana met when he was "an idle, shiftless boy of twenty-one," and his "callow fancy" was kindled by Georgiana. Georgiana then eloped with him, over the objections of her family, and the two moved to a homestead in Nebraska. The story only hints at the couple's marital dynamics; while there are suggestions that Howard still cares for Georgiana, she does not seem to be a priority for him, as it takes fifteen years for him to buy her a parlor organ and his letter to Clark announcing her visit is mailed at the last moment. He also seems to have been a stern taskmaster, demanding long workdays from Clark and sometimes speaking harshly to him. - Theme: Civilization vs. The Frontier. Description: "A Wagner Matinée" explores the complex role of the pioneer in the American imagination, particularly through the character of Georgiana Carpenter. A former teacher at the Boston Conservatory, upon marrying Georgiana leaves behind her highly-cultured world for the Nebraska prairie, where she fights with grace and determination to maintain her connection to music. While her nephew Clark's memories of his aunt suggest that she has succeeded in this, her visit to Boston, after decades of isolation, unravels whatever fragile balance she has found. Through Georgiana Cather argues that, while elements of frontier and "civilized" culture can maintain an uneasy coexistence for a time, they are ultimately at odds with each another. Cather portrays the Nebraska frontier as almost unimaginably remote and foreign compared to Boston society. Clark describes Georgiana's homestead with her husband Howard as a reversion to a primitive state, their dug-out a "cave dwelling" whose inhabitants share water with the buffalo and brace for Indian attacks. The weary, plodding daily struggle of such an existence infiltrates every aspect of life; even Uncle Howard's letter to Clark, announcing Georgiana's visit to Boston to settle a legal matter, appears the day before her scheduled arrival looking "worn and rubbed." Georgiana's jarring arrival in the city further highlights her stark difference from the environment in which she suddenly finds herself. Clark describes his reaction to her as "that feeling of awe and respect with which we behold explorers who have left their ears and fingers north of Franz-Joseph-Land, or their health somewhere along the Upper Congo." There is a whiff of exoticism, and even of heroism, about Georgiana, as a survivor of an implicitly dangerous place devoid of culture. Indeed, for Clark, Georgiana represents a haven of civilization and beauty amid the unremitting drudgery of the frontier. Clark remembers his aunt as his instructor, encourager, and comforter against the backdrop of culturally deprived, toilsome Nebraska life. When he was young, she sat beside him at the parlor organ as Clark "[fumbled] the scales with … stiff, red fingers," or ironed until midnight as Clark read Shakespeare. They milked cows together as Georgiana recounted musical performances she had seen in her youth, and she sang Verdi to Clark when he fell ill. She was responsible for "most of the good that ever came my way in my boyhood," Clark recalls. Yet even as she encouraged him in "finer" things, Georgiana was constantly busy with the mundane manual tasks of the homestead, a pressing reality that haunted their every interaction. While Clark practiced music or studied, his aunt made mittens, ironed, or darned late into the night. The frontier remains an overshadowing presence on Georgiana's trip to Boston, as she frets distractedly over a sickly calf and an opened kit of mackerel she left behind. Even as she and Clark discuss the changes that have taken place in the city, Georgiana is haunted by farm duties and seems fearful of venturing out. Though Boston is her hometown, "the place longed for hungrily half a lifetime," Georgiana seems not to recognize it. That Georgiana seems hopelessly out of place upon visiting Boston, reentering "civilization" for the first time in years, underscores how deeply frontier life has changed her from the cultured woman of Clark's memories. In light of his aunt's "semi-somnambulent state," Clark begins to doubt that taking her to a Wagner matinée—intended as a display of gratitude—is a good idea after all. Georgiana stands out painfully in the concert hall, with her "queer, country clothes" and her gnarled hands "mere tentacles to hold and lift and knead with." She has been "dead" to civilization for a quarter of a century, and instead of serving art and beauty, her body has been given over to the utilitarian concerns of survival. As the matinée goes on, however, Clark recognizes that his aunt is still the cultured woman he remembers, even as Georgiana mourns for the civilized world in which she no longer belongs. Despite her nephew's misgivings about the matinée, Georgiana shows stirrings of life when they enter the concert hall, and Clark begins to realize "how superficially [he] had judged her." Though she appears aloof and impassive at first, Georgiana is increasingly stirred by the music, silently playing the score of The Flying Dutchman from muscle memory. As later pieces evoke Georgiana's tears, Clark is moved as well, recognizing that "the soul which can suffer so excruciatingly and so interminably … withers to the outward eye only." His aunt's weathered, anachronistic appearance had deceived him; underneath, the same "civilized" soul has somehow survived the barren atmosphere of the frontier. After the concert, however, Georgiana is overcome, weeping, "I don't want to go, Clark!" The empty stage has brought Nebraska near—"empty as a winter's cornfield"—and reminded her what lies on the other side of this respite: "the tall, unpainted house … naked as a tower; the crook-backed ash seedlings … the gaunt, molting turkeys picking up refuse." Georgiana realizes that she does not truly belong there, though it seems improbable that she can regain a place in modern Boston, either. Cather uses Clark's distance from Nebraska and from his aunt to create a sense of foreignness about Georgiana. By showing glimpses of Georgiana through the haze of a young boy's adoration, as well as the passage of many years, she creates a heroic portrait of the pioneer woman, even as she complicates the picture by introducing the older, timid, displaced aunt at the same time. Cather's story ultimately suggests that a person cannot withstand both the draw of civilization and the pressures of the frontier. They will either return to the former, like Clark, or be pulled apart by the tension between such disparate lives, as Georgiana seems to be at the story's conclusion. - Theme: Music and the Human Soul. Description: Music (and its absence) figures prominently in both Clark's and Georgiana's experiences of frontier life. Clark's boyhood memories of Aunt Georgiana always involve her love of music, and often focus on the ways she used music to comfort Clark in an environment devoid of beauty. For him, music pointed to the promise of life beyond the frontier farm. For Georgiana, however, music comes to represent a path she chose not to take, and—especially now that modern music has outstripped her own study—becomes a source of grief. Throughout the story Cather argues that music expresses the soul's longings because of its ability to transcend mundane existence. Clark's memories of Aunt Georgiana are all intimately tied to music—specifically to music's ability to lift him beyond the deadening realities of life on the farm. Uncle Howard's letter announcing Georgiana's arrival opens "a gulf of recollection so wide and deep" that Clark feels himself once again a farm boy, fumbling with musical scales with his aunt at his side. Clark goes on to describe his "reverential affection" for the woman who not only managed the homestead, but also took time to coach him on the parlor organ when both were exhausted from a day's work. Even mundane tasks around the farm were made "glorious" when Georgiana reminisced to Clark about seeing Meyerbeer's Huguenots in Paris in her youth; a greater contrast to milking cows can hardly be imagined. Clark also recalls Georgiana comforting him by singing Verdi's "Home to our mountains" while he lay ill, thinking that her singing was "fit to break the heart of a Vermont boy near dead of home-sickness already." He further remembers the particular joy, after leaving the farm, of seeing an orchestra performance for the first time: "fresh from ploughing forever and forever between green aisles of corn, where, as in a treadmill, one might walk from daybreak to dusk without perceiving a shadow of change." After such endless, plodding toil, the violinists' bow-strokes "seemed to draw the heart out of [him]." For Georgiana, however, music represents the aspirations she has left behind. In contrast to the hope Clark found in music—a hope apparently realized by leaving the farm—music awakens desires that it is now too late for Georgiana to fulfill. Georgiana "seldom talked to me about music," Clark remembers, and when she did, she warned him not to love it too much, "or it may be taken from you." This suggests that even when Clark was a boy, Georgiana already considered music—perhaps her greatest love—to have been lost to her. When Clark takes his aunt to see a Wagner matinée during her Boston visit, he is at first puzzled by her seeming detachment. He then sees that her mangled hands instinctively recall the score of The Flying Dutchman. When he sees her tears during the "Prize Song," Clark begins to realize that despite her stoic appearance, the music has touched longings hidden underneath Georgiana's rustic exterior. When he questions Georgiana about her knowledge of the "Prize Song," she haltingly shares the story of a drifting cowboy she had known on the farm, a German with operatic training. This improbable figure had brought her much joy—Georgiana had even pushed him to join the choir of the country church—until he spent a drunken holiday in town and disappeared as suddenly as he had come. He represents something of Georgiana's own lost dreams; the incongruity of this figure, pressed into service as a choirboy despite rather dissolute habits, speaks to the desperation of Georgiana's longing in her isolated situation. As the concert proceeds, Clark seems to realize the depth of his aunt's pain as her tears increase. He cannot fully comprehend it—"I never knew what she found in the shining current of [the music] … I could well believe that before the last number she had been carried out … where, from the beginning of the world, hope has lain down with hope and dream with dream and, renouncing, slept." Yet he has come to realize that Georgiana's longings involve a much deeper renunciation than his own boyhood sufferings. After the concert ends, Georgiana gives full voice to her grief, and Clark finally understands that, for her, the music has not simply evoked nostalgia or melancholy, but the imminent return to a place that has meant the death of her deepest desires. Music is an incredibly potent force in Cather's story. For Clark, it has been a source of youthful solace that not only lifted him momentarily beyond his circumstances, but also gave him hope that he would someday leave them behind for good. For Georgiana, however, music has a far more tragic undertone. In Nebraska, she fought for every chance to savor music amidst daily survival, but in Boston, Wagner's music overpowers her with the realization that her soul's thirst can never be fully quenched. This is because music is not only a resource for her survival, but a part of herself that she has lost. - Theme: Home and Estrangement. Description: Georgiana's history is one of deepening estrangement. Despite having grown up in the city, she reappears in Boston like an anachronism and struggles to get a solid grip on her surroundings until she enters the familiar world of the concert hall. Yet during the concert Georgiana experiences a deeper estrangement still, realizing she can neither return to Nebraska the same as before. Having left one home to establish another, Georgiana has sacrificed a sense of belonging—and in trying, in a way, to go home again, is painfully reminded of her distance from once-familiar surroundings. Cather's story argues for the notion of "home" as an incredible source of grounding and comfort, and the loss of home—even when actively left behind—as a source of poignant displacement. As a music teacher at the Boston Conservatory in the 1860s, Georgiana occupied an unusually public and elite role for a woman of her era. Her elopement with Howard Carpenter, a man who seems to have been her opposite in ambition and temperament, was already a surprising departure from expectation. Her accompanying him to the prairie to establish a homestead set her apart even more drastically from her ancestral home, her upbringing, and the path she had already set for her life. Georgiana's ensuing years on the prairie represent a losing battle to hang on to aspects of home. She endures fifteen years without an instrument, and only upon Clark's arrival can she once again exercise her teaching skill and share her love of music. The extent of this practice is limited to late-night tutelage and occasional conversations in the cowshed. By the time she visits Boston, Georgiana's battered appearance is a "shock," making Clark think of an explorer who has sacrificed her health. She is no longer the woman she was when Clark lived with her as a boy, and the contrast with her own life in Boston many years earlier could hardly be more extreme. In agreeing to move to the frontier with Howard, she has become a stranger to the society that was once her home. Far from being a homecoming, Georgiana's return to Boston only further estranges her from her past. The journey has itself been somewhat traumatic—she "had become black with soot" and suffered train sickness. Upon awakening the day after her arrival, she is "still in a semi-somnambulent state." She is so disoriented that Clark says it seems as if only "a few hours of nightmare" separated her from Red Willow County and his Newbury Street lodgings. Georgiana seems not to recognize that she is in "the place longed for hungrily half a lifetime." Indeed, she is so timid that she seems disinclined to venture out and is preoccupied by tasks forgotten back home. She seems to Clark to be caught between worlds, and all of this leads Clark to wonder whether her visit, to say nothing of bringing her to the concert, has been a mistake. Attending the concert seems to reawaken Georgiana, however, by bringing her back to an environment in which she feels at home. As the musicians come onstage, she "looked with quickening interest over the rail at … perhaps the first wholly familiar thing that had greeted her eye since" her arrival. With the opening notes, she clutches Clark's sleeve, and he realizes that "for her this broke a silence of thirty years." For all intents and purposes, Boston is no longer home to her, but the concert hall remains a haven. Superficially, Georgiana doesn't "belong," but she somehow transcends the scene. While her dowdy dress marks her as a relic of another era, she stands aloof from such outward trappings, admiring the crowd of concertgoers like "so many daubs of tube-paint on a palette" and unbothered by the "froth and fret that ebbs and flows" around her. Her musical knowledge stops short of Wagner's era as well, leading Clark to wonder, "Had this music any message for her? Had she enough left to at all comprehend this power which had kindled the world since she had left it?" Even so, the music elicits a visceral reaction, suggesting the depth of Georgiana's longing for this world left behind. Seeing his aunt's tears, Clark reflects that the soul "which can suffer so excruciatingly … withers to the outward eye only; like that strange moss which … if placed in water, grows green again." Though it had not been clear to him that Georgiana could enjoy such sophisticated music, he now realizes that her soul is resilient and responds to such beauty, even after many years without it. Although the music seems to touch something timeless in Georgiana's soul, her fitness for both this world—and for Nebraska—is left in question. Georgiana's tears are ambiguous, suggesting that she grieves her estrangement from this world even as she enjoys it for the first time in many years. When Clark attempts to make light of the moment, she responds, "And you have been hearing this ever since you left me?" He realizes the music has taken his aunt somewhere he cannot follow ("I never knew how far it bore her, or past what happy islands"); that she is, in fact, a stranger to him again. Georgiana's sobs in the emptying concert hall suggest that she will be forever a stranger to both worlds. She knows there is nothing waiting for her but the "black," "unpainted" homestead, and that returning "home" is perhaps all the harder now that she has been awakened to what is beyond it. One of the most poignant scenes in the story is Clark's memory of his aunt singing Verdi's "'Home to our mountains, O, let us return' in a way fit to break the heart of a Vermont boy near dead of home-sickness already." But Georgiana's homesickness proves to be the more intractable case, as she discovers that there is no longer a fit "home" for her anywhere. Through the figure of this formidable woman, Cather makes a case that the pioneer generation forever finds itself caught between worlds, too—sacrificing much for the sake of "progress," yet never again able to keep pace with the world left behind. - Climax: The end of the concert - Summary: Clark, who lives in Boston, receives word from his Uncle Howard that his Aunt Georgiana is coming to visit from rural Nebraska—in fact, she is due to arrive the following day. Clark has not seen Georgiana since his youth, and he is immediately pulled into vivid recollections of practicing music at her side. The next day, at the train station, Georgiana arrives dusty and disoriented, and Clark is shocked by her weathered appearance. Georgiana, he explains, had been a music teacher at the Boston Conservatory as a young woman, but she met Howard in Vermont one summer and subsequently eloped with him to the Nebraska frontier. Together they established a claim fifty miles from the railroad in Red Willow County, building a primitive dugout. Georgiana had not been away from Nebraska for thirty years. Clark had spent much of his boyhood on his aunt and uncle's homestead, and he owes to Aunt Georgiana most of the good he experienced as a child. After long days of farm work, he studied Latin, literature, and music while his aunt did chores and offered him encouragement. Now Clark hopes to repay her for her kindness by taking her to the Symphony's Wagner concert. However, the day after her arrival, Georgiana still seems detached, distracted by problems back on the farm. Clark worries that the matinée was a bad idea and that his aunt will feel embarrassed at reentering a cultured environment. Upon their arrival at the concert, however, he realizes he has misjudged her. She has a dignified bearing and is quickly engaged by the rich sights and sounds of the concert hall. As the concert begins, Clark finds Georgiana's reactions inscrutable, and he wonders if she can relate to the music, given her many years of estrangement from higher culture. Eventually he notices that she is weeping, and he realizes that her soul, which has suffered so much, is still the same underneath the shockingly changed exterior. By the concert's end, Georgiana is sobbing, and she pleadingly tells Clark, "I don't want to go!" Clark understands that beyond the concert hall, there is nothing for Georgiana except for the drudgery of the colorless homestead.

- Genre: Short Story, Horror - Title: A Warning to the Curious - Point of view: First Person - Setting: Seaburgh, England (a fictionalized version of the real town Aldeburgh, England) - Character: Paxton. Description: Paxton, the protagonist of "A Warning to the Curious," is a young man visiting Seaburgh. He meets the narrator at The Bear hotel, where he discloses that he recently stole a famous holy crown that was buried in town. Since then, Paxton explains, he has been haunted by the ghost of William Ager, which causes Paxton extreme distress. Paxton knows that the crown is a cherished part of the town's culture, yet he is unable to resist the temptation to steal it. The ghost sends Paxton various warnings against taking the crown, but Paxton refuses to acknowledge them. The exact motives behind his obsessive drive to get the crown remain somewhat unclear, but regardless, his theft is an undeniable infringement on the community's security and tradition. Upon learning about Paxton's situation, the narrator and Henry Long take pity on him and help him return the crown in hopes that the ghost will leave him alone. The ghost doesn't leave, and Paxton is never able to overcome his guilt. The story doesn't thoroughly detail Paxton's background, but it's clear that he has no social connections aside from the narrator and Henry Long. Paxton planned to travel to Sweden after his stay in Seaburgh, but William Ager's ghost kills him before he has the chance. - Character: The Narrator. Description: The unnamed narrator meets Paxton in Seaburgh, where the narrator regularly goes to play golf with his friend, Henry Long. The narrator is puzzled by Paxton's agitated manner at first, but he welcomes his company and gets along with him well. Impressed and fascinated by Paxton's story of finding the crown, the narrator doesn't pass any judgment. As a regular visitor, the narrator is more enmeshed in the community of Seaburgh than Paxton is, but he is of course still an outsider and does not share the cultural value that the locals place on the crown. The narrator says he will help Paxton return the crown, but really he and Henry Long merely accompany Paxton on the journey. The narrator sees and senses evidence of William Ager's ghost, but the ghost doesn't target the narrator, and the narrator never touches the crown himself. After returning the crown, the narrator can tell that Paxton is still in danger. He wants to help by making sure Paxton always has company, but Paxton has no friends or family. The narrator realizes that the ghost will kill Paxton, and he eventually comes across Paxton's gruesomely murdered body. He never tells the media about the ghost or the crown in an effort to stay loyal to Paxton. The entire ordeal traumatizes the narrator, and he never goes back to Seaburgh again. - Character: The Writer. Description: An unnamed writer records the story as he heard it from the narrator, such that "A Warning to the Curious" is a story within a story. The writer has fond childhood memories of visiting Seaburgh, so he is particularly interested in stories about the town. The writer's narration is only present for the first few paragraphs of the story, in which he describes Seaburgh in vivid detail. - Character: The Old Man. Description: The old man is the first person who tells Paxton about the holy crowns. Paxton meets him at a church in Froston, a town near Seaburgh. The old man tells Paxton that the crowns have saved the area from German invaders for years. He is very insistent and becomes agitated when he thinks Paxton doesn't believe the legend. This conversation is the spark that starts Paxton on his quest to find the crown, and it's also one of the clearest examples in the story of the crown's utmost importance to the locals. - Character: The Rector. Description: Paxton meets the rector, the leader of the church, while speaking with the old man. The rector elaborates on the legend about the crowns and tells Paxton that there is no one guarding the last crown now that William Ager is dead. The rector is happy to explain the local legend to Paxton, but he purposefully withholds information about the exact location of the crown. The rector also explains how lamentable it is to the community that William Ager was the last of his family line, further reiterating the cultural significant of the crown. - Character: The Boots. Description: The boots (whose job it is to clean the guests' shoes) is one of the servants at The Bear hotel where Paxton, the narrator, and Henry Long stay. The three men have a good relationship with the hotel staff despite their differing social classes. The boots in particular is concerned when he suspects the three men might be in trouble, and he stays up late at night to ensure they return safely after returning the crown. - Theme: History, Culture, and Disrespect. Description: In "A Warning to the Curious," the fact that Paxton steals an object imbued with such cultural and historical value shows how overpowering selfish desire can be. To that end, his eventual death suggests that disrespecting culture and history is highly disruptive and can sometimes come at a great cost. Though the story's title—"A Warning to the Curious"—seems to imply that curiosity is Paxton's offense, he's ultimately punished (by the ghost and by his own guilt) for his disrespect, not just his curiosity. Of course, he's initially curious upon hearing about the mysterious hidden crown, but this curiosity goes too far when he decides that he needs to find the crown himself—simply listening to the old stories like everyone else in town is, apparently, not enough for him. The old man at the church tells Paxton that without the crown, invaders would have "killed man, woman and child in their beds." The emphasis with which the old man talks about the crown makes its cultural and historical importance obvious, and Paxton later says that he "didn't disbelieve" this legend. And yet, he goes in search of the crown anyway. Even though he recognizes that the surrounding community views the crown as a form of protection, he pompously sets out to dig it up, thus defiling an important cultural object. In turn, his transgression is not mere curiosity, but a selfish desire to possess this precious piece of history as his own. Once Paxton successfully uproots this cultural treasure, his need to possess it gives way to intense guilt. What's more, there are tangible consequences to his selfish behavior, as the ghost of William Ager—the former protector of the crown—haunts him and intensifies his guilt. Paxton feels deep regret and resolves to return the crown, but he knows the ghost won't forgive him. He's right, and the ghost kills him the following day. That the story ends this way suggests that certain transgressions can't simply be undone: even Paxton's attempt to correct his wrongdoing cannot bring relief, and this is because his misbehavior upended a longstanding cultural legacy. The consequences of such disruptively selfish behavior, the story implies, can be catastrophic. - Theme: Community vs. Individualism. Description: "A Warning to the Curious" dramatizes the potential downsides of defying the rules and customs of a tightknit community. The townspeople Paxton meets in Seaburgh are all strikingly welcoming and friendly. The rector and the old man he meets outside the church show concern for each other and seem to be friends, which is especially notable because the rector is clearly of a higher social status than the other man, and fraternization between different social classes wasn't all that typical in England in the early 20th century. The men are also exceptionally friendly to Paxton and welcome him into their community. They don't hesitate to tell Paxton all about the holy crowns and their local folklore, and they show him around the church. The woman who later fights off a dog that attacks Paxton has the same attitude—they are all willing to go out of their way to help. Even the narrator and Henry Long, who are visitors like Paxton is, are allies of the townspeople. The narrator and Long regularly stay at the same hotel, where they tip the servants well in exchange for the servants' help and protection. Furthermore, William Ager, guardian of the crown, is loyal to his societal duty even after his death, as his ghost is determined to get the crown back in order to protect the town. There is, then, a strong sense of communal support and good will in Seaburgh, and this is what Paxton ultimately undermines by stealing the crown.  To that end, Paxton is the only character who does not cooperate with or positively participate in the Seaburgh community. By stealing the crown, he chooses to betray the people of Seaburgh—and, in doing so, he denies himself the protection of the community. He becomes a threat to Seaburgh, and the ghost of William Ager kills him as a result, reinforcing the idea that communities care only for their members and allies—outsiders and people with bad intentions are left vulnerable to attack. Interestingly, Paxton was an outsider even before his experience in Seaburgh, as the narrator notes that Paxton had no friends or family who might have been able to help him. Paxton even separates himself from the narrator and Henry Long at the end of the story, who perhaps could have helped him. He is completely isolated, and the story suggests that his anti-social, individualist behavior is what leads to his downfall. - Theme: Folklore, Religion, and Belief. Description: "A Warning to the Curious" presents a broad view of spirituality that incorporates aspects of Christianity as well as folklore. Some aspects of the story's underlying spiritual landscape are unknown even to the characters, but the story implies that in times of uncertainty, unconventional signs of spirituality or otherworldliness shouldn't be automatically ignored—in fact, the story even hints that there might be reason to embrace such beliefs when facing the unknown or the inexplicable. Paxton seems not to believe that the crown has any real power. He senses a presence as he digs for the crown and even feels nails scraping his back, but he continues as though these supernatural threats are meaningless. Since he ignores these signs, it seems likely that Paxton holds a traditional religious view that doesn't incorporate ghosts or local legends, so he's stubbornly and arrogantly unmoved by otherwise obvious signs that something supernatural is afoot. After all, he certainly encounters signs of some kind of greater force or power. But he overlooks them, and this demonstrates just how arrogantly set in his ways he is. By the end of the story, the power of the ghost and the crown is finally made clear to Paxton, but it's too late: the damage has already been done, and the ghost kills him as a result. In turn, the story warns against thoughtlessly discounting certain systems of belief simply because they don't align with more traditional ways of thinking. - Climax: William Ager's ghost kills Paxton. - Summary: The small coastal town of Seaburgh is bright and colorful and features a prominent church atop a hill. The writer describes Seaburgh from memory, as he used to frequent the town in childhood. He recently met a man who told him a story that takes place in Seaburgh, and the writer recorded the story. The narrator of the story used to go to Seaburgh regularly to golf with his friend Henry Long. In the narrator's tale, he and Long meet a young man one day while spending time in the lounge of their usual hotel. The young man—whose name is Paxton—is agitated and says that he just had a disturbing experience. A little while ago, he explains, he went to a nearby town to visit a church. There, an old man told him about a local legend that three holy crowns were buried in the area to fend off invaders. Paxton was intrigued, so he talked to the church rector to learn more. The rector told him that there was only one crown left and that it was buried nearby. The rector also said that there was a family—the Agers—whose duty it was to guard the last crown, but that William Ager, the last heir, had recently died. Paxton was immediately determined to find where the crown was buried. He asked a few local people for pointers on the crown's exact location, and when he found the spot he secretly dug into the ground and took the crown. The narrator and Long are impressed, but Paxton is distraught and says he must return the crown, though he doesn't explain why. The three of them go to Paxton's room to see the crown. On their way back to the lounge, the sensation of a supernatural presence comes over the narrator and Long. Finally, Paxton discloses that something has been haunting him ever since he began his plan to find the crown. At first, Paxton tells them, he sensed that something was giving him signs not to go near the crown, and when he first touched the crown he felt fingernails scraping at his back. He took the crown anyway, though he now regrets it, and the ghost has been following him ever since. Upon hearing this, the narrator and Long offer to help return the crown. They quickly formulate a plan to sneak out of the hotel that night to replace it. The three men leave the hotel late at night, and throughout their journey to the crown's original spot, they all have a strong impression that they're being watched. When they arrive at the location, Paxton buries the crown in a panicked frenzy, and they leave in a rush. Even after returning the crown, Paxton is still overcome with guilt and anxiety. The three men plan to meet in the afternoon the next day. When the agreed upon time comes, the narrator and Long can't find Paxton. A hotel servant says she saw him run outside, so the other two take off to find him. They sprint along the sand following Paxton's footprints, and they see another bony pair of footprints alongside his. It seems that Paxton chased after the ghost thinking it was the narrator or Long, and as they run, the narrator already knows that the ghost will kill Paxton. After a short time, they find Paxton's body, and his face shows that the ghost violently killed him—it's unclear what, exactly, happened, though it's possible that Paxton ran off some sort of ledge. The murder is never officially solved, as the narrator and Long don't disclose the story to the media. The narrator never returns to Seaburgh again.

- Genre: Short Story, Romanticism mixed with Realism, Regional Fiction - Title: A White Heron - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Rural Maine - Character: Sylvia. Description: Sylvia, the protagonist of the story, is a 9-year-old girl living on a farm in the Maine woodlands with her grandmother, Mrs. Tilley. Before moving to her grandmother's farm, Sylvia lived in a crowded manufacturing town with her mother and many siblings. In town, she felt stifled and bullied, but now she enjoys the company of animals and asserts her freedom to explore nature. Jewett describes Sylvia as a curious, observant, and shy young girl with a "pale face and shining gray eyes" that easily convey if she's feeling excited, scared, or troubled. The arrival of the hunter disrupts her peaceful country existence, as he asks her to help him find the rare white heron so that he can shoot and stuff it. Initially afraid this stranger, she agrees to help him because she begins to admire him and enjoy his company, feelings that border on romantic. Alone at night, she climbs a tree to locate the heron's nest. She spots the heron but while she views her natural environment from an aerial perspective, she identifies with the bird and feels a deep spiritual connection to it. She decides she cannot tell the hunter about the location of the heron because she cannot allow him to take the bird's life. The story ends with her becoming wiser, having made the moral choice to preserve nature, while still feeling regret over the loss of her friendship with the hunter. Sylvia's climatic choice to save the nature she loves suggests that one should choose to protect the environment even if that experience entails sacrificing other things that matter, like friendship. - Character: The Hunter. Description: The hunter (whose name is never revealed) is an ornithologist from town who comes to the countryside with the aim of shooting and stuffing a rare white heron for his collection of birds. He stumbles upon Sylvia in the woods and stays a couple of nights in her grandmother Mrs. Tilley's house. He is a materialistic person who seeks to turn wildlife into trophies and expects country homes to contain "horrors" of "primitive housekeeping" because of their lack of material comforts. The hunter presents Sylvia with the central moral conflict of the story: whether or not to help him find the heron. He believes he can tempt Sylvia into helping him with a monetary reward. This, plus his charming personality, friendly nature, and great knowledge of birds initially convince Sylvia to help him, despite the fact that she is horrified by his violent shooting of the birds she loves. When Sylvia sees the world from the heron's perspective and decides not to reveal the location of its nest, however, the hunter leaves, presumably to continue his hunt for rare birds. The hunter represents the industrialization that threatens to conquer and destroy nature in order to satisfy human greed, and Sylvia must reject him in order to truly value her natural environment. Yet the hunter also represents the human companionship and connection one longs for, with the narrator wondering whether or not the wild birds Sylvia saved can replace the friendship she could have had with him. - Character: Mrs. Tilley. Description: Mrs. Tilley is Sylvia's grandmother who owns a farm in rural Maine. She is old enough to have an experienced knowledge of the countryside and to need of one of her grandchildren to help her with farm duties, hence bringing Sylvia to live with her. Mrs. Tilley's life is colored by "family sorrow," as four of her children have died, her daughter lives away from home in town, and she has lost touch with her son who went out West, though she says she does not blame him for not communicating. She cares for her granddaughter and enjoys watching her grow, noting that bringing Sylvia to live with her in the country has allowed the child to come alive with wonder and energy. Sylvia marvels at how Mrs. Tilley feels a strong sense of community with the other folks who live in the country and shows hospitality to strangers like the hunter. Her wise and caring nature shows the wholesome characteristics of country folk that Jewett wishes to document and celebrate in the story. - Character: Dan Tilley. Description: Dan is Sylvia's uncle and Mrs. Tilley's only living son (although she is not totally sure that he is alive). He left home many years ago to explore the American West and has lost touch with the family. Mrs. Tilley remarks that both Dan and Sylvia share a deep personal connection to wildlife and both feel a call to explore nature. - Theme: Nature vs. Industrialization. Description: At the climax of "A White Heron," the story's protagonist, Sylvia, must choose whether to help the hunter find and kill a beautiful and rare white heron, or whether to keep the heron safe by not revealing the location of its nest. This choice can be seen as an allegory for the conflict between nature and industrialization. By 1886, when Sarah Orne Jewett wrote the story, both the industrial revolution's economic promise and its detrimental effects on nature were clear. Furthermore, the factories and mills that had come to define the landscape of southern New England were moving north towards the rural Maine woods that Jewett loved. In this context, Sylvia's decision about whether to preserve nature (by keeping the heron's location secret) or profit from its consumption (by revealing the heron's nest and accepting the hunter's bribe) is also a statement of her opinions on industry. Sylvia ultimately decides to keep the heron's nest a secret, which is Jewett's way of suggesting that valuing nature over industrialization is the right choice. For Jewett, the conflict between nature and industry is synonymous with a conflict between town versus country life, and Sylvia's experiences moving from the industrial town where she grew up to her grandmother Mrs. Tilley's house in the countryside underscore the value of nature. Jewett remarks that Sylvia "tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town," but she "never had been alive at all" there. The town was "noisy," Sylvia found herself "afraid of folks," and her experience of nature seemed to consist only of a neighbor's "wretched geranium." After first seeing the beauty of her grandmother's farm, Sylvia remarked that she "never should wish to go home." Away from the deadening effects of her industrialized hometown, Sylvia seems to come alive in nature. Instead of feeling afraid of the world, she begins to explore it eagerly—Jewett remarks that there "never was such a child for straying about out-of-doors since the world was made!" She learns the landscape intimately, tames wild creatures, and takes joy in looking after her grandmother's stubborn cow. Clearly, the countryside is a healthier environment for Sylvia, since nature makes her confident and joyful, while town made her dull and afraid. While Sylvia's transformation suggests that she would unconditionally value nature over urban industrialism, the hunter (whom Jewett associates explicitly with town and industry) is still attractive to her. The hunter embodies encroaching urban influence, as he has sophisticated knowledge and state-of-the-art gadgets. He tells Sylvia many things about birds that she didn't know, and he gives her a jackknife and carries a gun, both of which are clearly not common in Sylvia's rural life. He is also explicitly associated with industry, since his purpose—to kill a bird and take it home—mirrors the way that industry consumes nature to create domestic comforts. While Sylvia is uncomfortable with the hunter's plan to kill the heron (and with his shooting other birds along the way), she still finds him "charming and delightful" and even feels for him the stirrings of romantic love. Sylvia's attraction to the hunter (despite that she "would have liked him vastly better without his gun") suggests that urban industrial influence is seductive to everyone, no matter how much they cherish the natural world. That Sylvia identifies with (and even loves) aspects of both the hunter and the natural world makes her choice about whether to help him kill the heron even more difficult. While Sylvia is with the hunter, she seems to come around to his perspective, feeling fondness for him and wanting to help him with his quest to find the heron. Her identification with the hunter leads her to climb a tall pine tree to try to locate the heron's nest for him, a step towards killing the heron. Viewing the countryside from an aerial perspective atop the pine tree, however, Sylvia sees her environment the way the heron sees it. She changes her mind in this moment, coming to identify with the perspective of the heron and therefore deciding not to help the hunter on his quest. The difficulty of this choice ultimately gives Sylvia's decision to protect the heron moral authority: she understands both sides of the issue, yet she still believes that protecting nature is right. However, the fact that she would have helped the hunter had she not explicitly seen the world from the heron's perspective has a troubling implication: perhaps the more that nature is destroyed, the less people will be able to protect it, because transcendent experiences of nature like the one that swayed Sylvia will be more difficult to find. - Theme: Conservation vs. Greed. Description: Just as Sylvia must choose between nature and industrialization, she must choose between conservation and greed. Greed threatens the nature of the countryside (through industrialization, as well as through the hunter striving to possess the white heron as a trophy), but it also promises Sylvia material reward (in the form of the hunter's bribe) for helping in this destruction. After witnessing the heron from the top of the old pine tree, Sylvia decides to reject the hunter's offer in order to conserve the life of the heron. Jewett therefore shows how one must turn away from the societal greed that seeks to consume nature without limits and instead conserve one's natural environment. Jewett associates the hunter with materialism and greed, since he dedicates his life killing birds so that he can stuff and preserve them in his collection. His materialism is also apparent in his judgment of Mrs. Tilley's simple farmstead. While he ultimately finds the house comfortable and well-kept, he initially fears the "dreary squalor" of "primitive housekeeping," which shows his preference for finer comforts and his bias against poorer country people. The parallel between the hunter and materialism is cemented when he tries to use money to advance his interests: he offers Sylvia the (then) enormous sum of 10 dollars to help him find the heron, which assumes that Sylvia shares his materialistic values. He never imagines that nature might be more important to Sylvia than money. While the hunter's monetary bribe genuinely tempts Sylvia (she could buy many "wished-for treasures" with it), she ultimately chooses to value conservation over money. This is rooted in the attitude towards nature—one of exploring it rather than possessing it—that she and her uncle Dan (a "great wand'rer") share. To them, they gain more "wealth" through exploring nature than possessing it, since nature gives them transcendent experiences of beauty, wisdom, and companionship. Jewett describes Sylvia's observation of her natural environment from the top of the pine tree, for example, in glittering detail: she sees the sun's "golden dazzle" on the sea, two "glorious" hawks flying close enough to see their soft feathers, and the "solemn" and magnificent heron in the marsh. From this great height, Sylvia cannot intervene in nature—she can only observe it—and she cherishes this experience of seeing nature's unity, calling the view a "pageant of the world." Sylvia also gains moral insight from this experience. From this height, she can begin to see the perspective of birds, helping her to realize that they have independent lives and consciousnesses. Seeing the hawks from the air instead of the ground, for example, makes Sylvia feel that she, too, "could go flying away among the clouds." This experience of seeing the resplendent beauty of nature and coming to appreciate the individual experiences of animals is the real "wealth" of nature, since it makes her realize that she loves the natural world too much to tell the hunter where the heron lives—and that it would be immoral to do so, since the heron is an independent creature. Underscoring Jewett's commitment to conservation over greed, the old pine tree that allows Sylvia her transcendent experience of nature only exists because of an act of conservation. The tree is the tallest in the forest because it is the only old-growth tree that loggers spared when they cut down the forest years ago. This associates the tree explicitly with conservation. Not coincidentally, this conserved tree is essential to Sylvia's moral growth, since it literally enables her to find a new perspective on nature. By providing her with joy and wisdom, the conserved pine tree allows Sylvia to find the moral conviction to choose her experience with nature over the hunter's desire to possess it. The tree's association with conservation points to the moral importance of conservation. While greed threatens to the destroy the natural world (through the hunter's greed for the heron's life, his bribe for help finding the bird, and through the industrialization that the hunter represents), Sylvia comes to recognize the beauty, knowledge, and freedom that make nature worth conserving. Overall, Jewett argues that nature should be conserved against the destructive ambitions of human greed. - Theme: Innocence vs. Experience. Description: At the beginning of "A White Heron," Sylvia lives a quiet, innocent life in the country. But Jewett shows that this childhood innocence cannot last as human interference, in the form of the hunter's appearance, leads to one gaining wisdom, as Sylvia's experience with the white heron helps her to make the moral choice of conserving nature. Innocence transforms into experience with complicated results, but Jewett suggests that experience and knowledge are inevitable and that nature can comfort those who must make sacrifices in order to gain wisdom. As Sylvia spends time with the hunter, her admiration of him begins to suggest love. Jewett's description of Sylvia's first feelings of love communicates the wonder of childhood innocence, but more importantly how this innocence cannot last when confronted with experience. Jewett writes of "the woman's heart" inside the child "vaguely thrilled by a dream of love", recognizing the excitement of adult feelings beginning to be awakened in childhood. Yet Jewett also states that Sylvia "loved him as a dog loves," revealing the inequality of her youthful infatuation and the impossibility of it turning into lasting companionship. After Sylvia gains experience with nature through identifying with the heron, the hunter will leave, taking with him any possibility for companionship. Here Jewett shows that youthful innocence is often misguided and thus cannot survive the experiences and lessons of life. Sylvia's attachment to the hunter drives her to climb the pine tree and search for the heron, a profound experience which leads her to a deeper understanding of nature. She returns to the hunter and her grandmother having become wiser, knowing she must protect the heron. The youthful excitement that compelled her to find the heron led to the experience that informed her decision to let the heron remain hidden. This suggests that the innocence and wonder of childhood will lead to experiences that it itself cannot survive, thus causing the child to become wiser through experience. Sylvia's countryside home represents her innocent, simple enjoyment of her life. Yet she, like her uncle Dan before her, feels compelled to leave the home in order to gain a deeper understanding of nature. Jewett suggests that this leaving home is necessary, but not without sacrifices. According to Mrs. Tilley, Sylvia's grandmother, Dan felt compelled to leave his homeland of New England and explore the American West. She says she does not blame him for losing contact with her as a result, but the narrator hints at "family sorrow". This suggests that while one may not be able to resist exploring and gaining new experiences, these experiences will come at the price of the foundational elements of one's life such as family relationships and childhood homes. Sylvia must leave her home late at night in order to climb the tree and view the heron. She returns home to the hunter and her grandmother with new knowledge of the natural world, but she is troubled by the experience she has gained. Physically, she is broken down, her clothes torn and smeared with tree pitch and her skin pale. Mentally, she is troubled by the moral knowledge that she must protect the bird even though that means betraying the hunter. Because she left home, her innocent understanding of the world is lost, and her new wisdom means she must act against her own initial desires. Jewett shows that leaving home transforms an innocence, simpler person into a wiser, more moral one, but this transformation comes with difficult sacrifices. At the end of the story, Jewett highlights how Sylvia's gaining of experience and loss of innocence has left her with feelings of longing and regret, caused by her inconsistent memory of events. The story ends with a call for nature to comfort Sylvia. Jewett suggests that a loss of innocence can leave one with feelings of longing, but nature offers comfort for what has been lost. Sylvia misses the hunter because she forgets the horror she felt at the sight of him killing birds. Here, Jewett shows how experience does not always make one wiser or happier, especially if one tends to remember the good of the past and not the bad. Because of this incomplete memory, Sylvia continues to hear the echo of the hunter's whistle "many a night." Her experience haunts her long after the hunter has departed, causing her to doubt her decisions. The story ends on the paragraph which describes this, leaving the reader wondering if the experience of the plot was worth the loss of the peaceful innocence she possessed before. The story ends with a call for "woodlands and summer-time" to bring its "gifts and graces" to comfort Sylvia in her regret and loneliness. Jewett suggests that while experience comes with sacrifices, nature offers comfort for those who have lost their innocence. Through the events of the story, Sylvia journeys from innocence to experience. Jewett shows how Sylvia's innocent relationship to her environment cannot last, as the hunter will come and compel her towards a deeper relationship with nature. This experience will help her to make the wiser, moral choice of saving the heron, but will come at the price of her naïve first love. Experience will be a complicated gift of wisdom and loss, but Jewett suggests that the grace of nature can comfort one who feels regret over their loss of innocence. - Theme: Solitude. Description: Sylvia's existence in the country is quite solitary, as her only companions are her grandmother Mrs. Tilley and their cow Mistress Moolly. This solitude leads Sylvia to sometimes long for human companionship, but mostly she seems content to be alone with nature. In fact, Sylvia's positive relationship to solitude suggests that solitude is essential to coming of age, because it allows the freedom to forge one's own identity and it breeds independence and self-reliance. While Jewett argues that solitude allows one to fully commune with nature, she admits that one will still long for human companionship. Through her characters' need for human relationships, Jewett shows that solitude can have a negative side effect of loneliness. Though Mrs. Tilley seems content with her country lifestyle, she still grieves the loss of four of her children and enjoys watching her granddaughter grow in the country. With this, Jewett suggests that nature may offer many bounties, but one still needs the help and companionship of other people. The last sentence of the story describes Sylvia as a "lonely country child," showing that while life in the country is beautiful and peaceful, loneliness and longing can still plague those who live there. In the absence of many human relationships, Sylvia finds meaningful companionship with animals. Thus, Jewett shows how one can be apart from most humans but still find some companionship. Jewett personifies Sylvia's cow, Mistress Moolly, as an intelligent trickster that Sylvia can play games with in the absence of a human playmate. To a lonely child, animals can provide friendship and entertainment. Sylvia recalls how she and the white heron "watched the sea and the morning together" as she decides not to tell the hunter where the heron lives. This shows that one's connection with an animal can be strong enough to supersede one's connection to a human being. Mrs. Tilley says that her son, Dan, tamed a crow who he claimed had "reason same as folks," implying that Sylvia is not the only one who relates to animals, furthering Jewett's argument for this kind of companionship. The solitude of the countryside allows Sylvia the freedom she needs to learn and grow in her environment. However, Jewett presents this solitude with ambiguity, questioning whether or not these freedoms are truly worth the loss of human relationships. Though Sylvia lives in a house full of children and a town full of people before coming to the farm, her grandmother states that Sylvia only seems to come alive once she lives in the wide-open space of the countryside. This progression shows how the freedom to roam by oneself helps a child to grow and fully enjoy life. Sylvia is only able to go on her great adventure to find the heron when both her grandmother and the hunter are asleep. Here, Jewett suggests that when one is alone one possesses the freedom from supervision that is necessary for children to try new experiences, take risks, and discover the parts of life that they love most. Sylvia returns to her grandmother and the hunter with a new sense of independence, as she is able to defy the hunter's wishes in order to uphold the value of nature. This shows how freedom to explore nature teaches self-reliance. The story never answers the question, "Were the birds better friends than the hunter might have been,— who can tell?" This leaves the reader doubtful if nature can completely replace human relationships. Jewett reveals the limits of the argument for solitude. While solitude offers an individual the freedom necessary in order to grow, one will never be completely free from the need for human companionship nor be completely certain of fulfillment in nature. In "A White Heron", solitude is a bittersweet experience. Sylvia longs for human relationships and ends the story feeling lonely in her solitude. Yet solitude allows her to grow independently and gain knowledge through communing with nature. She also finds some consolation for her loneliness in the companionship of animals. While one may always feel longing for other people, Jewett shows how solitude is necessary for children to grow, gain wisdom, and learn independence. - Climax: Sylvia witnesses the white heron - Summary: Sylvia, a 9-year-old girl, is driving her cow home through the woodlands of the Maine countryside. She worries about being late because her mischievous cow, Mistress Moolly, hid from her, but her grandmother, Mrs. Tilley, understands how much Sylvia enjoys exploring the woods while caring for the cow. Sylvia feels so much excitement and wonder in the country, a contrast to the first eight years of her life, where she felt stifled and withered living in a manufacturing town. A whistle disturbs the evening's peace, and Sylvia is frightened when a stranger approaches her. The hunter explains that he became lost while searching for birds in the woods and asks if he could stay the night at her house. Sylvia is hesitant, still shy around the stranger, but when they return home, Mrs. Tilley welcomes the hunter inside. At dinner, Mrs. Tilley reveals that her son, Dan, is an explorer who always loved nature and now lives out in California (although they have lost touch and he may be dead). She says that Sylvia is like Dan, exploring her natural environment and making friends with all the wild birds. When the hunter hears this, he reveals that he collects rare birds by shooting and stuffing them and is currently searching the countryside for the rare and beautiful white heron. If Sylvia will help him find the heron, he says, he will give her ten dollars. The next day, the hunter and Sylvia explore the woods in search of the bird. Sylvia begins to warm up to the hunter, finding him to be friendly and very knowledgeable about birds. She begins to feel hints of love for him, despite that fact that she is horrified by his killing of birds. They do not find the elusive heron, but they drive the cow back home together. When loggers were chopping down the forest years ago, they left one tree: an old pine-tree that is now the tallest in the forest. Sylvia knows that if she climbs this tree, she will be able to see all the way to the ocean and she may be able to locate the heron's nest. So excited by this thought that she cannot sleep, she leaves the house in darkness while Mrs. Tilley and the hunter are still asleep. Sylvia climbs an oak tree in order to reach the shortest branches of the old pine tree. Though she climbs with difficulty, she perceives that the pine tree is helping her on her mission to find the heron, loving her for her brave spirit. Feeling tired yet triumphant, Sylvia finally reaches the top. She feels wonder at the beautiful aerial view of the countryside, and her excitement swells as she spots the heron flying up in the sky. She marvels at the heron and seems to adopt the heron's perspective, as if they share one mind. She climbs down still thinking about how she will tell the hunter about the heron's location and how he will react. Back home, Mrs. Tilley has noticed Sylvia's absence and is calling out for her granddaughter. Sylvia arrives back at the house, pale and with her clothes tattered and covered in pine pitch. She cannot speak to either the hunter or her grandmother, though the hunter offers to make her rich for helping him find the heron. She questions why she would keep the secret of the bird's location when he offers her a human connection to the rest of the world. But she recalls the glorious moment she shared with the bird and decides she cannot allow the hunter to kill it. Sometime later, Sylvia still hears the haunting echo of the hunter's whistle and remembers the love and loyalty she felt for him. She forgets the sadness she felt when she watched him shoot birds and instead wonders if the friendship she has with the wild birds can replace the human companionship she could have had with him. The narrator wills the nature around Sylvia to come and comfort her with all the gifts the natural world has to offer.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: A Worn Path - Point of view: Third person limited (Phoenix Jackson) - Setting: From Old Natchez Trace to Natchez, Mississippi - Character: Phoenix Jackson. Description: Phoenix, an aged and frail but also fierce woman (she was born into slavery in the pre-Civil-War South, though the story takes place in 1940), will not allow anything in her path to stop her from getting to her end goal, which is to retrieve medicine in town for her grandson. Though on her journey from her rural home into the Mississippi town of Natchez – which she has made several times before – she is confronted with both natural obstacles and racially tense encounters, she works through them with dignity, grace, and quite a bit of cleverness. Though her journey exhausts her emotionally and physically, she is seen through by her indefatigable optimism, faith in God, and love for her grandson. By the end of the story she has stated her place in the world and reaffirmed her hope in and for her grandson, and her perseverance and enduring hope in continuing to carve out her worn path – both the path into town and the path of her life – she reaffirms a kind of hope for all the powerless. She also functions as a Christ figure in the story. - Character: Hunter. Description: The hunter appears relatively briefly in the story, but he unforgettably exemplifies the racial politics that Phoenix has to deal with in her day-to-day life. Though at first he aids Phoenix when she has fallen in a ditch, he afterwards rather casually points a gun at her to see if it frightens her. The casualness of his action speaks to how little he actually cares for her as a human, and expresses his sense of racial superiority. The hunter also tells Phoenix that she should give up her journey and go back home, as he cannot imagine her – or any black person – possessing a legitimate reason for being out on the road to go to town. Condescending and superior, the hunter still gets duped by Phoenix when she takes advantage of his racism and urges him to get rid of the "big black dog" who isn't "scared of nobody." Ironically, he later tells her that he would give her a dime if he had any money, though he does not realize that she has already taken the nickel that has fallen out of his pocket. - Character: Grandson. Description: For Phoenix, her grandson represents the future of her family, and perhaps, for black people in general. Though we never get to see him, we do know that he suffers greatly after having swallowed lye a few years earlier as a young boy. The nurse in the city seems to believe that his hopes for the future are rather dim, yet Phoenix is confident that the boy will endure, saying that he "will last." Phoenix not only wants to give her grandson his needed medicine, it is revealed at the end of the story that she also wants to him a sense of the wonder and possibility in the world in the form of the paper windmill. - Character: Nurse. Description: The nurse knows Phoenix from her twice annual visits to the doctor's office. Though she is sympathetic to Phoenix, she is also a bit impatient when Phoenix is slow to respond to her and seems to consider her own time more important than Phoenix's. She gives Phoenix the medicine and marks it down as charity. - Character: Attendant. Description: On first looking at Phoenix in the doctor's office, the attendant assumes that Phoenix is a "charity case". She is fairly rude and condescending, haranguing Phoenix for failing to give immediate answers rather than caring about Phoenix's well-being. Noting that it's Christmastime, she offers Phoenix a few pennies as charity, and gives in when Phoenix asks for a nickel. This nickel allows Phoenix to buy the paper windmill. - Character: Woman. Description: Phoenix stops this woman on the street and asks the woman to tie her (Phoenix's) shoes. The woman, who is probably white, obliges, and kneels down in a scene reminiscent of Mary Magdalene washing Christ's feet. Yet, at the same time, the woman gruffly tells Phoenix to stand still, indicating her distaste and sense of superiority. - Theme: Race and Class. Description: In its depiction of the journey of an impoverished black woman in Mississippi, "A Worn Path" explores the realities of race and class in the South at a time when slavery was still within living memory. The depiction of race in the story is not simplistic. Rather, through Phoenix's experiences with other people, Welty shows the complicated ways that blacks and whites interact in the early 1940s South, with single encounters shifting within moments from kindness to menace, helpfulness to command. Symbolically, perhaps unexpectedly, a black dog and a black scarecrow derail Phoenix's journey, suggesting how the fact of their race disadvantages black people. Meanwhile, a white hunter who at first helps Phoenix to her feet after she's fallen then points a gun at her, threatening her in an almost casual manner, a reflection of the privilege afforded to white people at that time in the South and the fundamental disregard whites had for the security or comfort of black people. However, at the end of the story, after successfully reaching the city and getting medicine for her sick grandson and gathering together ten cents in the process, Phoenix raises her "free arm" and thinks of the present she will buy her grandson. In this way her own path from slavery to freedom is emphasized, and Phoenix's grandson becomes a symbol of the possibility of a better future of black people, though his illness suggests that possibility is by no means assured.Phoenix is described as an incredibly poor woman, and she is acutely aware of the trapping of class. She desires, for example, that her shoes be tied so she has some dignity before entering what seems to be the town hospital. At the same time, Phoenix is not above stealing a bit of money, as when she distracts the hunter and slyly nicks a nickel. After her theft, though, she worries about her vulnerability to punishment as a poor black women, reflecting that she has seen "plenty [guns] go off closer by, in my day, and for less than what I done". Later, in the hospital, the attendant gives her a nickel as charity, and while standing "stiffly" she "carefully" accepts the coin. From these instances we understand that Phoenix is both proud and clever, thinking highly of herself but not above getting the money and medicine she needs through whatever means she can, while also being aware of the potential debasement and dangers of her position. Money becomes a tool of empowerment for Phoenix, even as the stealing and the charity suggest a separation of classes. That she then uses the money not to buy the bare necessities but rather for a relatively luxurious – and certainly delicate – paper windmill that will show her grandson the wonders of the world suggests her hope of what the future holds and the way that having hope fuels her will to go on, but also the fragility of achieving those hopes in a world of unyielding racial and class divisions. - Theme: Perseverance and Power. Description: The story's title, "A Worn Path", first and most obviously refers to the path Phoenix has walked many times before to Natchez to get medicine for her sick grandson. But the title also alludes to the idea of life – and Phoenix's life in particular – as a journey that is made by repeated passage through and endurance of the world around her, and suggests that such endurance has a slow power that will ultimately leave behind a mark or "path" through that world. As she walks to Natchez, Phoenix must contend with unequal dynamics of power that are inherently tied to her age, her race, and her class. And yet Phoenix endures. Though she falls in a ditch and has to be rescued by the white hunter, she refuses his urgings to turn back and go home. In fact, Phoenix does more than endure. Her interactions suggest that she has learned how to use her supposedly helpless position in her own favor. She asks the hunter to save her from a dog and manages to steal his nickel. She plays into the preconceptions that the attendant and nurse in the hospital hold about her, and receives free medicine and another nickel. The duality of Phoenix's inner fortitude and social weakness—which becomes a type of power—occur throughout the story.Phoenix's journey on this "worn path", filled with hardship as it is, is one that she has completed repeatedly, "like clockwork." That she not only obtains the medicine but also enough money to buy her grandson a present – and has refused to become so beaten down by a hard life that she still wants to show her grandson the wonder of the world through that present – shows how perseverance can give power even to those in positions of weakness. That Phoenix's triumph might seem small is no mark against it, and in fact might be taken as an argument that it is these "small", everyday triumphs, that might eventually carve the "worn path" that brings Phoenix, and perhaps the blacks of the post-slavery South in general, out of their powerlessness. - Theme: Love. Description: Phoenix might at times, due to age, forget the object of her mission, but this only underscores the deep love that motivates her to complete it. The reader is always aware of this underlying aspect of her journey, but as the story progresses and Phoenix steals the nickel from the hunter and then asks for another nickel from the hospital attendant, the story seems to complicate Phoenix's love for her grandson with a sense that Phoenix is also out for a kind of personal gain. When it is revealed that Phoenix risked her life for the hunter's nickel and her dignity for the nickel at the hospital all in order to have the money to buy her grandson a gift that will give him a sense of the wonders of the world, those complications die away and the force of her love for her grandson surges through the story. Phoenix's love is not just one of loyalty or obligation—she endures the journey not just to keep her grandson alive and comfortable. Her love is more profound—she endures the journey to give her grandson a sense of what's possible in the world, to give him hope. Just as a phoenix rises from its own ashes, Phoenix's love offers her descendants a tiny step up, but also everything she can offer, in helping them rise up in the world. - Theme: Nature and City. Description: "A Worn Path" begins in a rural area some distance outside the city of Natchez, Mississippi and moves along with Phoenix as she walks towards the hospital in the center of the city. The rural road is arduous, causing Phoenix to fall into a ditch, and at that moment it seems likely that Phoenix's trip will get easier once she gets into the "paved city." Yet there are also aspects of nature that fill Phoenix with joy, and as she enters the city it becomes clear that while the physical path is more sure, there is danger, perhaps greater danger, in the social realities of a populated place. At first, the hunter, who lives in the city but goes out in the country to hunt, attempts to dissuade Phoenix from going to the city at all, essentially asserting that it is a place where she does not belong. When Phoenix does reach the city, her lack of place there is emphasized by her inability to read the document on the wall of the doctor's office. The city requires an education Phoenix never received. Yet Phoenix asserts her belonging and presence in the city – her right to occupy the entirety of the world around her – by proclaiming, "Here I be." - Theme: Human Dignity. Description: By persevering, by refusing to yield to the inequality forced upon her by her age, race, and class, by demonstrating calm, smarts, and willpower in the face of all obstacles, Phoenix exemplifies a remarkable degree of dignity. Phoenix never appears afraid or threatened, even when, most dramatically, the hunter aims his gun directly at her. Her sense of dignity is evident also when she insists on her shoes being tied, or in the "stiff" and "careful" way she accepts the charity of a nickel given to her. She neither rails against injustice nor stoops in the face of condescension. She proceeds always towards her goal, never losing faith that what she wants is something she deserves, and lets no obstacle derail her.Phoenix and her journey also offer those she meets the opportunity to respond with the same dignity that she displays, and to do so despite the complicated power dynamics of racial and class divisions in the South. However, not everyone takes the opportunity to treat her with dignity, or even when they do that dignity is complicated by their other behavior. The hunter helps Phoenix but then threatens her, if jokingly, reminding her of the violence done to black people both during slavery and of the lynchings that were common in the post-Slavery South. The hospital attendant gives her a nickel but condescends to her. The woman on the street ties her shoes, but not without issuing a command of her own. In this way the story portrays the ways that common human dignity can both overcome and then, in turn, be by overcome by the vicious divisions of race and class. - Theme: Christian Overtones. Description: Phoenix, seeing a bird flying overhead shortly after stealing the nickel, takes the creature to embody God's judging gaze. "A Worn Path" abounds with Christian images and ideas, from the way Phoenix's journey on the worn path seems to echo the path etched by Christ carrying the cross, to the way that the woman tying Phoenix's shoes recalls Mary Magdalene's washing of Christ's feet. A phoenix is a bird that rises from its own ashes, a kind of resurrection evocative of Christ's own. Consequently, the reader can see Phoenix as a type of Christ figure. By connecting Phoenix's journey to the "journey" of Christ, Welty elevates Phoenix's small journey to help her grandson into something more profound, suggesting that the "worn path" Jesus tread is not so different from that walked by Phoenix, and by extension that God's judging gaze is watching, also, how those who encounter Phoenix treat her. - Climax: Phoenix raises her "free hand" - Summary: A very old and frail black woman named Phoenix Jackson makes a long and difficult journey on a path from the country into the town. She carries a cane and switches it at imagined animals in the bushes. Her skirt gets tangled on thorns and she crosses a log over a river with her eyes closed. Seeing a buzzard and wondering what it is looking at, she muses on the difficulty of her task and the help God grants her. Phoenix mistakes a black scarecrow for a man or a ghost. When she realizes it is in fact just a scarecrow she is happy and dances with it for a moment. She finally makes it to a wagon track and thinks the journey will now be easier for her. But a black dog appears, and though she strikes at it with her cane, it ends up knocking her into a ditch. As she can't help herself, she waits until someone comes to help her. A white hunter pulls her out of the ditch and asks her about where she comes from and where she lives. When she tells him she is going to town, he condescendingly suggests that she won't get anything from her journey, and he assumes she's going to see Santa Claus as it's Christmastime. Noticing that a nickel has fallen out of the hunter's pocket, Phoenix goads the hunter to get rid of the black dog that knocked her down by claiming that "the big black dog" isn't "scare of nobody." While the hunter chases after it, Phoenix picks up the nickel. When the hunter returns, he casually points his gun at Phoenix and asks if she's scared. Phoenix responds that she isn't scared, that she's seen people killed for less than she's ever done, and he tells her he would give her a dime if he had any money. They part ways. Reaching Natchez, Phoenix is overwhelmed by all the lights but allows her muscle memory to take her to the big building where she needs to go. Before entering the building she stops to ask a woman carrying Christmas presents to tie her shoes. She wants to appear dignified before she enters the big building. The woman obliges, though a bit gruffly. Entering the big building, Phoenix climbs up the flight of stairs and stops before a document with a gold seal in a gold frame. "Here I be", she says. An attendant in this office immediately assumes she is a "charity case" and harangues Phoenix, who has ceased to talk as she has gone into a kind of reverie (seemingly from exhaustion), but a nurse comes out and identifies her and reveals that she comes to the doctor's office regularly. The nurse asks about Phoenix's young grandson's wellbeing, and explains that the grandson swallowed lye and now requires medication. Though the boy's case is difficult and the nurse seems skeptical, Phoenix remains confident that he is "going to last." The nurse brings out the medicine, which is given to Phoenix as charity as long as she can come to the doctor's office to get it. The attendant, noting that it's Christmastime, asks if Phoenix would like a few pennies. Phoenix asks for a nickel, which she gets. Phoenix then takes out her other nickel and places the two of them side by side. She declares that she will buy a paper windmill for her grandson. Raising her "free hand", she walks away slowly.

- Genre: Young adult fantasy - Title: A Wrinkle in Time - Point of view: Limited third-person narrative from Meg Murry's point of view - Setting: Earth, the planet Camazotz, the universe - Character: Meg Murry. Description: Meg is a thirteen-year-old girl who is a misfit at school, despite her unusual intelligence that the teachers can't seem to appreciate. The main source of her unhappiness, however, comes from the fact that her brilliant scientist father disappeared a number of years ago, and has made no contact with his loving, close-knit family since. With the help of her younger brother Charles Wallace and newfound friend Calvin, she embarks on an adventure with Mrs. Whatsit and co. to save her father, who is trapped on another planet by the powers of darkness. - Character: Charles Wallace Murry. Description: Meg's gifted five-year-old brother, Charles Wallace's talents extend from advanced factual and scientific knowledge to an unusual ability to penetrate and understand the minds of others. His assurance of his abilities proves to be his vulnerability as he believes he can mentally fight IT, and ends up being absorbed into IT, until Meg's love brings him back. - Character: Calvin O'Keefe. Description: Calvin, a fourteen-year-old boy who's so smart he's in eleventh grade and a talented athlete at that, enters the Murrys' lives in a most unexpected way at the beginning of the novel and is practically one of the family at the end (though he may mean something more to Meg). He has a talent for communication which comes in handy on other planets, and his warm love for Meg and Charles Wallace in addition to his courage sustains the group as they fight against the terrible Darkness. - Character: Mrs. Murry. Description: A beautiful, brilliant scientist with a wonderful family, Mrs. Murry does her best to lovingly take care of her children while her husband has mysteriously disappeared on government business, and hides her unhappiness at his absence. The children love her dearly in return, and are partly inspired by their love for their mother and their knowledge of her unhappiness in their quest to save their father. - Character: Mr. Murry. Description: Mr. Murry, the children's long disappeared father, is a brilliant physicist who landed on a planet overtaken by the Black Thing when he tried to tesseract for the first time. He's been missing for over a year when his children rescue him from Camazotz. Meg, who had dreamed of everything being all right when they found him, must grow up and take responsibility when she realizes her father cannot save Charles from the clutches of IT: only she can. - Character: Mrs. Whatsit. Description: First appearing to Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin as an old, funnily dressed woman, Mrs. Whatsit is nothing close to what she appears to be. She was a star who gave her life to fight the darkness—now she is a beautiful winged centaur-like creature, when she's not taken on the form of an eccentrically dressed tramp. Calvin describes her—along with Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which— as angels and messengers of God, for they are fighters for the good, are on the side of God, and are there to help but not directly intervene in what the children must do to save their father and themselves from IT. - Character: Mrs. Who. Description: A plump old woman with huge spectacles, Mrs. Who's unique trait is that she speaks mostly in quotations, since she can't communicate so well on her own. Shakesepeare, Dante, and above all Scripture feature prominently in her speech. Her glasses allow Meg to free her father from the transparent column in which he is stuck by rearranging the atoms of the wall. - Character: Mrs. Which. Description: Mrs. Which never seems to be able to fully materialize wherever they are, but the one time she does, it is as a witch on a broomstick, to the great amusement of Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who. She seems to be the head of their trio, the wisest and most experienced and most solemn of them all, though she is not as affectionate with the children as Mrs. Whatsit is. - Character: The Happy Medium. Description: Before going to the dark planet, Camazotz, the Mrs. W's take the children to see the Happy Medium, who lives on a planet on Orion's belt and who can show them in her crystal ball things that are happening all over the universe. The Medium shows them the evil that is happening, but also the good that is being done to fight the evil, so that the children can achieve a happy medium in their outlook going in to fight the Black Thing. - Character: Aunt Beast. Description: When Mr. Murry tessers himself, Calvin, and Meg away from Camazotz in a desperate attempt to save themselves from IT and Meg is subsequently injured, Aunt Beast is one of the tentacle beasts native to the planet they then land on who nurses Meg back to help. She is kind and loving, and helps to heal Meg's body and mind. - Character: The Man with the Red Eyes. Description: The children find the man with the red eyes waiting for them on Camazotz, once they enter the CENTRAL Central Intelligence building and are sent to speak with whoever is in authority. Like all those under IT's control, it is never really him who is speaking to the children, but IT. He (or rather, IT) manages to bring Charles' mind under the control of IT, but after the IT-controlled Charles then takes Meg and Calvin to see Mr. Murry's prison cell, the man with the red eyes is seen no more. - Character: IT. Description: IT is a gigantic, disgusting brain that controls the minds of all the inhabitants of Camazotz and does all the thinking for them. IT is pure evil, total Darkness, and is what captured Mr. Murry when he tessered to Camazotz by accident some time before the action of the book begins. IT, which claims to have all intelligence and all efficiency, is vulnerable only to the one thing it lacks: love. - Theme: Nonconformity. Description: At the beginning of the book, Meg is unhappy because she doesn't fit in at school, and desperately wishes she could be the same as everyone else. She's smarter than most kids, but her unorthodox way of thinking is not understood by her school, and she reacts by being sulky and stubborn. Her five-year-old brother, Charles Wallace, is also made fun of for being abnormally intelligent and different. But then the two meet Calvin, a "cool" kid who is unhappy because he hides his differences, and the Mrs. W's, who are the weirdest and most wonderful people they have ever met, and Meg begins to reconsider the value of her "differences". The final nail in the coffin of Meg's desires for sameness come when the children visit the planet Camazotz, which has been entirely taken over by the Black Thing. On Camazotz, everyone is the same, everyone conforms to the standards set by IT, and it is the unhappiest place in the book. When Charles Wallace gets assimilated IT and becomes the same as everyone on Camazotz, Meg realizes just how much she doesn't want herself or anyone she loves to have their differences taken away. The novel also contains many quotes from and references to great writers, thinkers, and scientists of the past (Shakespeare, Einstein, Goethe, etc.), all of whom were very "different" but accomplished great things for the good and the light through their work, and who are presented as the Earth's greatest fighter's against the Black Thing. In other words, the novel presents difference as not just a fact of life, but as a vital thing, the most important thing in the fight against evil. - Theme: The Value of Love. Description: While Meg focuses on her unhappiness at her father's absence and her problems at school, Calvin must remind her how lucky she is to have a family like hers in which there is so much love. Meg's love for her father enables to her to undertake the journey with the Mrs. W's in the first place, and Meg's love for Charles Wallace is the weapon with which she is able to save Charles Wallace and defeat IT. Love is the only thing she has that IT doesn't have—love is something that can only exist between different people, while IT destroys all difference. While Meg may think love a paltry thing at the beginning of the book, by the end she realizes she could possess nothing more empowering or valuable. - Theme: Deceptive Appearances. Description: Whether looking at Mrs. Whatsit, Aunt Beast, Camazotz, or even Meg Murry, one cannot trust appearances. As Mrs. Murry said of Charles Wallace to Meg, "…people are more than just the way they look. Charles Wallace's difference isn't physical. It's in essence." Frumpy looking Mrs. Whatsit is in reality a gorgeous centaur-like fallen star, tentacled Aunt Beast is a warm, motherly figure, and Camazotz, as innocuous as it looks when first landed on, is the unhappiest place one can imagine. To know what something is really like, the novel insists, one can't rely on one's eyes and must seek a deeper understanding of the mind and heart of the other. - Theme: Language and Knowing. Description: If Meg thought comprehending her and Charles Wallace's differences was hard, understanding the people and planets of a universe she never knew existed outside Earth is even more difficult. The Mrs. W's communicate in ways of their own—Mrs. Who, for example, hasn't really mastered the human language, so she quotes often from great authors to get her point across. Indeed many of the characters—Meg, Mrs. Whatsit, Mr. Murry—incorporate Shakespeare, Scripture, and other famous works into their thoughts and words to best express their feelings. But there is communication beyond the written and spoken word, which often fails (as seen best when Meg tries to explain light to animals that come from a sunless world). Meg can sometimes best tell Charles Wallace, Calvin, or her father that she loves them through a tender gesture or a warm embrace. Charles Wallace can somehow intuit the feelings of his mother, Meg, and Calvin without even being in the same room. Calvin's gift of communication, too, is intuitive and mental. Yet just as Aunt Beast will never understand the human sense of sight, all three children learn through their journey that there are some things they can't understand, and they must come to terms with this. As a talented math student who uses shortcuts, Meg always wants an easy and quick final answer, but her experiences and the wise people in her life teach her that she can't always get it. When she reaches Camazotz, she finally realizes that an effortless understanding of the universe is not something one ought to want, because IT is bent on total understanding, total control, and this world of total understanding and control is evil and suffocating. Meg is able to defeat IT not through her own knowledge but through a love that is more profound than words. - Theme: Christian References. Description: Though not an overtly Christian work (there are no priests, churches or religious ceremonies), there are many Scriptural quotations in A Wrinkle in Time. Christ is cited as one of the great warriors of light, next to the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Beethoven, and many different books of the Bible are quoted alongside of Shakespeare and Goethe and others. Underlying all of this is the author's belief that the core beliefs of Christianity are a powerful force for good in the fight against evil; however, she doesn't go much deeper than that, and uses those Scriptural quotations as a launch point for elaborating on broader themes. - Climax: Meg saves Charles Wallace, her younger brother, from the clutches of IT by simply loving him. - Summary: Meg Murry is a thirteen-year-old, plain-looking girl who can't seem to get along at school, despite unusual intelligence and a wonderful family. Impatient by nature, she quickly gets into trouble with her teachers, though the real source of her unhappiness is her missing father, who vanished a year ago on mysterious government business. Meg has two younger, perfectly normal twin brothers, Sandy and Dennys (10-years-old) and an extraordinary 5-year-old brother, Charles Wallace, who has intelligence and intuition beyond his years. Their mother, Mrs. Murry, is a Ph.D. like her husband, Mr. Murry, and while she tries to focus on her work and on the children, she is very unhappy and worried by her husband's absence. One stormy night, an old funnily-dressed woman shows up at the Murry's house: Mrs. Whatsit. Though Charles seems to know her, Mrs. Whatsit has come to deliver a message to Mrs. Murry: there is such a thing as a tesseract. Meg and Charles are mystified by the incident, and go to find Mrs. Whatsit the next day for answers (she's staying at a supposedly haunted house just off their property). On their way there, they come across Calvin O'Keefe, an athletic and popular boy who Meg knows only vaguely from school. It turns out that like Charles and Meg, he is unusually intelligent, and possesses a gift for communication. Though at first suspicious of him, Charles thinks he must be a good egg, and allows Calvin to come along with him and Meg. Mrs. Whatsit is not there, but they meet her friend, Mrs. Who, and then the three children head home to the Murrys to have dinner. Calvin straightaway feels at home with the Murrys. After Calvin has put Charles down for bed, he takes Meg for a walk in the garden behind the Murrys' house, and suddenly Charles, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which (their third companion) are there. The Mrs. W's tesser the children to another planet (tessering is a painful but quick way to travel through space and time; a "wrinkle" in time), where they show them the Black Thing: a shadow that has fallen across many parts of the universe, representing Evil. The Black Thing has captured Mr. Murry, and the children must save him. They then tesser to another planet, where they meet the Happy Medium, an oracle-like woman who shows them in her crystal ball a way in which the Darkness can be destroyed: a star can gives its life to destroy the Black Thing, and that is precisely what Mrs. Whatsit did. The time for action has come: Meg, Calvin, and Charles tesser to the planet Camazotz, an evil planet entirely taken over by the Black Thing, where Mr. Murry is. On Camazotz, everyone is exactly alike, every house, child, and adult is almost exactly the same. This is because every individual is controlled by IT, an enormous brain which thinks for everyone on the planet, destroying individuality. The children (whom the Mrs. W's can no longer accompany) find Mr. Murry and rescue him from his prison, but in the process Charles has his mind taken over by IT, and becomes ITs minion. This evil Charles takes his father, sister, and Calvin to IT, and Mr. Murry is forced to tesser himself, Meg, and Calvin away to save their own minds. The three of them land on another planet in Camazotz's system, and Meg is instantly enraged with her father for leaving Charles. She has, however, been physically and mentally wounded by tessering through the Black Thing, and the tentacled natives of that planet (especially Aunt Beast) tend to her until she is well. A council is held with the tentacled natives, the Mrs. W's, and Calvin, Meg and Mr. Murry, and Meg sees that only she can save Charles from IT, since she knows and loves Charles best of all of them. She tessers with Mrs. Which back to Camazotz, and manages to free Charles from ITs grasp by simply looking at him and loving him, for love is the one thing IT cannot stand. They then tesser back to the Murrys' backyard, where they find Calvin and Mr. Murry also returned. Mrs. Murry and the twins, upon hearing the commotion, run outside, and a very happy family reunion ensues.

- Genre: Southern Gothic Novel - Title: Absalom, Absalom! - Point of view: The novel features numerous first-person and third-person points of view, shifting between different characters' stories of the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen. - Setting: Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi (a fictional county Faulkner created, largely based on Lafayette County, Mississippi) - Character: Thomas Sutpen. Description: - Character: Charles Bon. Description: - Character: Henry Sutpen. Description: - Character: Judith Sutpen. Description: - Character: Rosa Coldfield. Description: - Character: Quentin Compson. Description: - Character: Ellen Coldfield. Description: - Character: Clytie. Description: - Character: Mr. Compson. Description: - Character: Charles Etienne. Description: - Character: Jim Bond. Description: - Character: Eulalia Bon. Description: - Character: Goodhue Coldfield. Description: - Character: General Compson. Description: - Character: Wash Jones. Description: - Character: Milly Jones. Description: - Character: Shreve McCannon. Description: - Character: The Spinster Aunt. Description: - Character: Major de Spain. Description: - Character: The French Architect. Description: - Character: Charles Bon's Mistress. Description: - Character: Charles Etienne's Wife. Description: - Theme: Storytelling, Perspective, and Truth. Description: - Theme: The South. Description: - Theme: The Limits of Ambition. Description: - Theme: Social Taboos, Racism, and Inherited Trauma. Description: - Climax: Clytie lets the old house on Sutpen's former estate on fire, killing herself and Henry Sutpen, and bringing Sutpen's dynasty to its symbolic end. - Summary: The main story of Absalom, Absalom! takes place in fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. It traces the rise and fall of the enigmatic Thomas Sutpen, who built his sprawling plantation, Sutpen's Hundred, on the outskirts of the town of Jefferson. The novel opens with Quentin, a young man whose grandfather sitting in the stuffy, darkened house of an elderly shut-in, Miss Rosa Coldfield. Quentin's grandfather, General Compson, was friends with Sutpen, while Rosa's sister Ellen was married to Sutpen (and Rosa herself was once engaged to him, too). Miss Rosa has nursed an intense hatred toward Sutpen for the past 43 years because of the anguish and suffering to which he's supposedly "doomed" her family. Now, she has asked requested that Quentin listen to her tell her story. Rosa describes Sutpen's arrival in Jefferson in 1833, the fortune he made there, and the family he started with Rosa's much-older sister, Ellen. Sutpen and Ellen had two children together, Henry and Judith. Rosa claims that Sutpen used her family's good name, marrying Ellen to gain "respectability." She describes how Henry later fought alongside Judith's fiancé, Charles Bon, in the Civil War—and then shot him dead outside the gates of Sutpen's Hundred as Judith stood waiting in her wedding dress. Rosa describes the yearly visits she and her father, Goodhue Coldfield, would make to Sutpen's Hundred, and how Ellen became a shell of her former self when she married Sutpen. She portrays Sutpen as a man too preoccupied with his own ambition to give much care or affection to his family. After Rosa finishes that day's story, Quentin returns home and listens to his father, Mr. Compson, tell his own stories about Sutpen. Mr. Compson fills in details that Miss Rosa left out and sometimes contradicting her version of events and also recounts Sutpen's arrival in Jefferson. He describes how his father, General Compson, loaned Sutpen seed cotton to plant, and he details the construction of Sutpen's grand mansion. He also tells Quentin about the dubious business venture that Sutpen convinced Mr. Coldfield to join him in, Sutpen's engagement to Ellen Coldfield, and the elaborate wedding that hardly anybody attended. Mr. Compson's story fills in more details of Judith's engagement to Charles Bon, Henry's friend from college who accompanies Henry to Sutpen's Hundred over the Christmas holiday one year. Bon is a little older than Henry and from New Orleans; Henry admires Bon's refinement and natural ease and tries to imitate him. Rosa doesn't meet Bon and only hears about what he's like through Ellen, who seems determined to force a romance between Judith and Bon. The second Christmas that Bon and Henry spend at Sutpen's Hundred, Sutpen summons Henry to the library, and they get into an argument that upsets Henry so much that he rejects his birthright and leaves with Bon that night. Nobody in town knows what the fight is about. Despite Henry and Bon's abrupt departure, everyone carries on as though nothing is wrong, and Rosa continues to sew Judith's wedding dress. Soon after, the Civil War begins, and Sutpen, Henry, and Bon go off to fight. Meanwhile, Mr. Coldfield, a conscientious objector, locks himself in the attic after passing troops loot his store, and he remains there until his death. Ellen has died by this point, as well. It's now 1864, and Rosa, orphaned and destitute, goes to live at Sutpen's Hundred. Later, in the novel's present, Mr. Compson walks outside and presents Quentin with a letter that Bon wrote to Judith while he was away fighting in the war, explaining that Judith kept the letter and gave it to Quentin's grandmother following Bon's death. As Mr. Compson and Quentin sit together on the veranda, Mr. Compson continues his story, speculating about what the argument between Henry and Sutpen was about. Mr. Compson believes that Sutpen went to Bon's home in New Orleans and discovered that he had a mixed-race mistress and a child there—meaning he would be committing bigamy by marrying Judith. In Mr. Compson's telling of the story, Bon is scheming and opportunistic, seducing Henry with his charm as much as Judith. In fact—at least at first—Henry eagerly encourages the courtship between Bon and Judith. But things change after Sutpen tells Henry about the other woman. After this (in Mr. Compson's telling) Henry accompanies Bon to New Orleans to confirm whether Sutpen's admission is true. There, Bon scandalizes Henry by taking him to the brothel where the mistress lives. Henry urges Bon to break things off with the mistress. After their trip to New Orleans, Bon and Henry head north to Mississippi and enlist in the military. Henry remains fearful that Bon will marry Judith before breaking things off with the other woman. After four years, Bon sends Judith a letter (the letter that Mr. Compson has presented to Quentin) telling her it's finally time for them to marry. Not long after, Henry and Bon return to Sutpen's Hundred, and Henry kills Bon at the gate. Sometime later, Quentin returns to Miss Rosa's house, and the story continues from her perspective. Miss Rosa's story picks up after Wash Jones, a squatter who'd been living on Sutpen's property, informs Miss Rosa of Bon's murder. After Bon's death, Rosa helps Clytie (Sutpen's daughter with an enslaved woman) and Judith carry Bon's coffin to the gravesite. Following the burial, the three women continue to live in Sutpen's house, barely scraping by as they await Sutpen's return from the war. When Sutpen returns, he hardly reacts to the news of Bon's murder. Later, Sutpen proposes to Rosa, who accepts. Then one day he insults her, causing her to call off the engagement, leave Sutpen's Hundred, and become a shut-in in her father's old house. (Later in the book, it's revealed that Sutpen suggested to Rosa that he'd only marry her after they had sex and she gave birth to a male heir.) In the present, the story picks up in Quentin and his roommate Shreve's dorm room at Harvard. Quentin has just received a letter from his father announcing Rosa's death. The letter's arrival has prompted Shreve, a Canadian, to ask Quentin to tell the story of Sutpen. As Quentin tells Shreve the story, Shreve repeats sections back to him, occasionally interjecting with glib, joking remarks. This section fills in details about the aftermath of Bon's death, describing how his son (Charles Etienne) and mistress travel to Mississippi to visit Bon's grave. After the mistress's death, Charles Etienne comes to live with Judith and Clytie at Sutpen's Hundred. They care for him but didn't offer much affection to the grieving boy. His lonely childhood and confusion about his racial identity lead him to grow up to be a troubled and sometimes violent man. Eventually he marries an unnamed Black woman and has a son named Jim Bond with her. They live in an old slave cabin on Sutpen's property, and Charles Etienne works the land until falling ill with Yellow Fever. Judith cares for him until his death; shortly after, she too succumbs to the illness and dies. Clytie raises Jim Bond and lives with him in the house after the others die. In the present, Quentin tells Shreve about a shocking admission Rosa made to him: there has been someone else hiding in the cabin. Quentin and Shreve continue to tell the story of Sutpen, describing his impoverished childhood in the mountains of West Virginia. The family later moves to Tennessee and works for a wealthy planter, who also owns enslaved people. One day, young Sutpen approaches the planter's mansion to deliver a message, and the Black enslaved man orders Sutpen to use the back door, humiliating him. It's at this point that Sutpen conceives of his "design": his ambitious plan to acquire so much wealth and respect that nobody will ever shut the door on him or any of his sons ever again. After this, Sutpen leaves his family and travels to the West Indies, where he makes a fortune. He marries a woman named Eulalia Bon and has a child with her. After discovering the woman concealed her Black ancestry from him, he abandons her and the child but continues to support them. This child, it's revealed, is Charles Bon—a fact Quentin only learned from Miss Rosa. Quentin and Shreve believe that this is what Sutpen told Henry in the library that fateful Christmas night. In Quentin and Shreve's imagined version of events, Bon's motives for courting Judith and inserting himself into the Sutpens' affairs are unclear. Perhaps he woos Judith to get back at Sutpen for his abandonment; perhaps his mother put him up to the task. Or perhaps he simply wanted Sutpen to acknowledge him as his son and only fell in love with Judith incidentally. In Quentin and Shreve's version of the story, Sutpen seeks out Henry during the war and tells him about Bon's Black ancestry, and this—not the incest or the mistress—is what causes Henry to turn on Bon and eventually kill him. Quentin and Shreve's version of the story also describes Sutpen's failed efforts to regain his former glory following the war and Sutpen's death. After Rosa calls off the engagement, Sutpen initiates a sexual relationship with Wash Jones's granddaughter, Milly. The girl gets pregnant but gives birth to a girl—not a male heir—so Sutpen insults her, and Wash kills Sutpen in retaliation before killing Milly, the baby, and himself. Finally, in the present, Quentin describes to Shreve how Miss Rosa took him to Sutpen's Hundred to find the person Rosa claimed was hiding in the house where Clytie and Jim Bond still live. Despite Clytie's protests, they walk upstairs and finds an old, dying Henry lying in a bedroom upstairs. Three months later, Rosa summons an ambulance to deliver Henry medical attention, but Clytie mistakes the ambulance for the authorities and sets the house on fire, killing herself and Henry as Jim Bond looks on and wails from outside. In the present, Shreve tells Quentin he has one more question for him: why does Quentin hate the South? Quentin insists—first aloud to Shreve, and then silently to himself, that he doesn't hate the South.

- Genre: Young Adult Novel, Historical Fiction, Bildungsroman - Title: Across Five Aprils - Point of view: Third Person Limited - Setting: A small family farm in Southern Illinois during the American Civil War - Character: Jethro Creighton. Description: Jethro Creighton is the youngest of Matt and Ellen's children. He grows up on his family's farm surrounded by his siblings John, Bill, Tom, Mary, and Jenny and his cousin Eb. When his brothers leave for the war (and later, after his father suffers a heart attack), Jethro takes on increased responsibilities on the farm without complaint. Jethro also possesses a keen intelligence and hunger for learning. which his beloved schoolteacher (and eventual brother-in-law) Shadrach Yale encourages and feeds. During the war, Jethro and his sister Jenny read and discuss newspaper accounts of the battles both to keep themselves current on military developments but also to improve their reading skills. Jethro suffers a crisis of conscience when his favorite brother, Bill, joins the Confederate Army rather than siding with the Union cause like the rest of his brothers. Yet, despite disagreeing with Bill on which side holds the moral high ground, Jethro learns to accept his brother's choice as an honest expression of his conscience. Then, when locals like Guy Wortman criticize Bill in his absence, Jethro follows the dictates of his own conscience and defends his brother, even when it exposes his family to other people's hatred and potential violence. As he comes of age during the long years of the war, Jethro learns to keep his own counsel and stand up for what he believes to be right, even when that makes his path difficult or dangerous. This is what men he admires, like his father, Shad, Ross Milton, and even the distant figure of President Abraham Lincoln, do. After the end of the war, Jethro prepares to welcome his brothers home and work the farm for one final summer before leaving with Shad and Jenny to complete his education. - Character: Shadrach Yale. Description: Shadrach Yale ("Shad") teaches at the school where Matt and Ellen Creighton send their children. A transplant from Pennsylvania to southern Illinois, Shad is an intelligent, accomplished man and a generous, kind teacher. He becomes close to the Creightons after Ellen nurses him through an illness, and he works with Matt, John, Bill, Tom, and Eb on the farm the summer that the Civil War breaks out. He and Jenny are in love before the war, and they eventually marry toward the war's end. Shad plays an important role as a mentor to Jethro, encouraging the boy to continue his formal education and exemplifying good moral character. Jethro willingly follows Shad's instructions and example. Shad enlists in the Union Army during the war's first year. He joins because of what his conscience says about his duty to his country, even though he opposes violence and fears that he will lose his life in the process. He survives the war—barely—and returns to the farm with plans to finish his own college education while making sure that Jethro receives a full education himself. - Character: Jenny Creighton. Description: Jenny Creighton, daughter of Ellen and Matt, is the closest sibling in age to Jethro—she and Jethro are the youngest of the Creighton siblings. Their closeness in age and mutual admiration for Shadrach Yale, whom Jethro treasures as a friend and beloved teacher and whom Jenny loves (and later marries), bring brother and sister very close throughout the years of the war. Despite her youth, Jenny is intelligent, determined, and independent. Until Jenny leaves to tend to a recuperating Shad in Washington D.C., she and Jethro follow the accounts of the war together, reading and discussing the newspaper reports and trying to understand their implications. This showcases Jenny's quick mind as well as her commitment to education and improving herself. - Character: Ross Milton. Description: Ross Milton edits the Jasper County newspaper, and he is a friend to the Creighton family. Ross suffers from debilitating arthritis, and his ability to continue with his life nevertheless—even chaperoning Jenny Creighton on a punishing train journey to Washington, D.C.—shows how hardship and suffering need not prevent a person from living a meaningful life. While Milton disagrees with Bill's decision to join the Confederate Army, he is a conscientious man who can still appreciate Bill's thoughtfulness, and the way Jethro defends Bill against Guy Wortman. Milton also values education, and he gives young Jethro and Jenny a grammar book that he wrote to help them improve their English while Shad is away at war. As the years pass, Milton becomes an important mentor to Jethro, helping him to make sense of the war and its consequences. - Character: Bill Creighton. Description: Bill Creighton is the son of Matt and Ellen Creighton and the brother to John, Tom, Mary (deceased), Jenny, and Jethro. He is Jethro's favorite among his brothers, and he has an especially close bond with his brother John and John's standoffish wife, Nancy. Although he has the physique of an Illinois farm boy, Bill prefers intellectual pursuits to physical diversions like hunting and fighting. His philosophical bent makes him conscientious, but it also isolates him. The extreme example of this comes when he follows his conscience to join the Confederate forces (to protect the rights of Southern farmers like himself). This leads to a rift between him and John, who joins the Union Army. But it also teaches Jethro the importance and value of thinking for oneself and making decisions according to the dictates of one's conscience rather than what is popular. Union soldiers from John's unit later capture Bill with other Confederates after the Battle of Chickamauga, which allows the brothers a brief reunion. Although it seems he thus survives the war, the book does not reveal his ultimate fate. - Character: Matthew Creighton. Description: Matthew Creighton is the patriarch of the Creighton family, husband of Ellen and father to John, Bill, Tom, Mary (deceased), Jenny, and Jethro, along with other children dead or living far away. When his sons leave to fight in the war, Matt stays on the farm, which he continues to work until he suffers a heart attack after Guy Wortman begins to harass his family. Throughout the book, Matt provides an important example of mercy to Jethro; for example, he prevents a lynch mob from harming Travis Burdow after Burdow causes Mary's accidental death. In this way, his actions align him with President Abraham Lincoln, who also seeks to temper justice with mercy. Matt initially refuses to allow Jenny to marry Shadrach Yale, claiming that she is too young. He later changes his position after Shad becomes wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg, admitting that he was too harsh, and finally gives the couple his blessing to marry. In this way, he teaches Jethro the importance of admitting when one is wrong. - Character: Eb Carron. Description: Eb Carron is Matthew Creighton's nephew, although he grows up alongside the rest of the Creighton children—John, Bill, Tom, Mary, Jenny, and Jethro—after his parents die when he is a child. Eighteen years old when the Civil War breaks out, Eb expresses faith in the Northern cause and volunteers to join the Union army as soon as he can. The realities of war begin to dawn on him as early as the campaign on Forts Henry and Donelson, where he and Tom witness soldiers dying of exposure after they foolishly leave blankets and coats behind to lighten their loads. Unlike Tom, he survives the Battle of Shiloh. Sometime after Shiloh, however, Eb deserts the ranks due to illness, trauma, and overwhelming homesickness. Despite his momentary weakness, Eb has a strong conscience and doesn't want to bear the humiliation of desertion or the responsibility of abandoning his comrades, so when President Abraham Lincoln declares a temporary amnesty for all deserters who are willing to rejoin the ranks, Eb jumps at the opportunity. He survives the war. - Character: Abraham Lincoln. Description: Abraham Lincoln is the 16th president of the United States. His election in 1861 deals a serious blow to the Democratic Party (at the time, the Democratic Party was primarily aligned with white, slaveholding landowners in the South) and its hold on federal power, thus adding fuel to the growing Southern secession movement. As president, Lincoln oversees the Civil War at the head of the Union. His popularity in the North waxes and wanes as Union generals like Ulysses S. Grant and George B. McClellan achieve victory or suffer defeat in battle. A careful thinker, Lincoln approaches issues thoughtfully and tries to consider all the alternatives. This earns him the respect of men like Matt Creighton and Shadrach Yale. Jethro thinks Lincoln's resistance to war a weakness initially, but he comes to understand that Lincoln represents a different type of maturity, one founded on mercy. Lincoln exemplifies mercy when he offers amnesty to Northern deserters or anticipates the need to reunify the North and the South, not just punish the South for the war. He is assassinated just days after the end of the Civil War. - Character: Ellen Creighton. Description: Ellen Creighton is the wife of Matt Creighton and matriarch of the Creighton family. Ellen has a dependence on coffee, even though her strong Protestant Christian faith makes her resent and try to resist this so-called weakness. She has seen much pain and suffering in her life, and although these trials have left their mark on her, she continues to live an upright and productive life and instills the virtues of honesty, hard work, and conscience in her children. - Character: John Creighton. Description: John Creighton is the eldest son of Matt and Ellen Creighton still living at the family farm in southern Illinois. His younger siblings are Bill (with whom he is best friends), Tom, Mary (deceased), Jenny, and Jethro. He has two sons with his wife, Nancy. At the beginning of the war, John feels so strongly that the Northern cause is righteous that he comes to blows with Bill after Bill expresses support for the Confederate cause. John joins the Union Army in the first winter of the war and serves honorably in many important battles. He and Bill reunite briefly when his unit captures Bill's at the Battle of Chickamauga. John survives the war. - Character: Ulysses S. Grant. Description: Ulysses S. Grant is a historical general who served in the Union Army during the American Civil war and was subsequently elected president. Grant's military career features a mix of daring victories and disastrous defeats; because of this, opinions about him in the North—especially in press coverage—vary wildly over the course of the war. Nevertheless, President Abraham Lincoln gives Grant increasing responsibility as the war continues. In contrast to handsome and charismatic (but significantly less competent) generals like George B. McClellan, Grant represents a more plainspoken, humble version of military authority, demonstrating the foolishness of depending on a person's appearance to judge their character. Ultimately Grant sees Union forces to victory and accepts General Robert E. Lee's surrender on behalf of the Confederacy at the end of the war. - Character: Robert E. Lee. Description: Robert E. Lee is a historical Confederate general from the American Civil War who rises to become leader of the entire Confederate Army and who signs the South's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at the end of the war. A top graduate of the United States Military Academy and an outstanding soldier and military engineer, Lee proves to be a competent and capable commander of the Southern forces. Because of his stellar reputation and solid military career, Lee represents the ideal military commander, a fact that sits uncomfortably with Jethro's sense that the North, not the South, is on the right side of the war. - Character: George B. McClellan. Description: George B. McClellan is a historical general in the Union Army whose swift rise to prominence and important early victories give heart to the North that its cause is just and that the war will be swift. Handsome, charismatic McClellan plays a vital role in building up the Union Army, especially after President Abraham Lincoln appoints him its general-in-chief, but after a string of disappointments and defeats, Lincoln demotes McClellan and slowly sidelines him in favor of other generals, especially Ulysses S. Grant. Shadrach Yale serves under McClellan; Shad's keen eye for character makes him distrustful of the general, whom he believes to be more concerned with his personal reputation than the North's victory in the war. He thus provides an example of the kind of adult Jethro does not want to emulate. - Character: Tom Creighton. Description: Tom Creighton is one of Matt and Ellen Creighton's children. He is the same age as (and best friends with) his cousin, Eb Carron. At the beginning of the war, Tom is eager to join the Union Army and fight, but his early experience watching his comrades die of exposure after they foolishly abandon their blanket and coats to save weight begins to sober him. Nevertheless, Tom serves honorably until he dies in the Battle of Shiloh. - Character: Ed Turner. Description: Ed Turner is the Creighton family's neighbor. Like Matt and Ellen, he is a subsistence farmer who supports himself and his family with the produce he raises on his own land. After John, Bill, Tom, Eb, and Shad (and some of Turner's own sons) go to war and Matt has a heart attack, Ed takes on a mentorship role to young Jethro, supporting Jethro as he accepts ever greater responsibility for running the Creighton family farm. - Character: Mary Creighton. Description: Mary Creighton is the daughter of Matt and Ellen Creighton and the sister of John, Bill, Tom, Jenny, and Jethro. When Jethro is seven years old, Mary attends a dance with her boyfriend; on the way home, they fall victim to the harassment of a drunken Travis Burdow, whose actions lead to Mary's accidental death. This loss represents Jethro's first meaningful experience with death. - Character: Travis Burdow. Description: Travis Burdow is a young man from a family whom local opinion holds to all be petty criminals. His thoughtless action of harassment causes Mary Creighton's accidental death, but Matt Creighton spares Travis's life when he pleads with a lynch mob to leave the young man alone. Travis enlists in the Union Army during the Civil War, but the book does not reveal his ultimate fate. - Character: Dave Burdow. Description: Dave Burdow is the father of Travis Burdow and the son of a somewhat-infamous man whom local lore holds to be a thief. As a result, the local community shuns and maligns the Burdows, especially after Travis causes Mary Creighton's accidental death. But Dave Burdow shows himself to be better than people's opinions of him warrant when he saves Jethro after Guy Wortman attacks him and when he generously contributes timber to rebuild the Creighton barn after Wortman burns it down. - Character: Nancy Creighton. Description: Nancy Creighton is John Creighton's wife. The couple has two sons. Born in Kansas and evidently raised in a harsh family, Nancy is shy and withdrawn. Over the course of the war, however, she comes to increasingly rely on her in-laws, and she slowly develops a relationship with her young brother-in-law Jethro. - Character: Guy Wortman. Description: Guy Wortman is the Creighton family's neighbor. He's a bully who often drinks too much. He has harsh words for the Creighton family after learning that Bill Creighton has enlisted in the Confederate Army, and he attacks Jethro before ringleading acts of vandalism and arson on the Creighton family farm. He only stops his harassment campaign after Sam Gardiner shoots him in an embarrassing way and Ross Milton spreads the story around the county through the newspaper. - Character: Sam Gardiner. Description: Sam Gardiner owns the general store in Newton, Illinois. He stands up for the Creightons after Guy Wortman and his friends begin to terrorize the family. Then, when Wortman turns his sights on the general store, Gardiner puts a stop to his campaign of terror by shooting him in an embarrassing manner. - Theme: Coming of Age. Description: When the Civil War breaks out in April of 1861, Jethro Creighton is just nine years old, still a child who deeply respects and admires the adult men in his life. Over the course of the war, Jethro grows up both in chronological years and in maturity. Because Across Five Aprils focuses almost exclusively on the concerns and affairs of men, it explores its vision of maturity in terms of what it means to be a man.  Among the adults around Jethro, four provide particularly important examples for him to model his own behavior on. Shad demonstrates courage and conviction when he sets his own life plans aside to fight for the Union. And as the war drags on through many brutal and costly battles, his courage shines ever more brightly. Jethro's father Matthew and President Abraham Lincoln share a judicious nature, and their attempts to prevent or limit bloodshed impress upon Jethro the importance of tempering justice with mercy. But perhaps most importantly, Jethro's favorite brother, Bill, models how a man should follow his convictions—and accept the consequences—no matter what other people think. Bill follows his conscience to the Confederate Army, turning himself against the United States government, his own home state of Illinois, his local community, and even his family. When Jethro becomes responsible for the fate of his cousin Eb, who has deserted the Union Army, he follows Bill's example of conscience, considers his values and independently choosing how he wants to act. Like the men he admires, Jethro ultimately forges a path that acknowledge the demands of justice while also seeking mercy for deserters in light of the trauma they have suffered in the war. And like Shad, he shows courage in the face of danger, for his actions expose himself and his family to legal trouble for harboring fugitive Eb. He accepts the potential consequences, no matter how grave, in order to do the right thing. His actions show how growing up means looking at this messiness and confusion, embracing the adult responsibility of developing a moral consciousness, and living according to it. The novel thus argues that true masculinity (or maturity in a broader sense) involves courage, a careful balance between justice and mercy, and the conviction to follow through on one's own beliefs. - Theme: The Realities of War. Description: Across Five Aprils vividly imagines the costs of the American Civil War, which remains the deadliest conflict in United States history. The book opens with the juvenile and simplistic view of war that Jethro Creighton, his brothers John and Tom, and his cousin Eb hold. But the complexity of the conflict soon comes into focus. The Creightons live in a Northern state—Illinois. But because they live in the extreme south of the state, their culture and beliefs more closely align them with residents of Kentucky, Tennessee, and other Confederate states. And while conflict over the institution of slavery remains an important part of the political tensions triggering the war, Southerners also express distress over a variety of issues regarding their political sovereignty. A tense family dinner in the opening chapters explores these issues, with Kentucky cousin Wilse and brother Bill taking the side of Southern autonomy against John, Tom, and Eb. Later, once the war begins, newspaper accounts, letters home from his brothers, and mounting personal losses cause Jethro to question his simplistic and romantic view of war.  Bill eventually follows his conscience to join the Confederate Army while John, Tom, and Eb join the Union forces. This split among the brothers ensures that the family will lose no matter who wins the war; likewise, although the Confederacy eventually surrenders, the destruction of lives and property on both sides of the line, as well as the loss of trust and cooperation between the Northern and Southern states calls into question the very meaning of the word "victory," since both sides end up so damaged. Across Five Aprils thus dispels romanticized, simplistic ideas about war and instead highlights the terrible cost that war extracts—not just from the men who join the ranks and fight, but everyone else, too. - Theme: Self-Determination. Description: Just before he leaves to enlist in the Union Army, Shadrach Yale tells Jethro Creighton that he wishes the long-simmering tensions that led to the American Civil War hadn't come to a boiling point just as he himself reached adulthood, since he had other plans for his life. Still, he chooses to serve, setting aside his own desires to work toward the greater good and showing how American democracy demands a balance between self-determination and the cooperation that maintaining a union among diverse interests demands. Unfettered self- interest would lead to anarchy, and the book explores the ways in which uncurbed individualism can become destructive through Guy Wortman, who oversteps community boundaries when his low opinion escalates into vandalism, or through the soldiers whose desertion endangers their comrades—and the broader war effort in the North. The biggest example of this strife is, of course, the Civil War. Importantly, the value of self-determination animates both sides' rationales for war. In the North, the abolitionists seek emancipation for enslaved people—granting them the same rights of self-determination as white citizens—in the South. Conversely, cousin Wilse (who lives in Kentucky) and brother Bill give voice to a Southern argument that states and regions also have the right to self-determination within the broader confines of the American nation. Both cite Southern claims that a national ban on slaveholding oversteps these rights. In Bill's case, the idea of Southern self-determination ultimately aligns with the idea of individual self-determination when he follows his convictions into the Confederate Army. While his family members express their distress over his choice, they ultimately respect his right to hold and action on his convictions, and they defend that right even at the risk of property damage and personal injury. Thus, while Across Five Aprils celebrates self-determination when practiced by well-meaning individuals, it also explores the ways in which freedom can lead to strife and difficulty. - Theme: Personal Conviction. Description: Set during the American Civil War, Across Five Aprils imaginatively explores many dearly held American beliefs and values, including the importance of democracy, the value of freedom, and the value of hard work. When social and political issues divide Northern and Southern states, ultimately leading to the Civil War, it shows how unclear and muddied right and wrong can be. In doing so, it develops a powerful argument not just for the importance of American values, but for the ways in which debate and testing can strengthen those values. Accordingly, the book argues that the best way to live up to America's values is to educate oneself and form nuanced opinions rather than blindly accepting deceptively simple truths. Thus, the novel valorizes Bill, who carefully considers many of the animating political and social issues beneath the Civil War and ultimately chooses to join the Confederate Army to support Southern farmers. Conversely, while Guy Wortman expresses pro-Union sentiment, he wants to reduce the war to a simple black-and-white issue rather than considering its full complexity. The novel punishes him for his refusal to look for nuance or to lay his life on the line for his alleged values. Meanwhile, the novel celebrates how people with a stronger moral sense, like Shad, Matt, and Ross Milton, accept and admire Bill's decision to act on his principles, even if they disagree with them. Importantly, Jethro discovers his capacity to respect different opinions by watching others argue and fight over their beliefs. At first, Jethro accepts the beliefs that his older family members hold without interrogation. But when his cousin Wilse brings an outside perspective from Kentucky, when Bill goes south, and when Shad teaches Jethro to see the strengths and weaknesses of the Union generals he admires, Jethro learns to test received ideas against experience. In doing so, his faith in the country and what it stands for—especially represented by the figure of Abraham Lincoln—grows, rather than diminishes. Ultimately, the novel suggests, one's values and beliefs can only be clarified and refined by testing them against personal experience and the views of others. - Theme: Hardship, Suffering, and Beauty. Description: The world in which nine-year-old Jethro Creighton lives at the beginning of Across Five Aprils is one of both great beauty and great hardship. The youngest of Ellen Creighton's 12 children, the novel wastes no time in letting readers know that the same year Jethro was born, three of his siblings died within a week of polio. Life on a farm means a lot of hard work, but being outside allows Jethro to appreciate the color and cheer of Southern Illinois, especially in the springtime. Then comes the American Civil War, which shows even more starkly how much hardship and suffering can exist in the world. Still, Jethro and his family never lose their capacity to appreciate the good things in the world around them, from the first green vegetables of the spring to the reward of a cup of coffee to the beautiful contrast of light and shadows in a candle-lit cabin to the sweetness of young love. Throughout, the novel suggests that suffering and hardship are an inescapable—and perhaps even valuable—part of life. But gratitude, and an appreciation for beauty that can never be fully overshadowed, have the effect of protecting the soul and keeping it from hardening. - Climax: Jethro Creighton decides how he will handle the situation of his cousin, Eb, who has deserted the Union Army. - Summary: In April of 1861, nine-year-old Jethro Creighton helps his mother, Ellen, plant potatoes on their farm in southern Illinois. His father, Matt, cousin Eb, and brothers John, Bill, and Tom also work in the fields while his sister, Jenny, prepares the family's lunch and family friend and local schoolteacher Shadrach Yale heads to the nearest town (still 12 miles away) for news. The country rests on the precipice of war. By the end of the day, Shad returns with news that Confederate forces have fired on Fort Sumter, beginning the American Civil War. Before the end of summer, Tom and Eb join the Union Army. In the fall, after much soul-searching, Bill sides with the South and leaves to enlist with the Confederate Army. Finally, after completing the fall harvest and first school semester, John and Shad leave the farm to join the Union Army. In the absence of the other men, Jethro's responsibilities on the farm increase. When the family needs supplies in town, including precious coffee, Jethro travels to town alone even though he's just 10. In town, Guy Wortman and other locals confront him about Bill's defection to the South, and Jethro defends his brother. Bill's defection instigates others to retaliate against Jethro and his family. Eventually, the stress of the situation leads Matt to suffer a heart attack. Jethro and Jenny assume even more responsibilities, with the help of kind neighbors like Ed Turner. In the fall of 1862, the Creighton family finally learns that Tom died at the Battle of Shiloh nearly six months earlier. Following their defeat at the Battle of Shiloh, the Union Army suffers a series of losses and costly victories into early 1863. Soldiers begin to desert the ranks, including Jethro's cousin Eb. In February, federal agents come to the farm looking for him; he faces serious penalties for the crime of desertion. Then, in March, Jethro finds Eb hiding in the woods. Torn between a sense of justice and mercy, Jethro supplies Eb with food and warm blankets while he decides whether he should turn his cousin in to the government. Ultimately, Jethro writes a letter to President Abraham Lincoln asking him to pardon contrite deserters Within the month, he receives a letter from the president himself announcing just such an amnesty for men like Eb, who quickly returns to his unit. Throughout the spring and summer of 1863, farm life goes on while John, Eb, and Shad suffer through vicious battles. Shad's luck runs out at Gettysburg, where he receives a likely fatal wound. Matt and Ellen allow Jenny to go to him in Washington, D.C.. Miraculously, Shad survives, and he and Jenny marry in August. As the war drags into 1864, and Jethro follows the contentious presidential primaries and election through the newspapers. A string of Union victories in the late summer and fall clinch the election for Abraham Lincoln, and the early months of 1865 see Union forces gaining traction in the South, where they rampage through Georgia and North Carolina. When General Robert E. Lee finally surrenders to General Ulysses S. Grant in April of 1865, Jethro feels pride, elation, and relief. But President Lincoln's assassination just a few days later overshadows the Union Army's victory. At the end of April 1865, Jethro sits mourning this loss on a hill near the family farm when Shad and Jenny return from Washington. John and Eb will be back soon, too, and although Bill's future is unclear, the Creightons' lives will settle into their new normal.

- Genre: Short story, Realism - Title: After the Race - Point of view: Third person primarily limited to Jimmy Doyle's consciousness, although there are instances when this third person narrator is omniscient and describes other characters' inner thoughts and feelings as well. - Setting: Dublin, Ireland - Character: Jimmy Doyle. Description: The story's protagonist is a young Irishman named Jimmy Doyle. Jimmy is twenty-six years old and has a brown moustache and "rather innocent looking grey eyes." Jimmy's father is a wealthy man, whose money supported Jimmy through his education: first at a Catholic college in England; then at Dublin University for law; and lastly at Cambridge for a term. It was at Cambridge that Jimmy met the Frenchmen Charles Ségouin, in whose car Jimmy rides for the first half of the story, although it is made clear that the two men are "not much more than acquaintances." Jimmy was never a serious student, and instead spent much of his time socializing within "motoring circles." Although he has made some smaller financial blunders in his life, he believes that his knowledge of how much work goes into making money will prevent him from making any truly disastrous mistakes. With his father's blessing, he is planning on investing in Ségouin's not-yet-founded motor car company, from which he hopes to make a lot of money. Jimmy enjoys the notoriety he attracts from being with his continental European acquaintances, and it is suggested that he feels that these European associations set him apart from other Irish people, even as his outburst about politics while drinking with the Englishman Routh indicates that he feels that the Irish should be taken more seriously by other European powers. The story depicts Jimmy as insecure about his standing within the broader world as a wealthy Irishman—rather than feeling confident, he is always looking for indications of his own worthiness, whether in the admiration of his countrymen or the attention of European continentals. Throughout, the story subtly implies that this insecurity is leading Jimmy toward disaster; in fact, the story suggests that Jimmy himself vaguely senses this, but can't do anything to stop it. As Jimmy goes through the evening with his continental acquaintances—eating dinner, giving speeches, talking politics, and playing cards—Jimmy seems to be being humored and exploited; and to be exploiting himself to get the affirmation he needs. In its ending, when a hopelessly drunk Jimmy hopes to escape into sleep from the thought of his substantial losses in cards, only to find that it is already dawn, the story suggests that Jimmy's desire to be accepted among the continentals is an unsustainable path that will lead to his ruin. Jimmy can also be seen as being a symbol for both the general Irish populace, and specifically for the Irish upper class—and a criticism of the self-hating traits that Joyce saw in his fellow Irish citizens. - Character: Charles Ségouin. Description: Charles Ségouin is a French man who owns the car that Jimmy Doyle, André Rivière, and Villona are riding in at the end of the race. Ségouin serves as a symbolic representative for the French in the story. At the beginning of the story, he is in good spirits because of the French team's success in the race, and because he has received some orders for the motor company that he is purportedly opening in Paris. He has also been working to persuade Jimmy to invest in this company. Ségouin appears to be rich, and apparently owns several large hotels in France. As the story progresses, Ségouin proves himself to have good taste (he sets up an excellent dinner at his hotel), and an able manager of the conversation among the group of men who gather for that dinner. Yet there is always the sense in the story that Ségouin may not be entirely on the up-and-up. It's not clear just how legitimate his not-yet-founded motor company is. His efforts to get Jimmy to invest are manipulative (he implies that he is doing Jimmy a favor by letting him put money into the venture), and his hotel wealth is unconfirmed. Further, his demeanor through the night seems to imply a willingness to humor Jimmy while taking advantage of him—getting Jimmy drunk, then crushing him at cards. The implication is that Ségouin may be playing on Jimmy's insecurities in order to exploit him, with a further suggestion that the French more generally may be exploiting the wealthy Irish class in similar ways. - Character: Jimmy Doyle's father. Description: Jimmy Doyle's father is a wealthy Irish businessman who acquired his money by managing a chain of butcher shops that are now established across Dublin. Although he had been an Irish nationalist as a youth (an advocator for Irish Home Rule), the story makes clear that he "modified his views"—and implies that he sold out on his political beliefs' and on Irish self-determination, in order to achieve financial success. That success is also built on his choice to enter into police contracts, which practically speaking means he sells meat to the jails and barracks, but has the broader significance of meaning that he makes his money by working in concert with the English authorities who rule Ireland. With his money, he sent Jimmy to a college in England, followed by Dublin university and then a semester in Cambridge. Although he pretends to appear angry at his son's sometimes frivolous expenses, he is actually proud of his son's spending. He encourages his son's connection with Charles Ségouin, as he believes there is lots of money to be made in the motoring business and he is proud of his son's continental associations. Along with Jimmy, he represents the Irish upper class, and how it has abandoned the needs of Ireland in pursuing its own wealth, and yet is likely to suffer failure as it pursues opportunity and stature among the wealthier, more worldly continental Europeans. - Character: Villona. Description: Villona is a poor, but talented, Hungarian pianist who is one of the six men who make up the partying group along with Jimmy Doyle. He also serves as a symbolic representative as Hungary and as a foil character for Jimmy Doyle. Joyce uses the contrast between Villona and Jimmy to illustrate his opinion of how the Irish should act in order to progress as a country. At the time that the story was written, Hungary had secured some governmental and fiscal independence from Austria, the country that had been ruling them, in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (although Joyce appears to be glorifying the reception of this political arrangement, as many Hungarians actually bitterly resented it and Hungary did not achieve total independence until 1918). While Jimmy is fixated on getting attention from his continental companions and on keeping up in their capitalist pursuits, Villona is satisfied with meeting his needs (glimpses into his consciousness reveal a focus on food) and exploring his artistic pursuits. Instead of talking about cars and capital at dinner, he tries to engage an uninterested Routh in a discussion about old English songs and instruments. While the other men play cards, he plays the piano and even leaves the cabin when they gamble, actions that demonstrate his disinterest in participating in the money games of the other men and his prioritization of art. Villona's decision to not participate in their capitalist schemes illustrates how the country of Hungary is acting independently—fiscally, politically, and socially—from the other national powers that would otherwise control them. Villona offers a juxtaposition to Jimmy that serves to more clearly reveal Jimmy's (and the Irish's more generally) desperate dependance on other countries' socioeconomic structures and approval. Additionally, while Jimmy is "too excited to be genuinely happy," Villona is "an optimist by nature," which suggests that Villona, because of his freedom from the insidious nature of capitalism, actually experiences happiness and is spared the spiritual despair that haunts Jimmy and, by extension, the Irish. - Character: Routh. Description: Routh is an Englishman who meets up with the group of men at dinner. He is the symbolic representative for England in the story. There are multiple references to a tight connection between Routh and Charles Ségouin (notably their friendship from Cambridge and Jimmy Doyle's imagining them as a "graceful" pair) that demonstrate how the historically powerful countries of England and France, to the exclusion and exploitation of others, always come out on top. Symbolically, Routh wins the card game that ruins Jimmy, an outcome that speaks to the historic abuse of the Irish at the hands of the English. - Character: André Rivière. Description: André Rivière is Charles Ségouin's Canadian cousin and is the story's representative for Canada, although he is connected in a tangential manner to France: he is Ségouin's cousin; he intends to become manager of Ségouin's proposed motor car business in Paris; he speaks French; and he is proud of France's success in the race. Through the extension of Rivière's cultural identity Joyce implies two things. First, Rivière, like Jimmy Doyle, is interested in associating himself with more powerful countries. Second, with Rivière showing a kind of cultural and financial compliance to the French, Joyce communicates the idea that a socioeconomic hierarchy exists between countries, and that the colonizing countries (England and France), by exploiting others, are at the top. Canada had, at one point, been colonized by the French. But Rivière is himself also French (he is directly related to Ségouin) which means that he is not one of the groups of people who were colonized by the French. Rather, he is more closely linked to the colonizers than the colonized. In this way, he and Jimmy are different, as Jimmy is an Irishman whose family is Irish. Through these subtleties, Joyce demonstrates the sliding scale of power amassed through colonization. While the country that colonizes others typically holds the most wealth and cultural control, the people who hail from that country and who settle in the colonized areas inherit some of that power as well, even if it is diluted. Meanwhile, those who are colonized, Joyce demonstrates, experience the worst and most brutal effects of colonization. In the final scene, Joyce illustrates this ladder of power by having Rivière lose to Ségouin in the card game, but still place above Jimmy. - Character: Farley. Description: Farley is an American and is described as being a "short fat man." He, like the other characters, serves as a symbol for his home country. He knows André Rivière, although their connection is never explained. His yacht, where the men gamble, is named after Newport, a city in Rhode Island that was famous for the many rich "robber barons" who lived there. Given both the possession of a yacht and its namesake, Farley is presumably an extremely wealthy man. When the group plays cards, Farley and Jimmy Doyle are "the heaviest losers," which might at first suggest that the United States is also a loser when competing with other countries. But given Farley's immense wealth, it is likely that his losses won't affect him as much as Jimmy's will affect Jimmy. The story, then, seems to portray Americans as being crass and unsophisticated compared to the Europeans, and yet also so wealthy and powerful that it doesn't matter. - Theme: Ireland at the Beginning of the 20th Century. Description: James Joyce's story "After the Race" was published and set at the beginning of the 20th century, when Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In practice, this political arrangement meant that Ireland was ruled by England, and English exploitation had left much of Ireland impoverished. The Irish capital of Dublin, in fact, had some of the highest inequality in the world. Given this dire situation, Irish unrest over English rule was increasing, and Irish Nationalists increasingly pushed for some measure of—or even complete—independence from England. In sum, in these early years of the 20th century, Ireland lagged behind much of the Western world politically and economically. "After the Race," which is set during the real-life Gordon-Bennett automobile race of 1903, portrays the international capitalistic competition in which Ireland found itself left behind. The purpose of the race was to show off the cars (and the manufacturing might) of France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States through the means of a race across Ireland. In the story, Joyce uses the six named characters to represent six different countries: Jimmy Doyle for Ireland; Charles Ségouin for France; André Rivière for Canada; Villona for Hungary; Routh for England; and Farley for the United States. The story follows Jimmy and his relations with the other men through their day, which concludes with a game of cards that leaves Jimmy hungover, regretful, and indebted to his companions. Jimmy's experiences with these men capture the secondary status of the Irish, even the relatively wealthy Irish such as Jimmy and his family. Jimmy's poor decisions and financial losses, which are set against the background of the poverty and inertia that paralyze the Irish, make clear how the Irish economic and political situation, combined with Ireland's own sense of inferiority as a result of this situation, ensured that, in competition with other Western nations, Ireland is doomed to lose. The setting of the automobile race in Ireland establishes the background of poverty, inaction, and self-accepted inadequacy that prevent the Irish from achieving economic and political progress. Ireland does not figure among the competitors of the automobile race, which illustrates that, while still under English rule, Ireland did not possess the resources and independence needed to be an industrial power in its own right. It is merely a "channel of poverty and inaction [through which] the continent sped its wealth and industry." In this competition from which Ireland is excluded, Joyce portrays the Irish as spectators that take no action to change things. As the Irish watch the cars from more powerful countries, they "raise[] the cheer of the gratefully oppressed," suggesting that the Irish have resigned themselves to an inferior status. The victories of the French imply that they are the global industrial leaders. With no Irish cars, the Irish spectators root for "the cars of their friends, the French" (historically, the French occasionally came to Ireland's aid). Their support of the French indicate that the Irish contribute to the country's paralysis by settling for association with a more powerful country. Jimmy Doyle's decisions reflect the Irish's inaction and sense of inferiority, both of which further ensure Ireland's failure to achieve any significant progress.Jimmy is one of the riders in Ségouin's car and reflects the general Irish public's submissive support of the French. Even though he has money, he demonstrates the same passivity. Jimmy is excited by the fame he gets from being seen with his continental European acquaintances. To him, the Irish make up "the profane world of spectators," and his association with these more powerful Europeans sets him apart and validates him. That he needs such validation, though, is a sign of his insecurity. Jimmy's relationship with Ségouin further betrays his feelings of inadequacy and reveals how his financial decisions affect the greater fate of Ireland. Ségouin leverages Jimmy's sense of inferiority by convincing him that "by a favour of friendship the mite of Irish money was to be included" in the venture. By agreeing to invest, Jimmy shifts Irish money into a foreign country, ensuring Ireland's economic failure. Joyce uses the card game to symbolize that Ireland, for a variety of reasons, will lose when competing with other countries. Jimmy unwisely engages in the card game while being extremely drunk. The narrator says that "it was his own fault" that he loses, which suggests that Joyce blames Jimmy (and, therefore, the Irish) for entering into a capitalist game that, given his incapacities, favors the competitors and puts Irish money into the pockets of other nations. Because he is drunk, "the other men had to calculate [Jimmy's] I.O.U.'s for him." This dubious behavior suggests that these men may be taking advantage of Jimmy's weakened state, by which Joyce illustrates the exploitation of Ireland at the hands of foreign countries. When Jimmy realizes that "the game lay between Routh and Ségouin" (who come from England and France, the apparent leaders in the capitalist competition) he musters excitement for them, though "he would lose, of course." He, like the Irish fans lining the road at the beginning of the race, resigns himself to being a losing spectator. Standing in contrast to Jimmy's craving to be among the continentals is Villona, the poor yet talented Hungarian. In 1904, when the story was first published, Hungary was not fully liberated from Austria, but they had secured parliamentary and financial independence in the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (although this arrangement did not actually secure the freedom desired by many Hungarians; they would not have total independence until 1918). Through Villona, Joyce is indicating the path that the Irish should take: political and economic independence from their English rulers. Unlike Jimmy, Villona never seems concerned about the other men or their obsession with capital and industry. Significantly, he does not engage in their card game, instead playing piano before heading outside to usher in the new dawn. This dawn that Villona welcomes is, as the story puts it, the "grey light" that lifts the "dark stupor that would cover up [Jimmy's] folly." The contrast between Jimmy's and Villona's situations—Villona greeting the dawn; Jimmy wishing to hide from it—emphasize what Joyce implies are the different trajectories of their lives and countries: independence and promise for Villona and Hungary; dependence and economic ruin for Jimmy and Ireland. - Theme: Wealth and Greed vs. Citizenship. Description: "After the Race" addresses the behavior and situation of the class of newly wealthy Irish during the early years of the 20th century. Although Ireland under British rule was plagued by widespread poverty, there was nonetheless an Irish business class that had arisen due to the Industrial Revolution and the globalization of trade, and which had become quite wealthy. It is this class of people that Joyce portrays and criticizes in his story. "After the Race" follows a young Irishman named Jimmy Doyle, whose rich business-owning father has provided him with economic stability and a variety of educational opportunities. But neither Jimmy nor his family use their resources to invest in Ireland or to change the Irish socioeconomic conditions of early 20th century Ireland. Instead, Jimmy sets his sights—and money—on achieving success in countries beyond Ireland; and it is much to his detriment that he does. The story takes place over the course of one day, which Jimmy spends driving, dining, and drinking with his foreign acquaintances: Frenchman Charles Ségouin and his Canadian cousin André Rivière; the Englishman Routh; an American man named Farley; and Hungarian pianist Villona. Rather than try to make a name for himself or for Ireland, Jimmy is content to be simply associated with these men from "great" countries, a relationship that he hopes to solidify by investing in Ségouin's soon-to-be-founded motor company. As the evening continues, it is clear that Jimmy's frivolous behavior has bleak consequences. After a night of heavy drinking and heavier gambling, Jimmy is left a loser at a table of European winners. Through Jimmy's failure, Joyce is clear in his verdict that the Irish class of nouveau riche are irresponsible citizens and that, by ignoring the plights of their own country in their eagerness to achieve their selfish and superficial goals, they harm not just their country, but themselves as well. Jimmy, who sees Ireland as an inferior country, is attracted by the social and economic opportunities to be found via association with more powerful foreign countries. He represents how the upper class of Irish citizens focus on making connections with these countries for selfish reasons. Because the Irish are excluded from the international capitalistic race, Jimmy sees his fellow Irish as making up "the profane world of spectators." Being with Ségouin and his other European continental acquaintances grants Jimmy distinction from his local friends and a spot in a race car. His companionship with Ségouin brings more than social notoriety—Ségouin is his gateway into the motor business, where there are "pots of money" to be made. Jimmy plans to invest in Ségouin's not-yet-founded motoring establishment. Ségouin even uses Jimmy's sense of Irish inferiority to persuade him to invest by suggesting that it is only because they are friends that Jimmy's Irish money is even being allowed into the investment scheme at all. Jimmy, desperate to belong, takes the bait. Both Jimmy and his father redirect Irish resources from Ireland in order to make more money for themselves; they greedily do what they can to amass more wealth, no matter if it comes at Ireland's expense. Jimmy's father had once been "an advanced nationalist," meaning that he had advocated for Irish Home Rule. But he "modified his views," and by doing so he abandons Ireland politically. Although Joyce doesn't explicitly explain why Jimmy's father altered his politics, he implies that he did so to make money. Jimmy's father became rich by opening a chain of butcher shops, starting in Kingstown, a town that, at the time, was heavily influenced by the English. Furthermore, he had "been fortunate enough to secure some of the police contracts." Clearly, he cares more about the money that these contracts offer him than about taking down the infrastructure that maintains British law and rule in Ireland. Through Jimmy's father, Joyce criticizes how the wealthy Irish class has sold out politically in order to make money for themselves. Jimmy, who has money because of his father's Ireland-based business, chooses to invest this Irish money in a foreign venture, Ségouin's motoring establishment. By doing so, Jimmy is redirecting Irish resources—money that is greatly needed to prompt economic development in the poverty-stricken Ireland—into wealthier foreign countries. He is convinced that, because he expects to make more money, it is a good investment. He doesn't consider how he is further dooming Ireland to economic stagnation, a greedy negligence that extends to the Irish upper class as a whole.  The calamitous card game signifies that Jimmy's greed—and therefore the greed of the wealthy Irish class he represents—will seal his fate, as well as Ireland's. Jimmy makes the choice to join his acquaintances at the card table. This decision, likely prompted by his greed and aspirations to be connected to wealthier European countries, is a bad one. Jimmy is very drunk and ends up confusing his cards and betting away huge sums of money, which symbolizes the poor financial decisions of the wealthy Irish. His heavy losses may even foreshadow financial ruin with his other gamble, the investment in Ségouin's company. Jimmy is too drunk to keep track of his own I.O.U.'s, so the other men manage them for him, which may indicate foul play on their end. Here, Joyce is suggesting that, by trying to play the game of capitalism with these more powerful countries, the wealthy Irish class is offering themselves up for exploitation and throwing away their (and Ireland's) resources. Jimmy's and his father's actions raise the question: had they focused their money and position to aid their home country, how would the result be different? On one hand, they would have protected themselves from the financial losses that Jimmy brings upon them. Additionally, Ireland would have the resources it needs to develop. But instead, Jimmy and his father augment the capital of other countries, an investment that, according to Joyce, is likely to leave the wealthy Irishmen themselves exploited, and to offer absolutely no return for Ireland, therefore sealing its fate of economic and political paralysis. - Theme: Capitalism, Commodification, and Amorality. Description: In "After the Race," James Joyce explores the ways that capitalism affects his characters behavior and perspective. The story takes place on the day of the real-life Gordon-Bennett automobile race of 1903, an automobile race through Ireland whose purpose was to show off the quality of car manufacturing of the participating countries. Set against this backdrop of competition and consumption, "After the Race" follows protagonist Jimmy Doyle on the day of the race. After driving in his French acquaintance Charles Ségouin's car, he and his companions—Ségouin, André Rivière, Villona, Farley, and Routh—spend the evening eating, drinking, and gambling. But this seemingly merry revelry is far less innocent than it appears. To start, Jimmy is not really friends with most of these men; in fact, apart from Villona, they seem to merely be his acquaintances. Jimmy, who is easily swayed by the appearances of things, values these men not for their character, but for what he can gain from them. He is not alone in this approach. Rather, the story is populated by characters who view the world as a series of potential transactions. From Jimmy's father, who sells out on his Irish Nationalist politics in order become wealthy, to the shady Ségouin, who, the story implies, aims to ensnare Jimmy into investing in his not-yet-existent motor company, the characters of Joyce's "After the Race" demonstrate how capitalism prompts people to commodify everything—and everyone—around them. But Joyce goes beyond merely observing this phenomenon; he condemns it, too. After a directionless day of carousing, Jimmy ends his night with debt and regret, through which Joyce makes it quite clear that, when participating in a capitalist society, one risks spiritual, if not financial, ruin. Joyce illustrates how capitalism generates a society in which money and industry is of utmost importance, which encourages people to value others for their monetary worth. Joyce uses cars to represent industrial and economic power. Cars, and the money and commerce that they represent, take on a god-like role in this story; passersby gather "to pay homage to the snorting motor" and Jimmy uses the word "lordly" to describe the car he is riding in. With money being of critical importance, everything becomes commodified. This is particularly true for the characters' relationships. Jimmy deems Ségouin "well worth knowing" because being seen with Ségouin gives Jimmy notoriety and provides him the opportunity to invest in the motor industry, in which he hopes to make "pots of money." Ségouin uses his acquaintanceship with Jimmy to persuade Jimmy to invest in his business. Rivière, who is to be manager of Ségouin's establishment, further encourages Jimmy to invest during dinner conversation. In the story, Joyce insinuates several betrayals to illustrate that, not only does capitalism engender widespread commodification, but it also encourages people to sell out others and their own ideals in order to make money. Jimmy's father had once been an "advanced nationalist," which means that he advocated for the independence Ireland desperately needs to escape its poverty-stricken state. But Jimmy's father "modified his views" and abandons Ireland politically, presumably so that he can make more money. Jimmy's father became wealthy from his chain of butcher shops, which he started in Kingstown, a town with English sympathies. He also "secure[d] some of the police contracts," which reveals that he is willing to work with the governing bodies (the police) that are in charge of upholding British law and rule in Ireland. Joyce also implies that Ségouin may be betraying Jimmy with his investment scheme. Ségouin hasn't even started his company yet, but he nevertheless pressures his acquaintance to invest, going so far as to say that their "friendship" is the reason Jimmy has the opportunity to be included in the venture at all. Jimmy may also be deceived during the card game when, too drunk to even sort his cards, "the other men had to calculate his I.O.U.'s for him." This suspicious behavior suggests that Jimmy's companions may be abusing his drunkenness. Beyond the immorality of capitalism, Joyce explores the amorality that capitalism spawns through Jimmy's actions. Jimmy is seduced by the superficiality of capitalism, and it leaves him directionless and distracted from the real significance of things, which renders him inactive and paralyzed instead of making meaningful progress. Jimmy's experience with the superficial allure of capitalism is represented through his relationship with cars. Instead of applying himself to his studies to acquire practical skills and intellectual enrichment, Jimmy squanders his educational opportunities to socialize with "motoring circles." When he tries "to translate into days' work that lordly car on which he sat," he is distracted by the "style" and speed, and doesn't consider the time, resources, and human labor that went into the machine. Rather than using his resources to make practical change for his native Ireland, he greedily invests his money with Ségouin, solely for the purpose of making more money for himself. This suggests two endless cycles: the rich becoming ever richer; and the redirection of money away from where it is most needed (such as the impoverished Irish). What Jimmy gets out of capitalism is reflected in his three sources of excitement when riding in Ségouin's car: the feeling of "rapid motion;" "notoriety;" and "the possession of money." These things are diverting, but shallow, and leave him "too excited to be genuinely happy." This vapid excitement carries Jimmy through the story and into the fateful card game with his companions. Drunk on both alcohol and the thrill of risk, Jimmy does not realize how much he is losing until it is too late. Only as the intoxication wears off does Jimmy realize that the game of capitalism is "a terrible game." But he only acknowledges his monetary losses and, without reflecting significantly on his choices, it is likely that Jimmy will repeat his folly time after time. Through Jimmy's failure, Joyce's judgement is clear: one risks both spiritual and financial poverty when buying into capitalist values. - Climax: When the card game finishes, leaving Jimmy Doyle a loser and significantly indebted to his companions - Summary: Cars are driving toward Dublin, and spectators gather to watch them speed by. Occasionally, the locals cheer for the passing cars, especially the blue French cars. The French team is doing relatively well in this race; they won second and third place. The first-place winner is Belgian, though he was driving for the German team. Every time a blue car passes, the Irish spectators cheer twice as loud. In one of these cars is a group of four excited men. One of them is the owner of the car, a French man named Charles Ségouin. He is accompanied by his Canadian cousin André Rivière, a Hungarian pianist named Villona, and a young man named Jimmy Doyle. Ségouin is pleased because the race has helped him to receive some support for the motor company he is going to start. Rivière is in good spirits because he is going to become manager of Ségouin's company. Villona is happy because he had a wonderful lunch. Doyle, however, is more excited than actually happy. Jimmy is twenty-six years old and is the son of a wealthy Irishman. Jimmy's father had been an Irish Nationalist, but he moderated those views early on as he sought financial success. He became rich by opening a chain of butcher shops in and around Dublin and by taking police contracts to supply the police with his goods. He is now locally famous as being quite wealthy. Jimmy's father sent him to England for college and then to Dublin University. Jimmy also spent a term at Cambridge, where he met Ségouin. Jimmy was not a good student, and instead spent his time socializing. Although Jimmy's father scolds him for how much he spends, he is secretly proud of his son's extravagance. As the car drives along, Jimmy struggles to understand what Ségouin and Rivière, who are in the front seats, are saying. Jimmy's excitement stems from three things: the thrill of driving quickly; the local fame that he has gained from being seen with Ségouin and his other continental companions (the Irish refer to people from mainland Europe as "continentals"; and having money. Jimmy believes that he has quite a lot of money, although he acknowledges that Ségouin would probably not be impressed. Additionally, Jimmy prides himself in knowing how much hard work goes into making money, which he is especially aware of now that he is on the verge of making a big investment in Ségouin's company. Between Ségouin's wealthy appearance and Jimmy's father's assurance that there is lots of money to be made in car manufacturing, Jimmy is confident of the investment. When the group arrive in Dublin, Ségouin drops Jimmy and Villona off near the bank. The two men walk north to get to Jimmy's parents' house, where they will be staying. They need to get dressed for dinner that night with Ségouin and Rivière. At Jimmy's house, everyone is excited about the prospect of Jimmy's dinner with the continental Europeans. Jimmy looks quite handsome when he dresses up, which makes his father very proud. In fact, Jimmy's father is in such good spirits that he is friendly with Villona. Villona, however, doesn't pay attention to Jimmy's father, as he is feeling hungry and is looking forward to eating dinner. The dinner is delicious and confirms for Jimmy that Ségouin has excellent taste. While at dinner, they are joined by Routh, an Englishman that Ségouin knew at Cambridge. The conversation between the men is lively. Villona speaks to Routh about his love of old instruments and English songs while Rivière engages Jimmy on the quality of French mechanics. When the discussion turns to politics, things get very heated between Jimmy and Routh, so much so that Ségouin intervenes with a toast. After dinner, they all walk in Stephen's Green, where they come across Rivière's American acquaintance Farley. They take a car and then a train to Farley's yacht. When they arrive, Villona starts playing songs on the piano in the cabin while the other men dance. Farley eventually tires out, so they sit down to have a small supper, although they really just end up drinking. Jimmy, Ségouin, Rivière, Routh, and Farley start to play cards, while Villona keeps playing the piano. They play many games, one after the next, while drinking even more. As the stakes climb, I.O.U.s begin to be handed out. Jimmy isn't sure who's winning, but he definitely knows that he's losing. By now he is quite drunk, and he keeps confusing his cards and needs the other men to sort out his I.O.U.s for him. He wishes the game would end; eventually, one of the men suggests one last game. The piano is silent, which suggests that Villona is up on deck. Jimmy feels terrible about the game and his losses, but he tries to be excited for Routh and Ségouin, both of whom are leading. At last, Routh wins, and debts get settled, revealing that Farley and Jimmy have lost the most. Beginning to feel hungover, Jimmy slumps at the table and knows that he is going to regret the game in the morning. For now, however, he is glad to sink into forgetful sleep. Suddenly, the door opens to reveal Villona, who announces the dawn.

- Genre: Short Story, Mystery - Title: After Twenty Years - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: New York City - Character: Jimmy Wells. Description: Jimmy Wells is a police officer and Bob's best friend from childhood. While Bob decided to move out West to pursue his fortune, Jimmy chose instead to remain in New York, eventually becoming a police officer. He is also no ordinary police officer, but a particularly impressive and respectable one, walking with confidence and swagger and artfully twirling his club. His ability to remain calm while masking his identity to Bob also suggests great emotional and mental intelligence, as well as decades of experience in law enforcement. Despite having just discovered that his old friend is a wanted man, he does not let on about his identity, politely inquiring after his friend's life without seeming too suspicious. Furthermore, despite arresting Bob at the end of the story, Jimmy also shows loyalty and affection for his old friend. Though Bob does not know it at the time, Jimmy does actually show up on time— early, in fact— for their meeting, showing he is every bit as reliable as Bob says he is. Moreover, out of loyalty to the memory of their relationship, Jimmy also chooses to not arrest Bob himself. Thus, he respects their friendship while still fulfilling his duty as a guardian of the peace. - Character: Bob. Description: Bob, or "Silky Bob," is a wanted criminal from Chicago as well as Jimmy's best friend from childhood. When he was 18, he decided to move out West, leaving Jimmy behind in New York. Out West he became a hustler and a criminal, making his fortune— as evident by his diamond necklace and gold watch—but also becoming an enemy of the law. Unlike Jimmy, who confidently walks his beat in plain sight of everyone, Bob's time as a criminal has made him covert and circumspect, evident in the way he lurks in the shadows. His life as a criminal seems to have affected him physically; he has a white scar and a pale face. Despite all this, he still reveals himself to be a loyal and reliable friend. Like Jimmy, he has come to their meeting on time, and even when Jimmy seems to be late, Bob does not lose any confidence that his friend will arrive. At the end of the story, Bob is arrested by a plainclothes police officer pretending to be Jimmy. Bob is upset when he learns the officer isn't Jimmy, though it is not clear whether he feels betrayed by his friend or whether he is merely shaken by the revelation. - Theme: Loyalty vs. Duty. Description: O. Henry's short story, "After Twenty Years," explores the conflict between personal loyalty and professional duty. The story takes place on the night two childhood friends, Jimmy and Bob, had agreed to meet before they parted ways 20 years  earlier. Since that time, however, the two friends have become very different people, a fact which challenges their loyalty to one another. In particular, Jimmy's discovery that Bob is a criminal forces him to choose between remaining loyal to his friend or upholding his duty as a police officer. This decision is especially complicated given the nature of their meeting. If he arrests Bob, he is not only betraying a lifelong friend, but he is betraying a friend who has remained loyal to him by traveling over 1000 miles to uphold a 20-year promise. However, letting Bob go free would mean disregarding his responsibility as a police officer and his obligation to serve justice. In the end, Jimmy decides to arrest Bob, showing his commitment to upholding the moral standards expected of him as a police officer. However, he does not want to be the one to arrest his friend, and so he sends another officer to do it for him. It is left to the reader to decide whether refusing to arrest him personally is a sign of genuine loyalty to Bob, or a sign of disrespect and cowardice. After all, though he is not the one to physically arrest Bob, Jimmy is still responsible for his arrest. As such, "After Twenty Years" illustrates the challenging choices individuals in positions of authority face when balancing their personal values and professional responsibilities. Jimmy's decision to prioritize duty over loyalty shows the difficult choices people must make and the sacrifices—or perhaps compromises—they must make to serve the greater good. - Theme: Time and Identity. Description: The short story "After Twenty Years" explores the relationship between time and identity. In fact, the central tension of the story is whether the two main characters, Jimmy and Bob, once close friends who grew up together in New York, will keep their 20-year-old promise to meet and will pick up their friendship where it left off. However, in the 20 years since they last saw each other, they have taken vastly different paths in life. Having remained in New York his whole life, Jimmy Wells has become a responsible and respected police officer, a fact reflected physically in his "watchful eye" and "stalwart form."  By contrast, in his search for riches out West, Bob has become a criminal. Though he has found success—evident from his diamond-covered scarf pin and handsome watch—he has paid the price for it, as he is now wanted by the law in Chicago. As such, time has transformed two old friends into enemies, though it is not obvious at first. In fact, when they first meet in the promised location it is as though they are strangers. Though Jimmy recognizes Bob, he also recognizes him as the wanted man in Chicago, and so he does treats Bob as a stranger and hides his own identity. Bob, meanwhile, is too focused on telling his own story to register that the police officer is his old friend. However, by the end of the story both friends ultimately realize how much their respective identities have changed, a fact demonstrated by the new names they are given. Jimmy becomes "Patrolman Wells," while Bob becomes "Silky Bob" (apparently his criminal nickname). In a twist, the friends successfully meet after 20 years, only to discover that they are now different people and can no longer be friends. As such, the story suggests that time can not only change one's identity, but turn the best of friends into strangers, or even enemies, in the process. - Theme: Appearance, Character, and Morals. Description: In "After Twenty Years," O. Henry uses physical details—from the rainy New York night to brilliant flashes of electric lights—to create atmosphere and even foreshadow elements of the story. Most strikingly, Jimmy and Bob's appearances clue readers into aspects of their respective characters. For instance, Jimmy's upright and law-abiding persona is reflected through his "watchful eye," "stalwart form," skillful twirling of his club, and confident gait. Thus, not only is he a police officer, but he physically embodies the characteristics of one – he "makes a fine picture of a guardian of the peace." On the other hand, Bob's criminal status is mirrored in his pale face, "keen eyes," and "white scar," features that hint at a troubled past. Despite his ill-gotten wealth—made evident by his diamond-encrusted scarf pin and watch—Bob does not seem to be doing well physically. His moral depravity seems to have taken physical form, giving him the appearance of an overly wary, sick person. Even before making both men's identities obvious, then, O. Henry uses physical appearance to signal that each man's character has developed and degraded in specific ways over the decades. As such, he suggests that while physical appearance can't reveal everything about a person, it can certainly reflect their moral trajectory. - Climax: Bob is arrested and discovers that the police officer was his old friend, Jimmy Wells. - Summary: Jimmy Wells and Bob are childhood best friends from New York City. Though they were like brothers in their youth, they gradually fell out of contact with one another. While Jimmy remained in New York, Bob moved out West to pursue his fortune. Before parting ways, however, the two of them agreed to meet 20 years later at Big Joe Brady's Restaurant, the place where they last saw one another. After 20 years, Bob is waiting for Jimmy at the restaurant when a police officer sees him lurking in a dark doorway. The police officer approaches Bob and Bob reassures him that he is only there to meet an old friend. After learning a bit about Bob's story and his pact with Jimmy, the patrolman moves on. Bob continues to wait for Jimmy long past their agreed-upon meeting time, confident that his friend will arrive. Eventually, a man in an overcoat approaches Bob and introduces himself as Jimmy. The two old friends embrace and walk arm in arm, telling each other about their lives. Eventually, however, they walk by a drug store with bright lights, and Bob realizes that the man is not Jimmy. It is too late, though, and the man reveals himself to be an undercover police officer. He arrests Bob, or rather, "Silky Bob," and hands him a note from a police officer named "Patrolman Wells." The note reveals that the officer from earlier in the story was Jimmy, but he couldn't bring himself to arrest Bob, so he sent the plainclothes police officer instead.

- Genre: Middle Grade Novel, Historical Fiction - Title: Al Capone Does My Shirts - Point of view: First Person - Setting: Alcatraz Island, 1935 - Character: Moose Flanagan. Description: - Character: Natalie Flanagan. Description: - Character: Mom/Helen Flanagan. Description: - Character: Dad/Cam Flanagan. Description: - Character: Al Capone. Description: - Character: Piper Williams. Description: - Character: Theresa Mattaman. Description: - Character: Jimmy Mattaman. Description: - Character: Annie. Description: - Character: Warden Williams. Description: - Character: Mrs. Carrie Kelly. Description: - Character: Rocky Mattaman. Description: - Character: Teresina Capone. Description: - Character: 105/Onion. Description: - Character: Scout. Description: - Character: Gram. Description: - Theme: Disability, Dignity, and Shared Humanity. Description: - Theme: Friendship and Community. Description: - Theme: Family. Description: - Theme: Growing Up and Doing the Right Thing. Description: - Climax: Mom apologizes to Moose and acknowledges that Natalie is, in fact, 16. - Summary: Twelve-year-old Moose Flanagan moves to Alcatraz in January of 1935. He doesn't want to be here, but Dad got a job as an electrician so that Moose's sister, Natalie, can now attend the Esther P. Marinoff School. Natalie isn't like other kids; at this school, a boarding school for disabled children, she can smear food in her hair and wear her clothes inside-out. Moose, meanwhile, is disturbed to be living on an island with notorious criminals like Machine Gun Kelly and Al Capone. Over the next few days, Moose's family settles in. Moose and Natalie meet seven-year-old Theresa and the warden's daughter, Piper, who's Moose's age. Piper asks rude questions about Natalie, insists that "something is wrong with her," and says her father won't like having a "crazy" person around. The next day, however, Moose, Mom, and Dad take Natalie to the Esther P. Marinoff. Moose is conflicted: he wants what's best for Natalie, and he isn't sure this is it. But Mom is convinced this is necessary, so the family leaves Natalie with Mr. Purdy. When they get home, there's a note summoning Moose to meet the warden. The imposing warden tells Moose the rules on Alcatraz (the most important being that Moose can't talk about famous criminals like Al Capone to his classmates at school) and allows Piper to sit in on the meeting. Moose recognizes that Piper has her dad wrapped around her finger—she can get away with anything. The next day is Moose's first day at school. Piper blatantly goes against her dad's rules and talks about Al Capone—and pressures Moose to do the same. This way, she insists to Moose, she and Moose can make a fortune selling the Alcatraz laundry service to their classmates; kids will be willing to pay them for Al Capone or Roy Gardner to wash their shirts (the convicts do all the laundry for Alcatraz's civilian residents). Moose also meets Scout, a baseball player, and has a great time joining in on the weekly Monday game. After school, back on Alcatraz, Theresa introduces Moose to her brother, Jimmy, and Annie. When Moose gets back to his apartment, he takes a phone call from Mr. Purdy: Natalie can't stay at the Esther P. Marinoff, and Moose's parents must come get her tonight. Mom is enraged and takes Moose with her. Mr. Purdy shares that Natalie screamed, implying that she threw a tantrum because he took her beloved button box away from her. He gives Mom the number for a woman named Mrs. Kelly, who might be able to help Natalie. At school the next day, Piper ropes Moose into helping her with her laundry scheme. Over the next week, Moose's life turns upside-down: Mom has met with Mrs. Kelly, and Mrs. Kelly believes that Natalie will improve if they take away her button box and let her hang out with other kids. This, Mom insists, means that Moose needs to look after her every afternoon—he can't play baseball on Mondays. And though the laundry scheme does make Piper, Annie, and Jimmy money (Moose ultimately refuses to help and so Piper declines to pay him), a classmate's dad writes a letter to the warden informing him of the scheme. The warden confiscates the money and scolds the children, and Piper goes to live with her grandmother in San Francisco for a few weeks. She insists she wants to be there, but Annie suspects Piper is being punished. Over the next few months, Natalie integrates into the band of Alcatraz children. Moose lets her have her buttons every afternoon, and she doesn't have "fits" anymore. Piper returns to Alcatraz suddenly in late March, ready with a new scheme: the kids are all going to take the boat to San Francisco and back on Sunday so they can catch a glimpse of Al Capone's mother, who's coming to visit. On Sunday, Theresa brings her new baby brother, Rocky, along. Rocky screams—until Mrs. Capone takes him and sings him a lullaby. The children are shocked and a bit disturbed. However, on Alcatraz, Mrs. Capone sets off the metal detectors and leaves without seeing her son. Moose later learns that she was strip-searched, and he feels awful for the poor woman. The following week, Scout begins to talk to Moose about "convict baseballs," baseballs that the convicts occasionally hit over the rec yard wall, and which Alcatraz children get to keep. He'd like one, and he implies that Piper is trying to find him one. Jealous, Moose begins taking Natalie to the bushes down the hill from the rec yard. She arranges rocks while Moose searches desperately for a ball. After the first day of searching, Natalie begins inexplicably saying, "105." One afternoon, Moose returns to where he left Natalie—and she's gone. He finds her with a convict, who offers Moose a baseball and then hurries away. The number on his shirt is 105. Piper catches Moose and Natalie as they're getting back to their apartment, and she deduces what happened. She believes that with Natalie's help, she can get Al Capone's autograph. Moose wants to tell his parents what happened, but neither of them are particularly concerned that a convict "noticed" Natalie. Mom is too focused on the fact that Natalie is improving (she's using pronouns and expressing emotions for the first time) and doesn't want to change anything about Natalie's life or schedule. Though Piper tries to talk Moose into letting Natalie see 105 so they can spy on them and see what they're up to, Moose refuses. Moose spends the next week keeping Natalie inside in the afternoons so she can't see 105. But one day, when Mom takes Natalie's button box without telling Moose, Natalie throws a tantrum. Moose loses his temper too, but when he realizes that Natalie has no control and is effectively trapped in her own body, his anger disappears. He rolls her in the rug to help calm her down and when she's calm, Natalie asks to go outside. They swing on the swings until Natalie falls asleep. Moose, with Dad's help, carries Natalie home and cleans up the living room, and Dad assures Moose that Natalie's condition isn't Moose's fault. That night, Dad tells Mom that they have to let Moose make decisions when he's watching Natalie; the two of them have a relationship and they must respect that. Since Natalie is interviewing for the Esther P. Marinoff School again next week, Mom is more nervous than usual. She frets about Natalie's birthday the day before the interview—Natalie is, for the fifth year in a row, turning 10. On Natalie's birthday, Natalie is anxious and seems on the verge of having a tantrum. But Moose takes her outside to walk, and Piper joins them. Piper holds Moose back while Natalie visits with 105 to say goodbye (he's being released soon and he knows about the Esther P. Marinoff), and then they return to Moose's apartment. Mom invites Piper to come to Natalie's party, but ultimately, all the Alcatraz kids come. When Moose walks Piper home later, he reveals that Natalie actually is 16—and Piper says she figured as much. When he gets home, Moose tells Mom and Dad that they can't keep pretending Natalie is 10. Mom is enraged, as she fears that nobody is going to care about a disabled adult—being a child forever is the only way Natalie will ever get help. But Dad asks Natalie how old she is. Natalie says she's 16. Natalie aces the interview the next day, and Mom apologizes to Moose for her behavior. Still, Natalie isn't accepted to the Esther P. Marinoff. Moose realizes that night that Natalie has genuinely improved thanks to Mrs. Kelly's suggestions, so he calls Mrs. Kelly the next morning to thank her. Since Mrs. Kelly believes the Esther P. Marinoff can help Natalie, Moose asks the warden for help getting Natalie accepted. When the warden refuses, Moose approaches Piper and asks for help sneaking a letter in to Al Capone with the censored mail, asking him if he can do anything. A week later, Moose gets off the boat on the last day of school. His parents and the warden are waiting: Natalie got accepted to the Esther P. Marinoff; Mr. Purdy has suddenly decided to open a wing for older children. Moose feigns ignorance, but the following morning, he finds a note in the pocket of his freshly laundered shirt. It says, "Done."

- Genre: Children's story, Fantasy, Literary Nonsense, Adventure - Title: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Point of view: A third-person narrator follows Alice through Wonderland, but also occasionally dips into the first person, when describing her thoughts, and also follows her sister's thoughts in the final chapter - Setting: Wonderland, a dream world that Alice finds when she falls down a rabbit hole - Character: Alice. Description: Alice is the protagonist of the story. Though she doesn't mention her age in the story, she is said to be seven years-old by experts, and in the sequel Through the Looking Glass, she does mention being seven and a half. She is inspired by the real Alice Liddell, the daughter of Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church, Oxford and a contemporary of Carroll. In the story, she is a spirited child, often following her instincts and the other characters courageously and standing her ground when she suspects nonsense. But she is also anxious and becomes homesick when she is confused and lost in Wonderland. She is on the verge of growing up, and the adventures of Wonderland play on her insecurites and show how she is terrified by the unknown world of the future but also thrilled by it and eager to discover. - Character: The White Rabbit. Description: The White Rabbit is the first creature Alice sees, anxiously running into the rabbit hole in order to not be late. He is a very distinguished rabbit, with a large house and a gardener and always wearing gloves, a waistcoat and a pocket watch, but he is always in a hurry. His fear of the Queen of Hearts while at the croquet tournament makes him a little rude and short with Alice. - Character: The Caterpillar. Description: The Caterpillar sits atop the magic mushroom that Alice finds in the forest. He has the appearance of a wise old professor – he smokes a hookah lazily and takes a very long time to say anything. He treats Alice wearily and with condescension, but also gives her advice and shows her how to eat the mushroom to grow and shrink. - Character: The Duchess. Description: The Duchess is a very ugly relation of the Queen. One minute furious, the next affectionate, the Duchess is a chaotic character and keeps a chaotic household, with a violent cook and a baby that looks very much like a pig, all presided over by the Cheshire Cat. The Duchess is sentenced to death by the Queen and is herself very fond of moralizing and justice, but always manages to escape with her head intact. - Character: The Cheshire Cat. Description: The Cheshire Cat is a large, smiling cat with the power to vanish and appear whenever he likes, causing him to be a bit smug, even in the face of the King and Queen of Hearts. He guides Alice in certain directions and reappears as if to check on her, and she seems to like him. - Character: The Queen of Hearts. Description: The Queen of Hearts terrorizes Wonderland with constant threats of execution, though we soon realize that these threats are ineffectual. Though she holds a trial for the Knave of Hearts, she would rather go straight to the sentencing and the proceedings turn into a charade. Alice remembers that the Queen's threats are nonsense, not to mention that she is flat and thin as a playing card, and overcomes her in the end. The Queen seems to symbolize or embody the sometimes nonsensical commands and punishments handed out by adults. - Character: The Mock-Turtle. Description: The Mock-Turtle is a sorrowful figure, who sits reminiscing by the sea. With his friend, the Gryphon, he remembers his old school teachers and his youth, when he would joyfully dance the Lobster Quadrille. He indulges in telling his story to Alice, and when she leaves, goes on sighing and crying as before. - Theme: Childhood and Adulthood. Description: Alice's experiences in Wonderland can be taken as a kind of exaggerated metaphor for the experience of growing up, both in terms of physically growing up and coming to understand the world of adults and how that world differs from a child's expectation of it. Alice's anxiety about growing up and about the wide world beyond her familiar comforts can be seen in her constant evaluation of her own size and worth. She physically grows and shrinks again and again in the story, at times not even able to see her whole shape. Her preoccupation with growing and shrinking, and finding the right size for what she needs to do, evokes how disorienting the idea of growing up can be. The physical changes can be both frightening and exhilarating.Alice's sense of how life should be, how she, as a child, has been taught about life, can be seen in the stories she tells, which are full of goodness, love and affection. Whenever she meets a character that challenges her or appears rude, she recites the lessons and proverbial phrases that she has overheard in the classroom and from her parents. "`You should learn not to make personal remarks,'" says Alice to the Hatter. In this way, Alice's Wonderland allows her to be both child and adult at the same time – she tests out her authority and expertise in just the way her parents and teachers must tell her what to do, but at the same time she is forced to confront the fact that people, adults, do make personal remarks (along with other things she has been taught are bad.)The adults in Alice in Wonderland order Alice around and give her advice and act like they are wise, but their orders are ridiculous and often cruel (like the Queen shouting at Alice about her impertinence when Alice is only being logical, their lectures are dry and boring, and sometimes their stories are both tragic and completely irrational, such as that of the Mock-Turtle). The "adults" of Wonderland show themselves to be less trustworthy, less good, than adults should be from the point of view of an innocent child. Further, the adults can be violent. In the Duchess' house, Alice hears the Duchess say "Off with her head" and thinks nothing of it, amid the absurd cooking rituals of the cook and the howling of the pig-baby. But as the dream goes on, this threat of beheading, of killing, becomes more real as it is spouted and over and over within the context of the ridiculous trial of the Queen of Hearts. The contradictions and inconsistencies of the adult world with how adults have told Alice she should behave is hereby revealed to not just be something that's funny and ridiculous (though it is that), it is also frightening and dangerous. The context of Wonderland allows Carrol to explore these ideas in a safe space of a "dream," but by creating such a space it allows him to explore those ideas more fully than he could in a realistic novel. - Theme: Dreams and Reality. Description: Alice in Wonderland is a dream world, full of curiousness, confusion and talking animals. Everything is a little off. This can be delightful and fund, but it can also create a menacing atmosphere that threatens to turn the story from a child's story of adventure and nonsense to something more like a nightmare, though it never quite does tip into true nightmare.What is perhaps even more interesting, though, is the way that the ridiculous dream world of Wonderland comments or parodies the real world. Wonderland is full of misunderstanding, of meaninglessness, of pointless races, pompous characters, maudlin stories or reminiscences without purpose, and is further full of commands from leaders that make absolutely no sense and are based on pure vanity and cluelessness. Its residents mainly just want to get by and survive and maybe have a good time. Its justice is often laughably faulty. In other words, as a child growing up might realize as the curtains on the adult and "real" world fall away, Wonderland isn't actually so different from that real world. The real world may be less exaggerated in its arbitrary rules and adult nonsense, crookedness, cowardice, and venality, but it has such traits in equal measure, and in many ways the cruelty of the real world is greater. Wonderland, then, because it is a ridiculous dream, becomes a lace where Alice can begin to navigate the real world without, yet, having to actually face that real world. - Theme: Words, Meaning and Meaninglessness. Description: Wordplay makes Wonderland what it is. The moment Alice descends into the rabbit hole world, she starts questioning everything the world above takes for granted, including and especially language. Sentences and phrases are twisted and turned around so that they mean several things at once and cause misunderstandings and humorous clashes between the characters. "`Do bats eat cats?'" Alice asks as she falls down the rabbit hole, trying to think of life above and life in the rabbit hole at once. "for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which way she put it." The order of the phrases doesn't matter because the meaning behind the phrases is unclear. And Wonderland is a place where Alice is struggling to find the meaning of the changes that are happening to her.When the Mouse in the Caucus-race scene misunderstands Alice and leaves her, offended, Alice is left alone and disoriented – this happens a lot with the characters in Wonderland. Alice's journey is fraught with misunderstandings and offences due to language. Her inability to recite rhymes that she used to know by heart warn her that adulthood might be a less musical, comfortable place—or that she has ceased to be herself, as she no longer knows what she once did. And so words and meaning becomes tied up with the idea of the self, of who a person is.The entire narrative has a verse-like quality because it is so packed with rhymes and recognizable phrases that should be set to tunes. But while in a traditional children's song or rhyme, the moral or message is clear, in Wonderland, nonsense rules and it is difficult to attach meaning, consequence, or moral to almost anything. The Mad Hatter is especially affected by this condition of meaninglessness and he is also one of the most wordy of the characters, constantly assessing his own and others' grammar and syntax to challenge the received meanings of language. - Theme: The Nature of Being and Not Being. Description: Alice's world is a philosophical puzzle. Even though she is just a child, Alice thinks and reflects deeply and comes up with some very existential problems. While in Wonderland she comes to wonder if she has become a different child completely, and lists the children she knows, trying to work out how their attributes define them as being Mabel or Ada. She then puzzles over the meaning of 'I'. Such a fundamental question of existence and identity is huge for a child to ponder, and it casts quite an uneasy shadow over Alice's movements through Wonderland. Her identity changes with each new scene and collection of characters, each questioning her and her authority, just as she herself does. The first thing the Caterpillar says to Alice is "Who are YOU?" and she is trying to find a consistent answer to this question the whole way through the story. Just as in life, the prospect of growing up and becoming someone different is threatening her sense of self and her vision of everything around her. Questioning the nature of being also inevitably brings up the question of not being. In Wonderland, though absurdity and confusion abound, death still looms in a real way. Just as in Alice's life as a well-off rather sheltered child, the idea of death is both ever present, but shadowy and distant at the same time – a constant terrifying threat that never quite materializes… yet. - Climax: The trial of the Knave of Hearts, where all the strange creatures Alice has encountered assemble at the court of the nonsensically angry Queen of Hearts. To Alice's surprise, she becomes the crucial final witness - Summary: A young girl named Alice sits beside her sister on a bank when all of a sudden a White Rabbit rushes past her, talking to himself about how late he is. Alice instinctively follows him down a rabbit hole. She falls and falls. Time and gravity seem to stop, so that she can explore the shelves and objects on the walls of the tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, she finds herself in a long hall, surrounded by locked doors of all sizes. She finds a key, which opens the tiniest door of all, but she is too big to fit through into the idyllic garden inside. Alice finds a bottle labeled "DRINK ME" which she faithfully drinks and feels herself shrinking, but though she is soon the right size for the door, she can no longer reach the key for it. A cake appears labeled "EAT ME" so she eats it and grows, but she grows too much and soon fills the giant hall and starts to cry. As she cries, her big tears form a pool on the floor of the hall. She shrinks again and slips and is swept up by the pool. The pool is occupied by some other swimmers, including a Mouse, who Alice tries to befriend. But she can't help talking about her cat, Dinah, whom she is very homesick for, and terrifies the Mouse. The animals eventually gather on the shore of the pool and debate how to get dry. The Dodo suggests a Caucus-race, which is a chaotic, rule-less race that everybody wins. Alice gives prizes but when she mentions her cat again, the animals all scurry away and she is left alone. The White Rabbit returns, having lost his gloves, and, mistaking Alice for his maid, asks her fetch them. So Alice runs off to his house. She goes in and finds another cake, so she eats it hoping to grow back to her original size, but again she grows to gargantuan proportions and the White Rabbit returns to find arms and legs through his windows and chimney. He gets his gardener and some other animal servants to remove her – they try all sorts of methods, eventually throwing pebbles at her. These pebbles turn into cakes as they reach her, and she eats them up and shrinks again and escapes out of the Rabbit's house and into a nearby forest. Here, Alice meets even stranger company. First, she encounters a giant puppy, then a Caterpillar sitting on top of a mushroom who interrogates Alice about her identity. Alice isn't at all sure who she is anymore and, when she tries to recite a nursery rhyme that she used to know by heart, it comes out all jumbled up. The Caterpillar tells her to eat the mushroom. She tries one side of the mushroom and finds it makes her smaller so quickly eats the other side, which makes her grow taller, but mostly in the neck. She swoops around above the forest, frightening a pigeon, who accuses her of being a serpent. She eats some of the shrinking side of the mushroom and sees a little house, with a Frog Footman outside, who has received an invitation for the Duchess to attend the Queen of Hearts' croquet tournament. Inside this house, the Duchess is nursing a pig-baby and a cook is having a temper tantrum. Everyone is sneezing because of the pepper the cook is sprinkling everywhere. The Duchess is in a terrible mood and rudely addresses Alice before flinging the baby at her. Alice decides to take the baby outside to save it from the cook's flying pots and pans, and meets the Cheshire Cat, the Duchess's curious vanishing grinning cat. The Cat helps Alice find her way. He says that in one direction lives the Hatter and in the other, the March Hare. They are both mad, as is everyone in Wonderland, including Alice, he claims. The baby, meanwhile, has transformed into a little pig. Alice goes off in the direction of the Hare but when she finds him, he is having tea in the garden with the Hatter and a Dormouse. The Hatter fires riddles at Alice, and is very keen to discuss the properties of Time with her. He tells her about when he "murdered Time" while singing a song for the Queen in March (when the Hare went mad). Alice gets fed up of not being listened to and leaves the party. She soon comes upon a tree, with a tiny door, and uses the shrinking mushroom to get to the right size to go in. She finally finds herself in the beautiful garden she has been aiming for. She goes in and meets some gardeners, who are flat and cardboard like playing cards, tending anxiously to the Queen of Hearts' rose bushes. The Queen's procession arrive, a whole set of playing cards, carrying clubs, diamonds and hearts. The Queen manically rules over everybody and regularly orders for playing cards who disappoint or annoy her in any way to be executed – she has already sentenced the Duchess to a beheading. The Queen takes Alice to join in the croquet game. It isn't the kind of croquet that Alice is used to – instead of mallets and balls, the Queen's version uses flamingoes and hedgehogs, who become quite unruly when Alice tries to use them. Also, nobody takes turns, so the pitch is suddenly a mess with animals and playing cards. The Queen gets very irate, calling for mass executions. Meanwhile, the Cheshire Cat has returned and is causing trouble with the King, but when the Queen's officers try to catch him, he vanishes. So the game is abandoned and the Queen turns her attention to Alice. The Queen thinks Alice ought to meet the Mock-Turtle and hear his history, so Alice is taken to see him by his old friend, the Gryphon. The Mock-Turtle slowly and sadly tells his story and soon is carried away with remembering the Lobster Quadrille and its accompanying songs, which he and the Gryphon sing for Alice. Alice then starts to tell her story and again finds that she has forgotten certain rhymes and songs, so she gives up telling her adventures and the Mock-Turtle starts a song about soup. He is interrupted by the sound of the Queen loudly commencing the Knave's trial. The court room is filled with the creatures Alice has met in Wonderland. The King of Hearts is acting as the judge and the jurors are a collection of dim-witted animals. The White Rabbit tells the story of the Knave's crime. He is accused of stealing some tarts that the Queen made. The first witness is the Mad Hatter. He begins to describe the day in question, but keeps getting cut off by the Hare and the King threatens him with execution and calls the next witness. The Duchess's cook comes to the stand, but an argument about the ingredients of the tarts halts progress. To Alice's astonishment, she is called as final witness. By this time, she has grown again to giantess size, and knocks the jurors flying as she gets up to take the stand. Another piece of evidence is revealed, a letter supposedly from the Knave, though it has no signature. Alice tries to defend the Knave, but the Queen of Hearts is not interested in hearing anything further, she just wants to skip to the sentencing. But by now, Alice has grown not just in stature but in confidence. She will not allow herself to be afraid of a pack of cards. At this, Alice wakes up on the bank beside her sister. She recounts her adventures, and then bounds off, leaving her sister to contemplate Wonderland herself, and imagine what Alice will be like as a grown woman.

- Genre: War novel - Title: All Quiet on the Western Front - Point of view: First person - Setting: France and Germany during World War I - Character: Paul Bäumer. Description: The narrator and protagonist of the novel. Paul and a number of friends enlist in the army at the onset of World War I after being inspired (and pressured) by the nationalist rhetoric of their schoolteacher Kantorek. After experiencing the cruelty of Corporal Himmelstoss at boot camp and the horror of the trenches, Paul becomes disillusioned with the war and feels as though he has been robbed of his past and his future. Paul exemplifies soldiers of the "lost generation," who had no jobs or wives to return to once the war was over and who carried the physical and emotional scars of the war with them forever. Though Paul often talks of how the war has transformed him into an animal or automaton, he retains compassion and affection for his close comrades. And while he sometimes becomes nostalgic for his childhood spent reading and playing among the poplar trees, he is, by the end of the novel, almost indifferent to his own fate. - Character: Kantorek. Description: The former schoolteacher of Paul¸ Albert Kropp, Leer, and Joseph Behm. Kantorek pressured his students to enlist in the army and inspired them with nationalist rhetoric. Paul and his friends had trusted Kantorek because to them he appeared cultured and civilized, but what they found most persuasive about him was the "idea of authority" that he represented. Interestingly, Paul notes that it was members of the educated upper classes like Kantorek who were most in favor of the war, while poor and simple people were the most opposed. - Character: Corporal Himmelstoss. Description: A postman in civilian life, Corporal Himmelstoss abuses young recruits in his wartime role as a trainer at boot camp. He was particularly cruel to Tjaden, a bedwetter, whom Himmelstoss made share a bed with another bedwetter, Kindervater. Kat theorizes that ordinary men like Himmelstoss come to be so cruel because all men have something cruel and barbaric in them, and this dark inner nature is released by the rigid power hierarchy of the military. Himmelstoss, however, is a dynamic character: after he is moved to a combat position at the front and experiences the horrors of trench warfare, he softens up and tries to make amends with the men he had terrorized at boot camp. In another wrinkle of complexity, Paul wonders if the cruel treatment Himmelstoss doled out actually made them better able to survive the war. - Character: Müller. Description: One of Paul's classmates. Müller is practical and unsentimental about what it takes to survive in war. When he visits Kemmerich, he pesters Kemmerich to give him his good boots even though this is a rather rude thing to do to a dying man who has just lost a leg. - Theme: The Horror of Modern War. Description: World War I is considered the first modern war, as it was the first conflict in which weapons like poison gas, armored tanks, and shell bombardments were used widely by both sides. Much of the land conflict in WWI was fought in networks of trenches dug throughout Europe, including the infamous "Western Front" in Belgium and France. Set in the final years of the war, the novel All Quiet on the Western Front is famous for its extremely graphic depictions of life and death in the trenches. Trench fighting was grueling and inefficient. Gaining a few hundred yards of land could easily cost the lives of thousands of men. Those who survived direct attacks often suffered catastrophic shrapnel injuries, losing arms, legs, and even faces.The technological advances that powered the war effort allowed for wholesale, mechanized slaughter. With weapons like heavy artillery and poison gas at their disposal, soldiers no longer had to come into contact with enemy combatants in order to kill them. Violence became a much more impersonal affair. Soldiers like those in Paul's regiment became detached from the men they killed, and the threat of a vague, unforeseeable death hangs over them. When Paul kills in person for the first time by stabbing a French soldier named Gérard Duval, he is deeply shaken by the experience—the "abstraction" of killing becomes a reality.In addition to the unprecedented trauma caused by the advances in war machinery, soldiers experienced other physical and psychological hardships. Paul, the young German soldier who narrates the novel, describes the soldiers' horrific living conditions in detail. Trenches flooded easily and offered little protection from the elements, making them breeding-grounds for diseases like dysentery and typhoid. They were also infested with vermin, including large, aggressive "corpse-rats" that fed on the bodies of fallen soldiers. Living in this environment, under the constant threat of violent death, took an emotional toll on the young soldiers. Many suffered from shell shock, a psychological condition similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Several characters in the novel, including Paul, experience some form of shell shock, causing them to freeze up, go mad, or attempt to flee during battle. As Paul observes repeatedly, no one can survive the war completely unscathed. - Theme: Survival. Description: Many of the young soldiers, including Paul, joined the army because they were motivated by romantic ideals like patriotism and honor. On the front, however, they quickly learn that patriotic fervor will not protect them from exploding shells or poison gas. In the trenches, there is only one goal: survival at any cost. Soldiers must be prepared to act unthinkingly in battle, no matter how horrifying these actions might have once seemed. The men revert to animal instinct under fire, suppressing all higher thought. Emotions like pity, grief, or disgust are fatal to the soldier, as they might cause him to hesitate or second-guess himself. Readers of All Quiet on the Western Front often find Paul's calm, neutral attitude towards his experiences almost as disturbing as the carnage he describes. As Paul himself explains, however, becoming desensitized to the horror around him is the only way he can keep going. Only rarely is an event traumatic enough to briefly break down these mental barriers—as, for example, when Paul is trapped alone for hours with the body of a French soldier he has killed, or when his best friend Katczinsky (Kat) is killed by a shrapnel fragment. - Theme: The Lost Generation. Description: Though Paul often dreams about his life before the war, he knows that he can never return to it. The war has destroyed an entire generation of young men, leaving them "lost"—physically and psychologically maimed and unable to readjust to their past lives. Even if they manage to survive the trenches, the things they have seen and done there have permanently transformed them. Paul experiences the jarring effects of this transformation most clearly when he briefly returns to his home village on leave. The village has not changed, yet Paul feels completely out of place there. His old interests in literature and art, represented by the shelves of books in his childhood room, now seem childish and unreal. He feels alienated from his father and his former teachers, who expect him to play the role of the heroic young soldier. Only his ailing mother seems to understand his reluctance to discuss what has happened to him—and even she, Paul knows, could not possibly imagine the terrible realities of trench warfare. When his leave ends, Paul is almost relieved to return to the front. His trip home reinforces his conviction that the war has created an unbridgeable divide between the young men who fight and the communities they have left behind. - Theme: Comradeship. Description: For Paul, the one positive aspect of the war experience is that it forges extraordinarily strong bonds between soldiers. The men of the Second Company are comrades-in-arms, closer than family or even lovers. They have seen unspeakable horrors and endured unimaginable suffering together, experiences they will never be able to share with those who did not fight. The war creates sharp distinctions between soldiers and civilians, but it erases other distinctions. Class divisions, for example, are no longer significant: well-educated young men like Paul fight and die alongside peasants like Detering. Comradeship is such an intense bond that one would expect the death of one soldier to trigger a strong emotional reaction from the others. But grief is a luxury these battle-hardened soldiers cannot afford. Apart from brief outbursts of rage or sorrow, the men are unable to properly mourn their fallen friends. Paul becomes increasingly numb to these losses over the course of the novel, as he watches every single one of his friends die. Paul continues fighting after the death of his last and closest friend, Kat, but he seems to have lost the will to survive. The novel's final paragraph suggests that Paul accepts and even welcomes his own death. - Theme: The Hypocrisy of the Older Generation. Description: When war broke out in 1914, many Germans viewed the conflict as an opportunity for Germany to prove her superior military strength. Young men were expected to support the national cause by signing up for active duty. These soldiers were volunteers in theory only, Paul says. The reality was that most had no say in the matter. Under immense pressure from parents, teachers, and politicians, young men had to enlist or risk being accused of cowardice. One of Paul's teachers, a patriotic older man named Kantorek, even marched his class down to the local recruitment office to volunteer. Paul feels that these authority figures deceived his generation, filling their heads with romantic ideas about patriotism but failing to prepare them for the horrors of battle. He is disgusted by the hypocrisy of those who preach the virtues of sacrifice, yet are content to let other men die in their place. Even when it has become obvious that Germany cannot win, those in power stubbornly prolong the war, blinded by greed and pride. - Climax: Paul stabbing the French soldier Gérard Duval in No Man's Land - Summary: After enduring heavy fighting on the Western front of World War I, a group of German soldiers rest behind the front lines. Over their first good meal in weeks, Paul Bäumer (the novel's narrator), and his friends Kropp, Tjaden, Leer, Katczinsky (Kat), and Müller bitterly remember how their schoolteacher Kantorek convinced them to enlist in the army with his idealistic and romantic ideas about war and glory. Now they've become so pragmatic and focused on mere survival that when they visit Kemmerich, a friend dying in the hospital, Muller asks Kemmerich if he can have Kemmerich's boots since Kemmerich won't need them anymore. Paul and his friends spend a lot of time talking about their petty and cruel commander during boot camp, Corporal Himmelstoss. They discuss why men like Himmelstoss, who was a postman in civilian life, become so terrible during war. Kat suggests that the military offers men an outlet for their animalistic impulses. When Himmelstoss is called up to join Paul's company, Paul remembers how he and his friends ambushed and beat Himmelstoss on the last day of boot camp. The German army sends Paul's company back to the front to set up barbed wire. After finishing the job under heavy fire, the company is attacked and forced to take cover in a cemetery. The shelling throws coffins into the air; dead bodies mix with the bodies of the living and dying. Paul and his friends survive, though many don't. Back at camp, the men discuss what they would do after the war. It's soon apparent that the younger soldiers in the group, such as Paul, can't come up with anything. Their lives have been defined by war. Paul thinks of them as "lost."A new French offensive begins. The men shelter in a cramped bunker, and the constant French shelling drives some recent reinforcements insane. Himmelstoss, for one, cowers in a bunker pretending to be injured. Paul beats him until an officer orders them both to join a charge against enemy lines. The Germans eventually repel the French attack and make a counter-attack of their own before retreating to their original lines. Only 32 of the 150 men in Paul's company survive the battle, and the company is brought off the front line to a depot to reorganize. While there, Paul, Albert and Leer meet three French women who are excited to sleep with soldiers. Soon after, Paul receives enough leave to visit his hometown, where he finds that his mother is suffering from cancer, and that the townspeople, including his father, are supportive of the war and know nothing of its horrific nature. The townspeople's ignorant patriotism annoys Paul, but also makes him feel distant, as if he's lost his home. When his leave is up, Paul is sent to a camp on the moors for further training. His duties include guarding Russian prisoners of war, with whom he comes to identify and sympathize as fellow human beings Eventually Paul is sent back to the front and his company. On an intelligence-gathering mission between enemy lines, he loses his bearings just as a French attack begins. As he waits in a shell hole for the attack to end, a retreating French soldier falls on top of him. Paul stabs the man but does not kill him. As the man slowly dies over the next day, Paul feels regret and does what he can to comfort him. After the shelling ends, Paul returns to camp, and is sent with his friends to guard an abandoned village. Paul and Albert are injured while on patrol, and wind up in a hospital, a frightful and depressing place where doctors sometimes practice unnecessary surgical procedures on injured soldiers. Albert has to have a leg amputated, but Paul recovers and is sent back to the front. Though the Germans are clearly losing, they fight on, and the war rages on into the summer of 1918. Many new recruits go crazy; a soldier named Detering deserts and is captured; Müller, Leer, and Kat are killed. In October of 1918, one month before the long awaited armistice is finally agreed to, Paul is killed on a day of otherwise quiet on the western front. The expression on the face of his dead body is calm, as though he were relieved to be dead.

- Genre: Science fiction - Title: All Summer in a Day - Point of view: Third person - Setting: A classroom on the planet Venus - Character: Margot. Description: Margot, the protagonist of "All Summer in a Day," is a nine-year-old girl who moved from Ohio to the planet Venus when she was four years old. Margot longs intensely for the sun, which she remembers vividly from her time on Earth. Without the sun, Margot has become withdrawn, pale, and somber, eschewing the company of other children and thinking only of summertime. Margot's classmates treat her coldly or with jealousy, because they have hardly experienced the sun at all and will likely remain on Venus for the rest of their lives, while Margot may be lucky enough to return to Earth. On the much-anticipated single day of summer, Margot becomes a scapegoat for the other children's longing and deprivation: they lock her in a closet so she won't be able to see the sun, which is the experience she most craves. - Character: William. Description: William is a boy in Margot's class, and he acts as a ringleader for the other students. Because he is jealous of Margot's experiences, he discredits her when she talks about the sun and tries to provoke her into fighting with him. William vents his frustration by getting the other children to help him lock Margot in a closet during the brief time that the sun is out. - Character: Children. Description: William and Margot are the only students named in the story, but the other students also join William in teasing Margot, and they get to play outside in the sun while Margot is locked up. In their unruly excitement before the sun comes out, Bradbury writes that they are like jumbled weeds. But after they have experienced the sun's revitalizing energy, the schoolchildren are devastated by the return of the rain and they suddenly feel ashamed about how they have treated Margot. - Theme: Jealousy, Bullying, and Isolation. Description: "All Summer in a Day" tells the story of a group of children ostracizing and bullying a child who doesn't fit in. Margot, who moved to Venus from Earth several years before, has real memories of the sun, unlike her classmates who have seen only Venus' constant rain. As sunlight is the experience that the children on Venus cherish the most, Margot becomes a scapegoat for the children's frustration and longing. Their jealousy of her experiences leads them to a profound act of cruelty, which suggests that jealousy and deprivation, rather than outright hatred, are the engines of bullying. The children are jealous of Margot because, while they can only speculate about what sunlight is like, Margot spent her early childhood on Earth. As the classroom prepares for Venus' short period of sunlight, Margot writes a clever poem about the sun. Because only Margot remembers the sun, her poem and recollections are the most true to life. In order to undercut this advantage, William tries to discredit Margot, saying, "Aw, you didn't write that!" Similarly, when Margot recalls that the sun is "like a penny," the other children, led by William, say that she is wrong or lying. They act as if they have more knowledge of the sun than her, when the opposite is true. Just before the sun is set to come out, the children, again led by William, torment Margot by telling her that the predictions are wrong and the sun won't appear. Then, they shut her in a closet to keep her from going outside—while the sun appears, she will be trapped in the dark. In this way, they deprive her of experiencing the sun, just as they felt they had been deprived. The nature of these specific acts of bullying shows that the children are motivated by jealousy. Margot has been able to experience what they desired but were denied, and now they have the power to turn the tables. Bullying, therefore, is an expression of the children's own sense of misfortune, as well as a twisted way attempt to fix a perceived injustice. Though their cruelty is reprehensible, their jealousy is understandable—not only did Margot live on Earth for years before moving to Venus, but she also may return one day, as her family can afford the "thousands of dollars" it would cost to move back. Therefore, Margot has opportunities that the others don't, and perhaps her sour attitude towards Venus doubly wounds them in light of her privilege. As the children prepare for the sun to come out, Margot shows off her superior memory of the sun, telling the other children that the sun is "like a penny," or "a fire…in the stove." To the other children, this is a reminder that Margot's experiences have given her special knowledge of the sun, which they can only imagine. In addition, Margot refuses to participate when the other children try to include her in activities like playing tag and singing. In fact, when William begins to bully Margot, she is intentionally standing apart from the other children. Margot makes it clear that she thinks life on Earth is better than life on Venus, and that making friends with the children there is pointless. Margot has a "waiting silence" and a "possible future," so it is clear to the other children that she does not value life on Venus and, unlike them, she has the option to leave. In both her behavior and her circumstances, Margot shows that she comes from a better world and that she is uninterested in Venus or its inhabitants. In this way, the children are made repeatedly aware that they are suffering from the sun's absence, and, unlike Margot, can do little about it. In the face of this powerlessness and inequity, the children direct their frustration towards Margot. Although Margot's behavior intensifies the children's animosity towards her, their decision to lock her in the closet is more about the children's own anxieties and desires than it is a retaliation against Margot's personality. This is clear because, in the moments leading up to Margot's relegation to the closet, she is simply standing quietly, looking out the window with the rest of the children. William and the others attempt to taunt her, but she remains unengaged even when physically pushed. Their actions, then, seem broadly cathartic rather than directed at Margot herself. The children who inflict great harm on Margot do so not because they personally hate her, but because of a very real sense of deprivation. Margot is unjustly tormented for having seen the sun, but the children are also intensely aware that she has access to the thing that is most scarce and desirable to them. Ultimately, the story shows that even extremely cruel bullying is driven by more complicated motives than hatred alone. - Theme: The Power of Nature. Description: "All Summer in a Day" imagines a world in which humans have left Earth for Venus, an inhospitable planet where they must live completely indoors and can only dream about the pleasures of being outside. This estrangement from nature changes humanity, both physically and emotionally, by draining people of color, vitality, and even empathy. In this way, Bradbury shows how central nature—and particularly the sun —is to humankind. The strongest example of this is the story's protagonist, Margot, a little girl who moved to Venus from Earth several years before and is therefore alone among her classmates in remembering the sun. Bradbury's descriptions of Margot reveal that her life on Venus has left her much diminished from her days on Earth. For example, Bradbury's physical description of Margot suggests that Venus has weakened her body—Margot is "frail" and her color has drained away to the extent that she looks like "an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost." She also seems so demoralized by her surroundings that she has become uninterested in the typical pleasures of children. "If they tagged her and ran," Bradbury writes, "she stood blinking after them and did not follow. When the class sang songs about happiness and life and games her lips barely moved. Only when they sang about the sun and the summer did her lips move as she watched the drenched windows." Therefore, Bradbury depicts Margot as a child so heartbroken and diminished by the loss of nature that she has become nearly inhuman. While Margot reels from the loss of nature, her classmates have never even known the sun. Their upbringing on Venus, in an environment hostile to human life, seems to have shaped them to be meaner than their counterparts on Earth. The constant rains and lightning are dangerous and depressing, and the lush vegetation—which Bradbury describes as a "nest of octopi, clustering up great arms of fleshlike weed"—is the color of "rubber and ash," making even the natural elements of Venus seem dead and hazardous. Because of this, and because the sun comes out only once every seven years, humans must live in underground tunnels to survive. Just like this environment, Margot's classmates behave hostilely towards her. They taunt her, mock her, and they ultimately leave her locked in a closet during the only two hours of sunlight they will see for seven years—an act that is particularly cruel since Margot longs so fervently for the sun. In this way, Bradbury strongly ties the children's behavior to their environment. After the sunlight has passed, the children remember Margot and seem, for the first time, remorseful for how they treated her. Seeing the sun has either imbued them with a warmth and empathy they had lacked beforehand, or their experience of seeing and losing sunlight has made them finally sympathetic to her grief. The power that nature and sunlight have over all of the children suggests that humanity is, at least in part, defined by its relationship to nature. Without the sun, human beings in this story do not seem whole—they lack physical vitality and emotional warmth. Perhaps in recognition of the sun's centrality to human life, the people in the story practically worship it, making the sun an object of fascination and longing. This dystopian fetishization of nature by people who are acutely affected by its absence can be read as a parable of technological progress and urbanization. Published in 1954, the story appeared in the midst of the postwar boom of suburban development and aerospace technology. In light of this, Bradbury seems to suggest that human beings are better off living in landscapes that keep them alongside the natural world, and that technologies that estrange people from nature—like the rocket that transported earthlings to Venus—can diminish humanity rather than further its progress. By depicting both characters who long for the nature of Earth and characters who suffer from never having known it, Bradbury suggests that contact with nature and the sun are centrally important to human health and wellbeing. Without this contact, humans seem to lose an important piece of themselves. - Theme: Nostalgia and Discontent. Description: "All Summer in a Day" depicts a world in which the sun, though absent, has tremendous power over people's lives. Characters are obsessed with their memories of the sun; Margot is sustained by her detailed memories, while her classmates—whose memories of the sun are either distant and brief or altogether nonexistent—are anxious and insecure that they can't remember it better. Through his depiction of a society obsessed with memory and absence, Bradbury demonstrates that nostalgia leads to social unrest and personal dissatisfaction. Unchecked nostalgia is a social sickness that prevents people from appreciating the present. This is clear on Venus. Since the sun appears only once every seven years, inhabitants spend much of their time recalling these brief moments of summer. Most children are too young to remember the last appearance of the sun, so they dream about it and long to experience it firsthand. The sun has such mythological and emotional importance in their society that the children's lack of coherent memories of the sun (or lack of firsthand experience with it) makes them feel insecure and anxious, disconnected from an important source of cultural meaning. In addition, since seeing the sun is such an important cultural experience, memories of the sun are a source of conflict on Venus. Margot "stands apart" from the other children because she knows that her memories of the sun are more recent, detailed, and reliable than theirs. The other children are frustrated by this imbalance, which makes Margot vulnerable to bullying. In these ways, Bradbury shows that living in a place in which sunlight is simultaneously so scarce and so valued makes both the ability and inability to remember the sun socially fraught. In addition to the social ramifications of remembering the sun, these memories have profound personal effects. Characters who focus too much on their memories have a hard time enjoying the present, which shows the detrimental effects of a society so consumed with nostalgia. Margot is the most extreme example of this phenomenon, as she experiences nostalgia so strong that the present is intolerable to her. Instead of joining the other children in games of tag or songs about life on Venus, Margot only participates in activities relating to the sun. She refuses to experience even the more pleasant parts of life on Venus, instead focusing solely on her memories of life on Earth. This fixation isolates her from her peers and even affects her health: she is pale, thin, and occasionally overwhelmed by the constant rain on Venus. Her parents consider moving her back to Earth to spare her from her anguish. And, after the other children have experienced the sun, they, too, feel dissatisfied with the normal state of things on Venus. The sound of the rain has become "gigantic," and already they cannot wait for the return of the sun. It seems as if their memories of this day will make them more like Margot—their delight in the sun will eclipse their enjoyment of everyday life. When considering the role of nostalgia in the story, it's important to also consider that, for those living on Venus, the sun is a relic of an earlier time before humans colonized Venus. In this way, the planet's obsession with the sun is not simply about the one hour of sunlight they receive every seven years, but rather about a deeper nostalgia for an era when all humans lived on Earth. Therefore, nostalgia for the sun has several levels of meaning—in the more immediate sense, nostalgia prevents characters from enjoying their everyday lives, and in a larger sense, nostalgia for the sun indicates a broad social pathology in which nobody is able to accept Venus as human reality. Instead of creating new values, myths, and expectations that fit their reality, humans on Venus remain nostalgically obsessed with the sunlight that defined a bygone era of human life on Earth. - Theme: Anticipation and Disappointment. Description: As its title suggests, "All Summer in a Day" is about a single day of great importance, one that the inhabitants of Venus have anticipated eagerly for seven years. While great anticipation often leads to dashed expectations, Bradbury's story shows that there is an even worse fate than unmet expectation: the brief moment of sunlight on Venus brings more joy than the children could ever have imagined, which leaves them with a demoralizing longing for the future, an anticipation that prevents them from enjoying their lives. At the beginning of the story, anticipation of the sun's arrival puts the children in a heightened, anxious state that ultimately breaks into hostility. Leading up to the sun's appearance, they worry that something will go wrong—the sun won't appear, or their teacher will let them outside too late. These mixed emotions leave the children tense and volatile, which ultimately spills over into violence. At most times, the children avoid Margot, but on this day, William tries to start a fight with her for staring out the window. He and the other children are so agitated with their own anticipation that they inflict on Margot the very outcome that they themselves most fear: they prevent her from seeing the sun. Margot is distraught. She attempts to escape by "protesting, and then pleading, and then crying," and then throwing herself against the closet door. For Margot, this day marked the return of the thing she most loved and missed, and her dashed anticipation feels catastrophic.  For the children who do see the sun, it doesn't disappoint. Despite their high expectations, they experience more joy than they thought possible. However, this means that, when the sun finally vanishes, the children are devastated. As a result, the close of the brief summer is a tragedy. When one student catches the first returning raindrop in her palm, she begins to cry. As the rains roll in, the children lose their cheer immediately, "their smiles vanishing away" as they return to the underground classroom. Their anticipation for the summer and the brief joy it brought has been suddenly replaced by an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss. After such a long wait, it's difficult to accept that their period of great happiness is already over. Even worse, now that the children realize what they're missing, their anticipation of the next summer is more bitter and fervent than before. In the end, the day seems to have brought far more sadness than joy, as instead of imagining the sun, they now miss something they have personally experienced. For the first time, the children truly understand Margot's longing for the sun and seem to become aware of the magnitude of what they have done to her. After they return inside, they are frozen with this realization, and feel too guilty to meet one another's eyes. Like Margot, they are now "solemn and pale." In the wake of the wonderful afternoon, the reality of the seven years they will have to wait to experience it again is difficult to bear. When the children return inside, they are more aware of the misery of their conditions: they "heard the gigantic sound of rain falling in tons and avalanches, everywhere and forever." This newfound sense of loss, impatience, and guilt will forever be bound up with the children's anticipation, as well as with their experience of their everyday reality. For Bradbury, then, having anticipation rewarded with brief, unmitigated pleasure is a greater curse than never knowing such pleasure at all. - Climax: The sun comes out while Margot is locked inside a closet - Summary: "All Summer in a Day" takes place on the planet Venus, a generation after the first colonists from Earth arrived there. Venus has a peculiar climate: every seven years, the sun comes out for just two hours. The rest of the time, it rains—all day, every day. The planet is covered with thick jungles and unruly weeds, perpetually caught in a cycle of growth and destruction. Humans live underground in a network of tunnels, eagerly awaiting the very brief summer. When the story opens, a group of nine-year-old children are gathered excitedly by the window of their underground classroom. After seven long years, today is the day that scientists predict the sun will make its brief appearance; indeed, the rain seems to be slowing. One child, Margot, stands apart. Unlike most of the children, Margot lived on Earth until five years ago, so while they all speculate about what the sun is like, Margot can actually remember quite well. Margot has not taken well to her new home on Venus: she is frail, quiet, and pale, as if "the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair." Lately, she has begun to panic at the touch of water. As the two-hour summer approaches, the schoolchildren read and write short stories about the sun. Margot finds herself the object of teasing when William, a boy in her class, tries to antagonize her by claiming she didn't write the poem she shared with the class. This is typical torment for Margot: the other children tend to tease her or avoid her, because they envy her childhood on Earth and the fact that her parents may even spend thousands of dollars to move her back there. To some extent, Margot seems to have brought this isolation upon herself, because she refuses to participate in games or songs unless they relate to the sun. For Margot, life on Venus is all but unbearable and the sun is all-important, and she makes no secret of these feelings. On the day the sun is set to appear, these tensions are close to a boiling point. While their teacher is briefly out of the room, William pushes and taunts Margot, but she doesn't respond, continuing to stare out the classroom window. Angered, William tells Margot that the sun won't come out after all. She's unsure whether to believe him, but clearly alarmed. Soon, the other children join William in taunting Margot about the sun, the thing she most cares about. William leads the other children in grabbing Margot and pushing her into a closet. She struggles and cries, but they lock the door, smile at one another, and return to the classroom. They seem to forget about the incident immediately. Just as the children return to the classroom, the rain slows even more and, finally, stops. They crowd eagerly by the classroom door. In the sudden roaring silence and stillness, the sun comes out, flooding the sky and jungle with radiant light. The jungle is revealed as a tumultuous tangle of "flesh-like weed," resembling a "nest of octopi" bleached a sickly ash grey by years of relative darkness. The children rush outside and peel off their jackets, reveling in the warmth of the sun. It is far better than they even imagined it would be. They run, laugh, and yell, staring at the sun and trying to savor every joyful moment. But all too soon, a girl begins to wail—she has caught a single raindrop in her palm. Immediately sobered, the children walk and then run back to the underground classroom as the sky darkens and the torrential rain recommences. It seems somehow louder and more painful than before, and the seven year distance between the present and the next glimpse of sunshine seems incomprehensibly long. Just as these somber feelings overtake the children, they suddenly remember Margot, still locked in the closet. They glance at each other, guilty and chastened. Slowly, against the backdrop of the terrible rain, they walk to the now-silent closet. They let Margot out.

- Genre: Political novel; "Great American novel"; American modernism - Title: All The King's Men - Point of view: first-person (told from the perspective of Jack Burden) - Setting: Louisiana in the 1920s and 1930s - Character: Willie "The Boss" Stark. Description: The novel's protagonist (along with Jack Burden, the narrator), Willie, over the course of All the King's Men, drags himself up from impoverished circumstances, initially eschews alcohol, earns a law degree, and, after holding small-town elected office, eventually becomes governor of the state of Louisiana. Willie, who made a name for himself as a young politician because of his opposition to government corruption, later becomes ensnarled in a series of backroom deals, which indirectly lead to the circumstances of his death, an assassination in the capitol building. Jack remarks numerous times in the novel that Willie's story is in some sense his own story—their friendship and work relationship has made their lives inseparable. - Character: Jack Burden. Description: The novel's narrator, Jack Burden comes from a wealthy and influential Louisiana family—he was born and raised in a town called Burden's Landing. Jack writes the account included in All the King's Men ostensibly in an attempt to tell the story of Willie Stark's rise and fall as governor of the state, but he finds himself telling more and more of his own life's story in an attempt to tell Willie's. Jack's two best friends, Anne and Adam Stanton, also take on important roles in Willie's story, as Anne becomes Willie's mistress (and, much later, Jack's wife), and Adam is spurred to kill Willie for his affair with Anne. - Character: Tiny Duffy. Description: Willie's lieutenant governor and a political operative of some importance in the state, Duffy was once a part of the Harrison Democratic machine in Louisiana, but realized, when Willie was elected, that he would have to switch his allegiances to Willie in order to survive politically. Tiny Duffy later orchestrates Willie's murder, indirectly, by informing Adam of Willie's affair with Anne. - Character: Lucy Stark. Description: Willie's long-suffering wife, Lucy has been with Willie since before the days of his fame, and though he has carried on many affairs during the time of their marriages, she remains with Willie until his death, though living apart from him. She even names her grandson Willie, after her late husband, because, as she she tells Jack, Willie "was a great man." - Character: Sadie Burke. Description: Willie's office secretary, Sadie Burke helped orchestrate Willie's rise to political prominence in the state. She has also been having an affair with Willie for some time, although Willie informs Sadie that he loves Anne, and that he is willing to leave his wife to be with her (which he was never willing to do for Sadie). Sadie later gets revenge on Willie by telling Duffy to inform Adam of Willie's affair with Anne, hoping that Adam will harm Willie. - Character: Judge Irwin. Description: A judge of great prominence in the state, and Jack's mentor from a young age in Burden's Landing, Irwin is representative of Louisiana's old political order, and he distrusts Willie. Willie orders Jack to dig up "dirt" on Irwin, which Jack does, then presenting this information to Irwin. Irwin later kills himself, and it is revealed that Irwin was having an affair with Jack's mother, and is Jack's biological father. - Character: Adam Stanton. Description: Jack's childhood friend, Adam is a gifted if somewhat anti-social doctor at the local hospital, well-known in the region for his medical prowess and morality. Willie wants Adam to run his free hospital, and though Adam is averse to working for Willie, because he thinks Willie is a corrupt politician, Jack convinces Adam to do so by exposing his father, former Governor Stanton's, own political corruption. Adam ends up assassinating Willie after finding out about Willie's affair with his sister, Anne. - Character: Anne Stanton. Description: Jack's childhood friend and ex-girlfriend, Anne is a philanthropist in the Baton Rouge area who starts up an affair with Willie—she claims that she loves him, though after Willie's death she repairs her relationship with Jack and eventually marries him, living with Jack and Jack's "father," the Scholarly Attorney, in Burden's Landing. - Character: Theodore, or "The Young Executive". Description: Jack's mother's most recent husband, Theodore, the "Young Executive," is not much older than Jack himself, and Jack knows that his mother will be married to him for only so long—he is quiet and largely submissive to her wishes. Jack's mother later leaves the Young Executive and moves to Reno, leaving her house in Burden's Landing to Theodore by way of apology for abandoning him. - Character: "The Scholarly Attorney". Description: This man, whom Jack believed to be his biological father, is revealed only to be his "stepfather" when Jack discovers Irwin's true relationship to his mother—the "Scholarly Attorney" (after learning of his wife's infidelities) has become a religious mystic in Baton Rouge, taking in the poor and lonely and providing shelter for them in his small apartment. Jack later takes in the Scholarly Attorney to live with him and Anne in Burden's Landing. - Character: Gummy Larson. Description: A political crony affiliated with Tiny Duffy, Gummy Larson wants the contract for Willie's free hospital—six million dollars—so that he can "skim" some amount of money off the top for himself and for Duffy. Gummy briefly has the contract but discovers, near the end of the novel, that Willie has reneged on the deal. - Character: Harrison and MacMurfee. Description: Two bigwigs in the state Democratic Party, MacMurfee attempts to run for the Senate in Louisiana, after serving as governor before Willie (and falling to Willie in the 1930 election). Harrison, who was also governor in the state before Willie, also retains a great deal of influence in the state legislature. Although neither MacMurfee or Harrison is seen in the novel, they exert a great deal of power over Willie at various moments, and Duffy, who remains in thrall to Harrison throughout his time as Lieutenant Governor, might be seen as a continuation of Harrison's influence in the state. - Character: Mortimer Littlepaugh. Description: The head counsel for the American Power Company when Irwin was attorney general in Louisiana, Mortimer lost his job because American gave it to Irwin, as part of a bribe—Mortimer then attempted to inform Governor Stanton of this, but Stanton covered up his friend Irwin's behavior. Mortimer eventually killed himself so that his sister, Lily, could get his life insurance payout. - Character: Lily Littlepaugh. Description: Sister of Mortimer, Lily is found by Jack Burden in Memphis, and Jack convinces her to provide him a copy of the letter Mortimer wrote to Lily describing Irwin's malfeasance and Stanton's cover-up. Jack provides Lily with a small handout in order to convince her to speak, as she is living in poverty and near-squalor. - Character: Cass Mastern. Description: A distant ancestor of Jack's, Cass Mastern was a student at Transylvania College just before the Civil War, where he carried on an affair with his friend Duncan's wife Annabelle. Cass later found a life of religion and died in the Civil War. Jack intended to write his doctoral dissertation on Cass but could not. At the end of the novel, Jack is planning, finally, to finish this book on Cass's life. - Theme: Idealism vs. Pragmatism. Description: Early on in All the King's Men, Jack Burden describes himself, ironically, as an "Idealist"—he claims that, because he ignores the things he does not want to know about, he has committed himself to high-minded principles. In practice, however, Jack Burden is the chief of staff for Willie Stark, the powerful governor ("the Boss") of Louisiana. Burden is not an Idealist, but rather the opposite—a hardheaded Pragmatist, who cares only about getting done what needs to be done. This tension between Idealism and Pragmatism is a central tension in the novel. Some characters become disillusioned with their principles, and begin to act more in their own self-interest. Adam Stanton, originally terrified of ruining his "honor," agrees to head Willie Stark's large charity hospital as Director after he realizes that his own father, the former Governor Stanton, helped to cover up an instance of blackmail in which Judge Irwin participated. Anne Stanton initially tells Jack that Stark is a bad man—a political wheeler-and-dealer without principles—but later asks Stark for a good deal of money to start her own children's charity and has an affair with him. Judge Irwin claims he opposes Willie politically because he does not agrees with Stark's methods, which Irwin considers to be unscrupulous and "dangerous"; but Irwin has used just such methods in the past. Other characters retain their moral positions, more or less, throughout the novel—but even these characters appear to be some mixture of Idealist and Pragmatist. Sadie, who claims that she "made" Stark politically, views politics and human relationships as a series of give-and-takes—but she has a soft spot for Stark himself, with whom she has been having a long-standing affair. Out of jealousy Sadie later tells Duffy, Willie's other close operative and competitor, to inform Adam of Anne's relationship with Willie—with full knowledge that this will cause Adam to snap and attack Willie. Lucy, on the other hand, appears to be an Idealist—always protecting Tom's interests, never divorcing Willie despite his long history of philandering—but she is practical as regards her husband, his political career, and their life together, though they have lived separately for many years. When Stark dies, Lucy names her grandson (Tom's son) Willie, claiming that Stark was a "great man." Then, finally, there is Stark himself—a man who, in his early life, wishes to be a politician for all the right reasons, but who, over time, comes to regard his office as only a means to an end—a way of effecting change for the greater good. The only situation that causes Willie to tap once again into his youthful Idealism is the hospital that is to bear his name—the hospital he considers his crowning achievement as governor. Stark wants this hospital to be untouched by graft—and it is this desire that starts a long series of complicated events, culminating in Duffy's anger with Stark, Duffy's conversation with Adam, and, eventually, Stark's violent death. - Theme: Politics, Influence, and Power. Description: All the King's Men is a political novel—a novel about the nuts-and-bolts of how politics gets "done." For Stark and other characters, politics are inseparable from the use of influence and power to achieve one's ends. Those ends might be for the public good, or they might be only for the enrichment of the politician. Stark is the novel's political champion, and when he is finally assassinated, it is not because he has offended some political operative—rather, he has angered a man who believes himself to live outside, or above, politics (Adam Stanton). Stark is a populist politician, meaning that his policies are intended for the good of the people, and that he can make recourse to these policies as a means of defeating his political enemies, whom he paints as corrupt bribe-takers and fat-cats.Stark's achievements as a politician are undeniable in the state—the roads are improved, for one, and the hospital is to be built—but some citizens object to the means by which these changes are effected. Stark has little patience for the long-standing political institutions and networks in the state. But others, including members of Burden's own family and friend group in Burden's Landing (his mother; Judge Irwin; the Pattons) believe that Stark has upset the political balance in Louisiana, and that his methods will ultimately cause more harm than good.Stark is buoyed by a number of political operatives, Jack foremost among them. Because of his background as a PhD student and a reporter, Jack is an information man—he hunts down "dirt" on political opponents of Willie's. It is Jack's biggest assignment to find dirt on Irwin, which Jack eventually does, although Jack runs this evidence by Irwin before making it public, thus causing Irwin to shoot himself. Sadie is the Boss's political "hammer"—she is crafty, intelligent, and ruthless, and saw in Willie from the beginning his political potential. But when Sadie realizes that Stark has betrayed her, romantically, for the last time, she jettisons these allegiances and uses her influence to have Stark killed.Duffy, another part of the political machine in the state, who was once opposed to Stark, becomes Stark's Lieutenant Governor, and has a hand in Adam's killing of Stark as well. Duffy is mostly concerned with using political influence to fatten his own wallet, which he does quite ably over his career. In the end, Burden comes to realize that politics are not just reserved for elected office, but are rather inseparable from all human relationships—power and use of influence can cause friendships to crumble, and mutual interests can bring parties together who might seem to have nothing in common. If Jack becomes disgusted with politics by the end of the novel, he has really become disgusted with the ways in which humans beings use each other for their own gain—even if he knows that he, too, has used others throughout his life. - Theme: Personal History, Memory, and Time. Description: Because Burden has known Willie for so long, and because his life has become so intertwined with his Boss's, the novel is also a poignant examination of the effects of time and memory on personal relationships. The novel is, in many ways, a fictional "memoir" of Burden's own life and relationships. Burden wonders, frequently, what it means to remember, and comes back often to the memory of Anne, lying back in the water, watching a gull fly overhead. For Jack, this memory of Anne, apart from its romantic significance, is a marker of the young life he can never recapture.Burden believes, or develops throughout the novel, a philosophy of "motion"—that events and people do not seem real in themselves, but only in relation to other events and people. Therefore one must continually talk to new people (and not become too close to others), and one must be "on the move," in a car, on the road or in a train, working constantly. Jack lives his life by avoiding life—by never sitting still, and therefore not allowing time and memory to catch up with him. There are others in the novel, however, who have a markedly different relationship to memory and time. Stark, for his part, never forgets a slight, and those who have helped him in the past also receive a "bonus" in the future for their help to him. This is why Willie rewards Slade with a liquor license, for supporting Willie when Willie refused to drink alcohol long ago.The Scholarly Attorney leaves Jack's mother when he realizes Jack is not his biological son, and he spends much of his life hiding from reality, helping those on the street who need help, and otherwise refusing to acknowledge the passage of time or the presence of memory. Irwin, though he admits that he took a bribe long ago, does not initially remember the man whose position he took as a result of that bribe—Jack marvels that Irwin has so selectively chosen to manage his own "history" of his life, and Jack wonders, too, whether he has gone about selecting certain memories himself, and crafting a history based only on these memories. Anne and Adam, too, have selective memories of their youth, and want to believe, most strongly, that their father, the former Governor, was a good an honest man, as these are the memories they have of their father—indeed, these memories are the only "family" they have. Burden ends the novel with a long meditation on the nature of time, that idea that time and memory are moving, always, that they are relative quantities rather than fixed absolutes, and that Burden's efforts to "beat" time, to fix his memories in place, and to find happiness in those memories is impossible. Instead, Burden realizes he will have no life that is not in the past, not in the future, but in the present—that "period" of time which has been most difficult for him to handle, his entire life. - Theme: The South and Southern Culture. Description: All the King's Men is a great American novel, but it is also a novel set in a very particular place and time: the American South of the Great Depression, in Louisiana. As such, the novel has a great deal to say about the nature of life in that region in that time, and, more generally, on the nature of "Southernness," or the Southern experience.One fact of Southern life is, and was, the inescapable quandary of race. Burden, in his research on his own family, uncovers a long and tawdry story framed in the lead-up to the Civil War, and involved the selling of an innocent slave "downriver". In Jack's own time, the only black characters mentioned in the novel are servants or poor denizens of the cities in which he travels. Jack himself is not a racist—or, more specifically, his form of racism is not distinguished from the general racism of his time (he is not notably more racist than others). But Jack, and even the most virtuous of the other characters in the novel, show attitudes toward black residents that are, at best, indifferent, and at worst imbued with a disregard for those residents' humanity. Other parts of Southern culture are represented in the novel, too. For one, football is an important component of the story-line, and an important part of life in the South—Tom, Stark's only son, is critically injured in a football game. This event indirectly prompts another series of events leading to Stark's assassination. Sexual mores in the region are another aspect of the story—although chastity before marriage was important in many parts of the country at this time, Jack's courtship of Anne, for example, is imbued with a special sexual rigidity. The difficulty of obtaining a divorce in Louisiana causes Lucy to stay with Stark, despite his repeated infidelities. But Southernness is not just window-dressing in the novel—a way of "fleshing out" a character (and Willie himself is based on a real Louisiana politician, Huey Long). Southernness is part and parcel of Willie. The Boss rose up from nothing—he was a boy working on his father's small farm—to a position of great power, whizzing around the state in his black Cadillac. The nothingness from which he rose existed only in the South at that time—one of the poorest regions in the country—and so the heights he attained were noticeably greater in relation to this. Similarly, only in the South, by Penn Warren's rendering, could this kind of dictatorial leadership style, this brand of politicking, be not only possible but encouraged on all levels. Louisiana has long been infamous for the nature of its political graft, and Stark was one of the finest practitioners of what was, essentially, the local political style. - Theme: Loyalty, Friendship, and Betrayal. Description: The novel returns, again and again, to a theme which in some sense contains all of the above—that of loyalty, betrayal, and the possibility of both within a friendship. The novel is a study of Jack's relationship with Willie—two strong-headed, impulsive men, from very different social backgrounds, who have come together with common cause in a professional setting. But Willie and Jack are also friends—even if their friendship is framed in the relationship of a boss to his employee—and when Willie dies, Jack recognizes the extent to which a meaningful chapter of his life has ended. Jack's other great male friendship in the novel is with Adam, whom he considers to be a great man, too; a man who, like Willie and unlike Jack, has made a success of himself in life. It is particularly crushing, then, for Jack that Adam should murder Willie—that one of his friends should murder another, and that Jack should somehow feel responsible, through a series of political maneuvers, for both friends' deaths.Numerous other characters in the novel experiences crises of loyalty and disloyalty—in fact, nearly every major character does. Lucy knows that her husband, Willie, has been greatly disloyal to her, yet she remains loyal to him and to their son, and, later, to her son's possible child, whom she names Willie. Sadie, loyal to Willie for a great deal of the novel, finally snaps when she finds out that Willie has been personally and romantically disloyal to her—she then aids in his death. Duffy, who was not loyal to Willie but who benefited from their political relationship, was all-too-ready to turn on his boss when the time came. Anne, in small ways, was disloyal to Jack as he was disloyal to her—in fact, their romance was characterized by a back-and-forth of intimacy and then withdrawal, with Anne later falling in love with Willie, and Jack never really forgiving her for this, although, by the end of the novel, they find themselves together again, in a sort of truce, in Burden's Landing. And Irwin, always loyal to Jack, was himself not so loyal to his own friend, who he cuckolded (sleeping with Jack's mother, as Irwin is Jack's biological father), and two-timing another man out of a job Irwin wanted. But Irwin recognized his flaws and vowed to support Jack anyway, though it pained Irwin to see that Jack had thrown in his political sympathies with Willie.In the end of the novel, Jack seems to realize that all the personal loyalties and disloyalties that have filled his memoir are inseparable from the people who have committed them; in addition, these people can never be fully loyal or disloyal, but can, rather, only be loyal relative to those around them—relative enough as the situation calls for it—and loyal to an ideal that, with luck, will bring good to others, rather than only good to themselves. Thus Jack does not resign all hope, in politics and life, at the end of the novel, but he has come through his experiences with a healthy distrust for any clean and uncomplicated narrative of human and of political relationships. - Climax: After attempting to blackmail Judge Irwin into supporting a political cause of Governor Stark's, Jack Burden finds out, from his mother, that Irwin has killed himself overnight, and that Irwin is his biological father. - Summary: The novel opens in 1933 as Jack Burden, the narrator and chief of staff for Willie Stark, Governor of Louisiana, rides with Stark in a black Cadillac to Mason City, where Stark grew up. Also in the car are Stark's wife and son, Lucy and Tom, and Stark's Lt. Governor, a former political rival named Duffy. Stark stops in Mason City, then visits his father on a farm outside town. Journalists following in another car, along with Sadie Burke, Willie's secretary, ask for photo-ops at the farmhouse with Willie, Lucy, and Tom. Willie obliges. Sadie informs Willie outside, later, that Judge Irwin has endorsed one of Willie's political opponents for a Senate seat, and Willie announces later that night that he, Jack, and Sugar-Boy, Willie's driver, will be driving to talk to Irwin in Burden's Landing, which is several hours away and the town where Jack grew up. Willie attempts to convince Irwin to change his mind and endorse the candidate Willie prefers, but Irwin says no. While leaving, Willie tasks Jack with finding "dirt" on Irwin that he can use as blackmail to make Irwin comply with his (Willie's) political wishes. Jack goes on to describe Willie's rise as a politician in Louisiana. Once a low-level County bureaucrat, Willie was defeated in an election after crusading for fairness and openness in a bidding process to build a schoolhouse. When the schoolhouse crumbles owing to shoddy workmanship, killing several children, Willie is recognized as a politician "for the people," and is tapped to run by the state's Democratic Party as a candidate for governor in 1926. Sadie Burke, who works for the Party machine, takes over Willie's campaign, and Jack covers it as a newspaper reporter for the Chronicle. One night, Jack is in the room on the campaign trail when Sadie admits to Willie that he is actually a "stooge" candidate, chosen by the Democratic Party to split the rural vote with MacMurfee, another rural politician, so that the Democrats favored politician will win. This news causes Willie to start drinking alcohol (he has, till now, abstained), and Willie goes onto the trail decrying Partying politics, saying he will support MacMurfee in 1926, and vowing to return in 1930 as a gubernatorial candidate himself. Willie makes good on this promise and is elected governor in 1930, then to another term in 1934. Willie later hires Jack when the newspaper fires him (for supporting Willie); Jack becomes Willie's political "jack of all trades." Jack goes on to write about Willie's political career as governor, his hard-handed methods to keep opposition in line, and his fervent desire to help the people of Louisiana by improving schools, roads, and the tax code, and by building a free hospital for all to use. Some of the political "old guard" in the state, including Judge Irwin, Jack's mother, and Anne and Adam Stanton, Jack's friends from Burden's Landing, do not approve of Willie's methods, and hate that Jack works for him. But Jack supports Willie during a period when the state legislature attempts to impeach Willie for supposed "bribery"—Willie beats the charges by blackmailing state legislators, and Jack considers this a political victory for Willie and his policies. Jack recalls his life as a graduate student at LSU, when he was working on a doctorate in history and writing about an ancestor of his named Cass Mastern, who died in the Civil War after being involved in a love affair that caused his friend Duncan Trice to kill himself, and his lover Annabelle Trice to flee Kentucky to Washington, D.C. Cass later died in the Civil War. Jack found he was unable to write his dissertation on Mastern, despite knowing the "facts" of Mastern's life, because Jack felt he could not properly represent the "truth" of these facts. Jack relates this journey of historical research to his newer task—that of trying to find "dirt" on Judge Irwin. Jack eventually succeeds in linking Irwin to a bribe Irwin accepted from the American Power company long ago, via communication with a woman named Lily Littlepaugh, whose brother Mortimer was fired so that Irwin could take his position at the American Power corporation. Willie, in the meantime, wants Adam to run his free hospital, despite Adam's objection, and Willie uses this information about Irwin and Adam's father, Governor Stanton (who looked the other way while the bribe happened) to show Adam that all politicians, including the Stantons, must use backhanded tactics to get what they want. Adam begrudgingly accepts the job to head Willie's hospital. But Jack later learns that Anne, who once opposed Willie, has been having an affair with him—Jack confirms this with Anne and drives from Louisiana to California to clear his head. Jack is so devastated by Anne's revelation of the affair because he, Jack, was once engaged to Anne back in Burden's Landing, though they drifted apart and Jack later married, and divorced, a woman named Lois. Jack returns to Baton Rouge after several days and admits to thinking that all life is nothing more, now, than a Great Twitch, a series of responses to stimuli, since Anne, the love of his life, has decided to take up with another man and leave Jack in the dust. The novel approaches its end as Jack reveals that Tom, Wilie's only son, is injured severely in a football game; Tom is paralyzed from the neck down, and Willie is receiving political pressure from MacMurfee and the father of a woman named Sibyl to give up his Senate aspirations, since Sibyl reports she is having a child by Tom. Willie can't stand this blackmail and attempts to get Jack to convince Irwin to put pressure on MacMurfee, by using Irwin's "dirt" against him; but Irwin kills himself after meeting with Jack, and Jack's mother reveals that Irwin was secretly Jack's biological father. This means Willie cannot use leverage with Irwin to force his hand and defeat his political enemies—he must instead accept Gummy Larson (a Democratic Party strongman) and Duffy's back-room deal for the hospital, which devastates Willie, who had wanted the creation of the hospital to be clean of any political graft. After Tom's injury, however, Willie reneges on his deal with Gummy and Duffy. Sadie, angry with Willie about his affair with Anne, convinces Duffy to tell Adam of the affair, knowing that Adam will want to harm Willie, and this indeed comes to pass—Adam shoots and seriously injures Willie in the capitol before he himself is killed. Willie dies several days later, and Jack reports that, after discovering that Sadie and Duffy were behind the crime, Jack moves back to Burden's Landing, since he has taken over Irwin's house, and he and Anne live there with the "Scholarly Attorney," the man whom Jack had thought was his father before the revelation that Irwin was his real father. Jack reports that he has written the story of Willie's life and his own, and now he must write the story of Cass Mastern in order to investigate fully the nature of time, regret, and the past on his own life. The novel ends.

- Genre: Novel - Title: All the Pretty Horses - Point of view: Third-person limited omniscient - Setting: Texas and Mexico - Character: John Grady Cole. Description: The protagonist of the book, John Grady Cole is a sixteen-year-old from San Angelo, Texas, who enjoys working on his family's ranch when he's not in school. Alienated by his mother's decision to sell the ranch, he sets off to Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. John Grady has a special way with horses: he is particularly loyal to his own horse, Redbo, but he also earns respect and admiration from Mexicans for his ability to tame or "break" wild horses. John Grady holds an idealistic, romantic vision of Mexico. He doesn't really believe anything will go wildly wrong there, though when it does, he faces the events that confront him with grit and determination. He's naturally kindhearted, as shown in his friendliness to Blevins, but this generosity can easily become naïveté that leads to disaster. In some ways, John Grady's development over the course of the novel can be thought of as a bildungsroman, a novel of growing up, as he learns about life and is gradually disabused of his romantic ideals. - Character: Lacey Rawlins. Description: John Grady's childhood friend, a seventeen-year-old who grew up on a neighboring ranch. Rawlins is also a good horseback rider, though he doesn't have John Grady's natural gift with horses. Lacey isn't as committed as John Grady is to escaping to Mexico. Once there, though, he has a sharper sense of the dangers present, and is always keeping an eye out for potential threats. Rawlins initially thinks it's ridiculous for them to adopt Blevins, who exasperates him by talking too much and telling obviously fabricated stories. Rawlins is hard on Blevins, cursing at him and making fun of him, but he seems almost more devastated than John Grady at Blevins' death. Rawlins knows from the start that it's a bad idea for John Grady to have an affair with Alejandra, and he too suffers the consequences when they're thrown in prison. Rawlins' friendship with John Grady never fully recovers, though he remains loyal to his friend throughout the novel. - Character: Jimmy Blevins. Description: A young boy riding a big bay horse whom John Grady and Rawlins encounter when they're about to cross the border to Mexico. He claims he's sixteen but looks more like thirteen, and the other boys doubt that Blevins is his real name—it's also the name of a well-known religious radio host in Texas. Blevins has run away several times, presumably rebelling against a malevolent stepfather. He's even more naïve than John Grady, and seems very young: he's afraid of lightning, and is stubborn enough to risk everything just to get a stolen pistol back. Blevins is portrayed as sometimes ridiculous but entirely harmless, and his downfall is shocking to the others, portraying the extent to which evil will blot out whatever it can, however innocuous its victims. - Character: Don Hector Rocha y Villarreal (the hacendado). Description: The owner of the La Purísima hacienda, where John Grady and Rawlins work for several months. Don Hector is impressed by John Grady's skill with horses, and grants him a special position breeding his horses. He is wealthy, intelligent, and sophisticated, and also seems kind and treats John Grady with respect. However, he conforms strictly to the Mexican ideal of a woman's honor, and feels no compunction about turning the boys in when he learns of Alejandra's affair with John Grady. - Character: Alejandra Rocha. Description: Don Hector's daughter, and a skillful horseback rider of a black Arabian on the hacienda. Alejandra attends an expensive private school in Mexico City, where she spends time with her mother, but she's impatient with society life and prefers to spend time on the hacienda. She is willful and proud, riding one of John Grady's horses against her father's wishes, and boldly knocking at John Grady's door the first evening they sleep together. Alejandra is also fiercely loyal: it is because she has given her word to her great-aunt, and because she fears the loss of her father's love, that she refuses to run away with John Grady in the end. - Character: Alfonsa. Description: Alejandra's great-aunt, the matriarch of the hacienda. She was a bookish child and had radical, free-thinking ideas, making her a natural partner to Francisco and Gustavo Madero, two brothers who would help to start the Mexican Revolution. Like Alejandra, Alfonsa was always proud and stubborn—she refused to return from Europe if it meant promising her father that she would renounce her relationship to the Madero brothers. In many ways, Alfonsa is an admirable example of a woman ahead of her time. She tells John Grady that it is not his poverty or class that matters to her, but his ability to affect Alejandra's honor through his entanglement with the law. Nevertheless, Alfonsa's true motivations remain ambiguous. It's difficult to tell whether she is truly acting in Alejandra's best interests, or is instead using her compelling story to justify more selfish interests. Her monologue on fate and destiny is similarly ambivalent. - Character: Gustavo Madero. Description: Francisco's brother, another historical figure who sought to remake Mexico through progressive social reform. In the novel, both and he Alfonsa suffered physical accidents and bonded over their suffering: though they were never engaged and though he suffered a violent death in the Revolution, she has remained in love with him to this day. - Character: The captain. Description: A Mexican official of ambiguous authority, he is brutal and unforgiving. After being laughed at as a boy, he is haunted by the memory and acts viciously and pitilessly as a result. He is the one to kill Blevins, and he tortures John Grady and Rawlins as well. It turns out that the captain is weak and cowardly, as John Grady learns when he travels with him as a hostage on horseback. - Character: Wayne Cole. Description: John Grady's father, he only appears briefly at the beginning of the novel. It seems that the two were once close, but the father went away to fight in World War II and was imprisoned in Goshee, a POW camp, after which he was different. He seems not to care about much as the novel opens, essentially shrugging his shoulders at his ex-wife's decision to sell the ranch. John Grady thinks about his father at various times throughout the book, and feels regret at their failure to establish a closer relationship. - Character: John Grady's mother. Description: An aspiring actress whom John Grady surreptitiously goes to see perform in another Texas town. Recently divorced from his father, John Grady's mother seems to care little about ranch life in San Angelo. She had run away to California years ago, though his father tells John Grady that she returned for his sake. Still, she seems more concerned with social life than with mothering, and is often absent. - Theme: The Idea of the American West. Description: Most readers of Cormac McCarthy will already be familiar with his setting—southern Texas and northern Mexico—from the long tradition of American Westerns, filled with cowboys and gunfights on wide-open terrain. By the time the novel takes place, in 1949, this world is no longer to be found in Texas. Instead it has become a myth, one filled with powerful values of freedom and honor, which John Grady Cole and Lacey Rawlins set off in search of in Mexico—but what they find is a much grimmer, coarser world. When the novel opens, John Grady's long family line of ranchers has begun to disintegrate, and though he's desperate to keep the family ranch going, he's too young to take it over. In 1949, as the United States is growing increasingly industrialized, Mexico seems to be a country where John Grady can revive a way of life that is dying out back home. Neither John Grady nor Rawlins, however, can ever seriously articulate why they've gone off to Mexico. Several times they tell other characters that they're bank robbers or bandoleros. At one point a jail captain questions why they'd want to take care of horses in Mexico for four times less money than they could get in the States. In fact, neither of the boys sets out with a serious plan for their time in Mexico. Instead, the country serves as a place of exciting escape, populated by bank robbers and cowboys. McCarthy's lush descriptions of the plains and vistas of Mexico only underline the boys' mythical vision of the country, to which physical beauty, beautiful girls, freedom of movement, and a simpler way of life all contribute. Indeed, while their idea of the American (that is, North American) West is thrilling, it's also largely benign: it's a place where they can sharpen their sense of independence and adhere to a worldview of honor and dignity. The problem is that the boys don't understand until too late that the stakes are higher than this, and that the mythical ideals they're seeking in Mexico contain a brutal underside of violence, misogyny, and corruption. Mexico may hold the ideals of the old West, but it's also a place of extreme inequality, endemic poverty, and terrible corruption. By experiencing this side of Mexico first hand, the boys come to be disillusioned, understanding the myth of the West as just that—a myth. - Theme: Romanticism and Reality. Description: While John Grady's romantic notions apply most powerfully to his ideal of the American West, they also apply to other values he holds dear for much of the novel. All the Pretty Horses has been called McCarthy's most romantic novel, and that's not just because part of it is a romance story: it's because John Grady believes strongly in the power of love to conquer all, from economic interests to family concerns. Other characters are more realistic. In a sweeping monologue in Part 3, Alfonsa, Alejandra's great-aunt, attempts to show John Grady just how powerful politics, economics, gender norms, and other social values can be. They've impacted her own life directly, and can certainly make love impossible. Alfonsa and other characters have learned to place other values, such as stability and even happiness, above love. In fact, Alfonsa sees John Grady's stubborn pursuit of his affair with Alejandra as proof that he couldn't be trusted as head of the family hacienda. As John Grady remains willfully immune to such practicality, the novel portrays his denial of reality as admirable but also, ultimately, both doomed to failure and highly naïve.Romanticism, of course, is more than just romantic love: one meaning of the term is a poetic movement emphasizing individual, subjective experience, heroic action, and the primacy of emotion. Such elements are evident in the way John Grady thinks of Mexico and its citizens, as well as his notions about justice. John Grady feels a deep, personal, and emotional connection to horses—much of the book is taken up simply with lavishly drawn scenes of riding across the mesas and plains of the country. His relationship to horses gives him a perhaps unique understanding of ownership, based less on laws and property rights than on one's subjective relationship with other living creature. This way of thinking is most intensely depicted in John Grady's attempt to get his, Blevins', and Rawlins' horses back at the end of the novel. The world, John Grady learns little by little, may support Romantic ideals in theory, but in practice a brute pragmatism tends to prevail. - Theme: Innocence, Expertise, and Knowledge. Description: In several ways, John Grady seems older than his sixteen years. Throughout his time in Mexico, John Grady is able to draw on the skills he learned growing up on a ranch, where he was responsible for many of the ranch's daily activities. John Grady gains respect and admiration for his skill with horses: the hacendado is impressed by this expertise and gives him a special job at the hacienda taking care of them. In addition, John Grady's knowledge of Spanish is a key skill that enables him and Rawlins to manage in Mexico—and at times ensures their survival. The novel is full of Spanish phrases, even short conversations that aren't translated. This can be disorienting for a reader who doesn't speak Spanish, though such disorientation reflects what must be Rawlins's own experience. It also helps to situate John Grady in a position of expertise, forcing Rawlins (and the reader) to trust him. At the same time, John Grady's Spanish skills belie his ignorance of many aspects of Mexican life—a point that is underlined when Pérez at the prison tells him he doesn't "speak the language" of Mexican prison life. Further, while John Grady has remarkable expertise in specialized skills such as horse-breaking, his real-world choices often appear astonishingly naïve to other characters, as well as to the reader. Rawlins begs John Grady not to get them mixed up with Blevins, who has most likely stolen his horse. Likewise, Alfonsa reminds John Grady of his greater ignorance, stressing several times that he hasn't lived as long as she has and lacks her wisdom about life. The scene near the end of the novel where John Grady shows up at the Texas judge's home to ask him for advice similarly highlights how lost he can feel when faced with new experiences, realities, and choices. There are different kinds of knowledge, the novel seems to be saying, and expertise at a skill is not the same as wisdom gained from life. - Theme: Fate and Responsibility. Description: Is taking responsibility for one's own actions an essential part of growing up, of accepting what it means to be human? Or is it simply hubris to assume that humans can escape or conquer fate? The novel doesn't take a clear-cut position either way. Instead, the characters struggle to determine what they are responsible for and what remains beyond their control. During a long conversation between John Grady and Alfonsa, she mentions a story her father used to tell to explain his conviction that responsibility can always be traced to human decisions. The story concerns a coin-maker who chooses which way to place the metal, heads or tails. From this, all other decisions follow—heads or tails—as remote as they may become. Alfonsa isn't sure she agrees with her father, however, as she thinks that human nature makes us "determined that not even chaos be outside our own making." Alfonsa's skepticism about the ability to master fate stems directly from the twists and turns of her own life, in which suffering and pain seem often to remain outside her or anyone's control. Paradoxically, she asks John Grady to accept his fate—no longer being able to see her grand-niece Alejandra—as inevitable, even though she intervened directly to bring it about. For John Grady and Rawlins, the tension between fate and responsibility is tied to Jimmy Blevins, who seems to simply appear in their lives and remain there, as if their fates were destined to be intertwined. John Grady and Rawlins are torn between wanting to be free of him and feeling responsible for his well-being. John Grady's deep-seated guilt, shown as he confides to the judge at the end of the novel, stems from what he sees as his inability to take full responsibility for Blevins' safety. Guilt and penitence only make sense in a world in which people are fully responsible for their actions. In addition, each time John Grady and Rawlins talk about God, they are implicitly discussing fate—if and how things could have turned out differently, and why things happen the way they do. These conversations are circular and inconclusive. While the novel never fully decrees whether humans are ultimately responsible for their own actions, it shows just how troubling this ambiguity can be, especially when other people's lives are involved. - Theme: Meaningful and Gratuitous Violence. Description: Some readers might recoil at the violence of All the Pretty Horses, which ranges from graphic portrayals to bleak descriptions. Different characters take different attitudes towards violence, regarding if and when it can be justified, and how closely it may be tied to revenge and justice. As a whole, the novel seems to distinguish between different kinds of violence, but it also remains committed to portraying violent acts as a method of literary realism—showing how violence can be a part of daily life in the settings where the characters find themselves.In some ways, the novel links violence to bravery and stoicism. In this conception, John Grady enters into a gunfight for a higher purpose: in trying to steal back the horses, he is honoring Blevins' memory and showing his loyalty to Rawlins and his own horse. The description of his gunshot wound and the process of burning it out with a pistol shaft to avoid infection is equally violent and graphic. When John Grady tells a Texas judge his story, the entire courtroom listens to him in silent awe. John Grady himself, however, is more ambivalent about the ethics of violence. He struggles over whether he should have killed a fellow prisoner, even though it was in self-defense, and confesses to the Texas judge that he's not a good person because he did so.The novel is clearer about other instances of violence. The prison captain who marches Blevins into the woods to shoot him is portrayed as a monster. He is probably one of those to whom Alfonsa refers when she tells John Grady that many in Mexico live only by the law of violence—the only law they can follow and respect, the only one that means anything to them. The novel thus draws a line between violence that serves a higher purpose, and violence that is simply gratuitous, that obeys no law but itself. - Theme: Loyalty and Belonging. Description: One way John Grady escapes from the constant, uncertain loop of fate and responsibility is by clinging to the value of loyalty above all else. We know from early on that John Grady is fiercely loyal to his ranch—he makes various attempts to prevent it from being sold, and finally decides that he himself must leave rather than see the ranch leave his family's possession. For the rest of the novel, loyalty directs his actions and serves as a means for him to choose between difficult options. Another way to look at John Grady's and Rawlins' relationship to Jimmy Blevins, for instance, is to understand it as not just one of responsibility, but also of loyalty. Having established a kind of friendship, the boys are now obligated to do what they can to protect him. If there's a hierarchy of loyalty for John Grady, though, Rawlins remains at the top: they've been friends from childhood and partners in their escape to Mexico. Rawlins feels similarly, even refusing to entertain the possibility of escaping from the prison's hospital ward if it means leaving John Grady behind. John Grady's loyalty to Rawlins also lasts beyond Rawlins's own departure from Mexico, as Rawlins is the first person he returns to see back home. Their relationship seems irrevocably changed by their time in Mexico, however, particularly by their time in prison. The novel seems to say that loyalty doesn't have to mean complete understanding, and it doesn't imply that to be loyal to someone is to be his or her soul mate: instead, loyalty is both weaker and more powerful than this. The importance of loyalty in the novel is underlined in a more striking way through John Grady's relationship to horses. After escaping from prison and managing to see Alejandra one last time, he risks his life again (and nearly loses it) in his attempt to take back his, Blevins', and Rawlins' horses. This attempt is tied to John Grady's loyalty to Blevins and Rawlins, but it's more than that. He feels loyal to the animals themselves. John Grady feels comfortable around horses as he does around few other people. With his parents divorced and his ranch sold, Texas is no longer a true home for him—even at the end of the novel, he tells Rawlins that it's "alien country" for him. But Mexico is equally foreign, and once Alejandra refuses to stay with him, there is no one place where he can belong there either. Instead, by remaining loyal to his friends and to his horse, John Grady stakes out a space of belonging. In establishing bonds between living things, then, loyalty makes it easier for John Grady to find other ways of belonging than a specific home or country. - Climax: After John Brady convinces his lover, Alejandra, to meet him before returning to her hacienda, she refuses to break her word to her great-aunt and marry him, leaving John Grady devastated. - Summary: As All the Pretty Horses begins, John Grady Cole's grandfather has just died, and he's learned that the San Angelo, Texas ranch that has been in his family for generations is about to be sold. The ranch is in his mother's name, and she doesn't want any part in it anymore. John Grady first tries to convince his father to change her mind, but his father, who hasn't been quite the same since his return from a POW camp in World War II, says there's nothing he can do. Mr. Franklin, the lawyer, tells him the same thing—as a sixteen-year-old, John Grady can't take it over. Mr. Franklin also tells him his parents have recently finalized their divorce. John Grady buys a ticket to San Antonio, where he watches his mother perform on a stage, and then waits for her at a hotel lobby, where he sees her with another man. John Grady goes to see his old friend Lacey Rawlins, and they talk about leaving for Mexico. Before leaving, John Grady sees Mary Catherine Barnett, a girl who has recently dumped him, one last time. John and Lacey leave early in the morning and as they approach the border with Mexico, a young boy who appears to have been following them catches up. He calls himself Jimmy Blevins, but they doubt it's his real name, as it's also the name of a religious radio host. Blevins admits he's run away from home. He's riding a beautiful bay horse, which the boys think may be stolen. Rawlins doesn't want anything to do with him. They separate, but end up running into each other again at the river dividing the U.S. and Mexico. That night, there's a thunderstorm, and Blevins, who is deathly afraid of lightning, hides in a river and ends up losing both his horse and all his clothes. Against Rawlins' protestations, John Grady lifts him onto the back of his own horse. They soon reach the town of Encantada in Mexico, where John Grady and Rawlins see Blevins' horse tied in a mud barn behind one of the houses. Though Rawlins protests again, they make a plan to take back the horse early the next morning. The plan soon goes awry, as a pack of barking dogs wakes the entire town up, and Blevins risks all their lives in making sure he gets his saddle in addition to his horse. Knowing that riders are following them, the three separate, with John Grady and Rawlins heading off the road. The pair ask people along the way where they can find work, and eventually they end up at the Hacienda de Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción, a ranch owned by Don Héctor Rocha y Villareal. They're hired to take care of the cattle, though after a few days they ask the gerente (manager) if they can attempt to break or tame—in four days—the sixteen wild mares that have been captured. As they work, a crowd of townspeople gathers around them. They succeed, and as a result Don Hector gives John Grady a more important task: that of breeding mares. Don Hector invites John Grady to play billiards with him and he discusses horses. Meanwhile, John Grady has caught the attention of Don Hector's daughter Alejandra, a beautiful teenager whom he dances with at a town dance in La Vega. They begin to ride horses together, but Alejandra's great-aunt, Alfonsa, warns John Grady that a woman in Mexico has nothing other than her honor. Nevertheless, Alejandra comes to John Grady's bunkhouse that night, and they begin to sleep together. One night he and Rawlins are on the mesa when they see a pack of greyhounds. They believe someone is hunting them, and worry that Don Hector may have found out about John Grady and his daughter. The next morning, policeman break into the bunkhouse and arrest them. They ride off with the officers for several days into an unknown town, where they're placed in a mud cell that also houses Blevins. It turns out that Blevins had worked for a few months before returning to Encantada to retrieve his pistol. He'd gotten into a gunfight and killed a man. The captain, a Mexican official, brings John Grady and Rawlins into his office, one by one, and tortures them, trying to make them confess that they committed crimes with Blevins and that they aren't who they say they are. A few days later, the three of them are taken out of the cell and onto a truck with the captain and a few other guards. They pick up another man, the charro (cowboy), and head towards the prison in Saltillo. At one point, however, they make a detour into an abandoned hacienda. The captain and charro take Blevins, who seems terrified, out of the truck, and Blevins thrusts his remaining pesos at John Grady and Rawlins. He's taken into the woods, and they hear the pop of a pistol. John Grady and Rawlins are taken to a vast prison in Saltillo, where for the first three days they're constantly in fistfights. After that, they're taken into the cell of Pérez, a prisoner who seems to be in a position of great power, able to arrange bribes to get them out. John Grady and Rawlins deny that they have any money and leave. Soon afterward, Rawlins is stabbed in the stomach, and led out of the prison yard by Pérez's men. John Grady buys a switchblade from another prisoner. A few days later, he's in the mess hall when a young cuchillero begins to fight him, apparently to the death. John Grady is wounded, and as the cuchillero prepares to slit John Grady's throat, John Grady stabs him in the heart. One of Pérez's men carries him, weak and bleeding, out of the yard. When he regains consciousness, he's in a black room. Over the next few days, several men come in and out. Finally, he's sent to meet Pérez, who hands him an envelope full of money. Apparently, Alfonsa has paid to have him and Rawlins freed. John Grady wants to go back to the hacienda to find Alejandra, but Rawlins buys a ticket back to Texas. When John Grady arrives, it turns out that it was as he had feared: Alfonsa had paid for John Grady's release in return for Alejandra's vow not to continue her affair with him. Alfonsa begins a long monologue, telling John Grady about her adolescence as a radical, free-thinking young woman whose close friendship with the political revolutionaries Francisco and Gustavo Madero caused her father to exile her to Europe. She tells John Grady about the devastating brutality and violence of the revolution, about how all their ideals turned into bloodshed. She says that his only excuse is that things happened outside his control, which is not a good reason for her to be on his side. Alfonsa relates several anecdotes about destiny and responsibility. Her own thoughts on fate seem ambivalent, though she says she believes it is human nature to want to place responsibility on someone or something. John Grady still decides to pursue Alejandra and convince her to stay with him. He calls her from another town, Torreón, and she agrees to meet him at Zacatecas. They spend a day and a night together, but at the end, she tells him she cannot break her word to Alfonsa; in addition, she has seen how her father's love for her, which she thought was unbreakable, is in fact not so, and she can't stand to see it unravel further. After she leaves, John Grady is devastated. But he has a final task in Mexico: retrieve his and Rawlins' horses. He returns to Encantada and forces the captain and charro, at gunpoint, to lead him to the horses. They bring him to an hacienda where he finds both horses and also Blevins'. Two men at the hacienda figure out what's going on and they exchange fire. John Grady is shot in the leg, but he's able to escape with the horses, and takes the captain hostage with him. They spend several days and nights riding. At one point, John Grady cauterizes his wound with a red-hot pistol barrel to prevent infection. He wakes up one morning to find a group of Mexicans taking the captain away in handcuffs. When John Grady reaches the border, he spends several weeks attempting to find the owner of Blevins' horse. He finally gives up and hands it over to the county. He tells the judge his story at the hearing, and the judge is impressed by John Grady's actions. Later that night, John Grady shows up at the judge's house, wanting to confess that there's much he's done that he isn't proud of, and how guilty he feels. Finally, John Grady returns to San Angelo, where he returns Rawlins' horse, and they have a short conversation. It seems that they're not as comfortable with each other as they once were. John Grady's father has died, and as the novel ends, he is heading out to Mexico again.

- Genre: Novel, Thriller, Migrant Literature - Title: American Dirt - Point of view: Third-Person Omniscient - Setting: Mexico, Arizona, Maryland - Character: Lydia. Description: - Character: Luca. Description: - Character: Javier. Description: - Character: Soledad. Description: - Character: Rebeca. Description: - Character: Lorenzo. Description: - Character: El Chacal. Description: - Character: Beto. Description: - Character: Marisol. Description: - Character: Choncho. Description: - Character: Slim. Description: - Character: David. Description: - Character: Ricardín. Description: - Character: Nicolás. Description: - Character: The Two Migrant Men. Description: - Character: Carlos. Description: - Character: Meredith. Description: - Character: Nando. Description: - Character: Padre Rey. Description: - Character: Néstor. Description: - Character: Hermana Cecilia. Description: - Character: Neli. Description: - Character: Julia. Description: - Character: Danilo. Description: - Character: Doctor Ricardo. Description: - Character: Víctor. Description: - Character: Víctor's Mother. Description: - Character: Paola. Description: - Character: Ángela. Description: - Character: Iván. Description: - Character: Elmer. Description: - Character: Sebastián. Description: - Character: Abuela. Description: - Character: Adrián. Description: - Character: Marta. Description: - Character: César. Description: - Character: The Detective. Description: - Theme: Trauma. Description: - Theme: Survival, Grief, and Resilience. Description: - Theme: Self-Determination, Uncertainty, and Chance. Description: - Theme: Motherhood. Description: - Theme: Forced Migration. Description: - Climax: Lydia, Luca, and a group of migrants undertake a clandestine journey on foot across the border between Mexico and the United States. - Summary: When three gunmen storm his cousin's quinceañera party, eight-year-old Luca and his mother, Lydia, are already in the bathroom. Lydia quickly pushes Luca into the shower, and they hide while three gunmen slay the 16 members of their family who were outside. The target of the attack was Lydia's husband, Sebastián, an investigative reporter who writes about cartels, and the perpetrator is Lydia's friend, Javier, jefe of the local cartel, "Los Jardineros." When Lydia realizes Javier's men will likely return to kill her and Luca, she prepares to flee. They travel around town gathering provisions and eventually check into a hotel under a false name. Once they head to their room, the front desk clerk uses a burner phone to alert an unnamed person of their arrival. In flashbacks, the narration describes the origins of Lydia's friendship with Javier, with whom Lydia began a flirtatious friendship after he bought two of her favorite books at the bookstore she owns. On the night of her 32nd birthday, Lydia and Sebastián discussed the relative peace Acapulco was enjoying at the time, which Sebastián speculates attributed to the new jefe of Los Jardineros. Something about Sebastián's description of the man jogged Lydia's memory, and she secretly looked through Sebastián's notes and discovered that the new jefe was, in fact, Javier. Following this revelation, Lydia told Javier she knew the truth about him and ended their friendship. In the present, Lydia wakes up at the hotel the next morning and orders room service. When the service delivery boy brings in the breakfast tray, he also offers Lydia a package: a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera and a note from Javier. Lydia realizes she and Luca are in danger, so they immediately pack up their things and flee, heading to the bus depot to purchase tickets to Mexico City. On the way to Mexico City, Lydia decides to get off the bus at Chilpancingo to avoid the cartels at the roadblocks. At an Internet café, she looks up Sebastián's friend, Carlos, and goes to see him. Carlos and his wife, Meredith, are involved in missionary work and help Lydia and Luca evade the cartels and escape Mexico by hiding in a church van transporting an American church group to the airport. At the airport, Lydia decides they will fly north, but she cannot purchase tickets because she is missing Luca's birth certificate. Desperate to get out of the country, she decides they will attempt to travel via La Bestia, the notoriously dangerous system of freight trains that clandestine migrants hop to get to the border. Lydia and Luca meet two migrants from Honduras on their walk to the tracks. One explains that new fences have been constructed around the train, requiring migrants to board while the train is already in motion. Lydia becomes discouraged, thinking the maneuver will be too dangerous. She and Luca eventually check in to the Casa del Migrante. That night, Luca sees a young man (Lorenzo) being kicked out of the Casa. The next morning, Lydia learns that the man sexually assaulted someone and is rumored to be in a cartel; Lydia fears he's associated with Los Jardineros. After leaving the Casa, Lydia and Luca meet two teenaged sisters from Honduras, Soledad and Rebeca. Soledad and Rebeca convince Lydia and Luca to jump onto La Bestia from an overpass, and they board for the first time. The following day, Lydia, Luca, Soledad, and Rebeca head south to catch the train on the Pacific Route, which is supposedly safest. On the southbound train, Rebeca tells Luca that she and Soledad are also fleeing a dangerous man. On the train the following day, Luca spots Lorenzo. Lydia is unconcerned until she learns about his Los Jardineros tattoo. Lorenzo walks over and introduces himself. He recognizes Lydia from a photo Javier shared with him and tells her that it is a miracle she got out of Acapulco alive. The next leg of the journey is dangerous, so the migrants disembark at Guadalajara and proceed on foot. Lydia is suspicious of Lorenzo, so she walks with him and asks him questions. He informs her that Javier's daughter, Marta, hanged herself after reading Sebastián's article. The news of Marta's death fueled a grief-fueled rampage, and Javier murdered Lydia's entire family in retaliation. Lydia is almost sad for Javier but vows never to forgive him. La Bestia soon crosses into Sinaloa, a notoriously dangerous state for migrants. Soledad and Rebeca tell Lydia about the coyote (a person who smuggles migrants from Mexico to the United States) they will use to get across the border. Then la migra (the immigration police) appear, and all the migrants are detained. Soledad and Rebeca are separated from the group. When they rejoin the group, it is clear they have been raped. Lydia and Luca are the first to be released. Luca refuses to abandon Soledad and Rebeca, however, so Lydia uses the rest of her cash to buy their freedom. When the group boards La Bestia again it stalls for three nights, narrowly escaping another encounter with la migra near the border. Back on the train the next morning, they see migrants riding on top of the southbound trains. A boy, Beto, hops off one of those trains and onto theirs. He approaches Luca and starts talking. He explains that the migrants on the southbound trains are recent deportees from the U.S. When the train gets to Nogales, Soledad and Rebeca call the coyote, El Chacal. He is reluctant to take Lydia and the children along but concedes for a higher price. The group spends a couple days in an apartment waiting for the other migrants to show up; one of them ends up being Lorenzo. On departure day, three trucks drive the migrants into the desert at sunset. On the way, they have to stop to pay off immigration officials. After three hours of driving, they begin the long hike to the border. On the first night, they are forced stop and hide to avoid Border Patrol, and later because vigilante trucks are parked at a trailhead. After many dreadful hours hiking in unbearably hot conditions, the group finally makes it to camp, and everyone falls asleep. The group sets out again when the sun begins to set. Later, heavy rain causes a flash flood. Ricardín, one of the migrants, gets caught in the flood and breaks his leg. His godfather, Choncho, stays in the desert with him while the group continues their hike. Luca prays that Choncho and Ricardín are able to make it to the Ruby Road, where they will be able to get help. At camp, the remaining migrants change into dry clothes and try to sleep. Later that night, Lorenzo tries to rape Rebeca. Soledad interferes and shoots him with El Chacal's gun. Because the shot might have disclosed their presence, the group is forced to start their hike three hours early when it is still very hot. While they are packing, Lydia spots Lorenzo's cell phone and brings it to his body. She turns it on and discovers that Lorenzo had been in touch with Javier the whole time. She decides to call Javier and ask him if he is disappointed that she and Luca are still alive. Javier tells her that he never wanted her dead in the first place—if he did, she'd be dead by now. Lydia then tells him that he had no right to do what he did. When Lydia gets back to camp, the group has already begun walking. There are fewer than two miles to go, but it is still very hot. Beto, who is asthmatic, struggles to breathe and soon dies. Everyone is devastated. El Chacal promises to return for Beto's body, and the group carries on. They make it to the campsite where two RVs have been waiting for them. The migrants say goodbye to El Chacal and begin the 45-minute drive to Tucson. A few weeks later, Lydia and Luca are living in Maryland with Soledad, Rebeca, their cousin, César, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend's mother. Lydia works as a house cleaner, and Luca is in school. Though her immigration status presents its own challenges, and though she and Luca continue to mourn the many friends and loved ones they've lost along the way, Lydia is grateful for the resilience that carried her and Luca to safety, and she resolves to make the best of their new life in the U.S.

- Genre: Novel - Title: American Psycho - Point of view: First-Person - Setting: New York City, the late 1980s - Character: Patrick Bateman. Description: Patrick Bateman is the novel's protagonist and narrator. He is a 27-year-old Harvard graduate who now lives in New York City and works on Wall Street as an investment banker. He religiously watches "The Patty Winters Show" and idolizes Donald Trump. He is meticulous about his cleanliness and health – his morning routine boasts an impressive array of exercises and beauty products – and he is interested in nothing but the finest, most expensive things – from shoes, to dining experiences, to women and friends. Patrick Bateman is also a serial rapist and murderer. He is a man filled not only with anger but also with the sadistic desire to enact his most violent and twisted fantasies on other people, especially on those whose lives he does not see as having value, like prostitutes and the homeless. Throughout the course of the novel, he takes the reader through the events of his life and into the darkest parts of his mind, and as his addictions to drugs, sex, and violence grow, the reader follows Bateman down a graphic spiral of torture, hallucination, and insanity. - Character: Paul Owen. Description: A fellow Wall Street investment banker, Paul Owen manages "the Fisher account," a fact Patrick Bateman obsesses over, though the reader never learns the significance of this particular account. Paul confuses Bateman for Marcus Halberstam, another banker, so often that, when in his presence, Bateman calls Evelyn "Cecilia," the name of Marcus' girlfriend. Bateman despises (and is likely jealous of) Paul, and eventually plots to kill him, taking him to dinner (while pretending to be Marcus Halberstam), getting him incredibly drunk, and killing him in his own apartment with an ax. This particular murder, however, is often considered to be a possible hallucination of Bateman's, as others report Paul being seen in London and, in the final pages of the novel, Bateman's lawyer, Harold Carnes, tells Bateman he had dinner with Paul just the week before. - Character: Evelyn Richards. Description: Evelyn is Patrick Bateman's fiancée. Though the two of them are both unhappy in their relationship and Bateman quite often treats Evelyn rather cruelly, they stay together largely for appearances. Like Bateman, Evelyn is shallow and materialistic, focusing on how others view her (and how much they enjoy her Christmas Party). She is often gossiping and expects nothing but the finest things as gifts from her fiancé. She values objects and money over real, intimate love and connection. Eventually, Bateman dumps her (after tricking her into eating a chocolate-covered, used urinal cake). - Character: Courtney Lawrence. Description: Courtney, one of Evelyn's closest friends, is in a highly-unfulfilling relationship with Luis Carruthers and having an ongoing affair with Patrick Bateman. In contrast to Evelyn, Courtney is often out on the town with Bateman and the rest of his male friends. She has a penchant for pills, mostly anti-depressants, and is often described by Bateman as being spaced out or completely wasted, though still very physically attractive. - Character: Jean. Description: Jean is Patrick Bateman's secretary, or, as he refers to her, "my secretary who is in love with me." She does, indeed, seem to care deeply for Bateman, doting on him in the office and following whatever orders he may give her, whether it be a business task, making a reservation at a restaurant, or dressing or acting in a particular way when in his presence. Throughout the course of the novel, the two appear to grow closer (Bateman even takes Jean to dinner one night) but he ultimately shirks off her affection and nothing more comes of it. - Character: Luis Carruthers. Description: A closeted gay man and Wall Street colleague of Patrick Bateman's, Luis Carruthers is the boyfriend of Courtney Lawrence, who seems highly uninterested in the relationship. Later in the novel, when Bateman attempts to kill Luis in a bathroom stall, Luis mistakes his advance for a display of secret affection and spends much of the remainder of the novel in a hopeless and pitiful pursuit of Bateman's interest. - Character: David Van Patten. Description: David Van Patten is a fellow Wall Street banker and another member of Patrick Bateman's main social circle. He has a girlfriend who he regularly cheats on and is the first person the reader sees wave a dollar bill in front of the face of a beggar, only to snatch it away and run off cackling. - Theme: Materialism and Consumption. Description: In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman and his band of incredibly wealthy Wall Street colleagues live lives of utter excess, purchasing nothing but the finest things, wearing only the finest clothes, eating at only the chicest restaurants, and looking down on any who fall short of their standard. These characters are exaggerated stereotypes of the 1980s Wall Street "yuppie" class that Ellis means to critique – often to the point of satire – in his novel. Ellis engages in this critique not through any attempt at realism, but rather by amplifying the characters' obsession with materiality and abandonment of all values other than wealth to extreme degrees. Every time Bateman encounters another person, he describes in detail what they are wearing and the high-end designer labels of their clothes. His meticulous descriptions and severe judgments reveal a character who calculates a person's worth based entirely on their wealth and outward appearance. Bateman and his friends' obsessions with their own images – being seen in the right places, with the right people, looking the right way – displays a hollowness of self, suggesting that the shallowness of this "yuppie" class may be connected to feelings that they exist within a culture that says the only way for them to attain self-esteem, value, and place in society is to buy it. Bateman and his associates also have a practice of ridiculing homeless people and beggars. Bateman, for instance, describes one homeless woman as "ugly" and "old," and makes a practice of dangling money in front of beggars' faces, only to gleefully snatch it away and enjoy their anguish and tears. Bateman and his Wall Street friends are model citizens in a capitalist society: they work, make money, and spend it. Because beggars and the homeless do not have the wealth and possessions that they do, they are seen as devoid of value and humanity, not worthy of respect or care. But Ellis pushes even further (the novel isn't called American Jerk after all; it's American Psycho). Bateman's hatred and mistreatment of the homeless turns violent when he first interrogates and then attacks a homeless man, Al, and his dog. After telling him to "get a job" and ridiculing him for "reek[ing] of… shit," Bateman slowly and meticulously drives a blade into the man's eyes and stomps on his dog's legs. He goes on to kill a number of other homeless people, including Al. These attacks indicate, obviously, that not only does Bateman believe that the homeless are beneath his care, but that they are undeserving even to live. They also suggest a kind of desperation on Bateman's part, however: he kills the homeless not just because he can, but because his worldview means he must. A homeless person being allowed to live suggests that people have inherent worth that has nothing to do with their wealth. By this logic, only by murdering and torturing the homeless – only by asserting that they have no worth – can Bateman fully believe that his wealth and possessions and status give him worth. The novel, then, pushes Bateman and his friends' ideas about homeless people to their furthest logical extensions until the result reveals the insanity – the psychotic-ness – of the original belief. The novel does the same with the idea of "consumption." Bateman and his wealth- and possession-obsessed friends believe that consumption, the purchase of material goods, is all that matters. As it progresses, the novel graphically relates Bateman's consumption of material goods – the best clothes, electronics, fine dining – to a cannibalistic consumption, as he starts eating the remains of his victims and consuming their own flesh in front of them. At one point, for instance, the novel describes "the fresh smell of blood cooking" and a pair of cooked breasts lying, "rather delicately, on a china plate I bought at the Pottery Barn." Here, Ellis compares the insanity of Bateman's meticulous materialism to the methodical consumption of human flesh. As cannibalism is a human eating the flesh of another human, the novel suggests that materialism is eating away at Bateman's own humanity and his ability to value others as anything other than flesh to be used. Bateman's sociopathic appetite for violence and disregard for others' humanity, the novel insists, is just the ultimate end point for a capitalist, consumer culture that values only wealth and materialism and sees no inherent value in anything else. - Theme: Identity and Isolation. Description: Throughout the novel, instances of consumed and mistaken identity contribute to a growing experience of isolation on the part of both the reader and narrator. Bateman is repeatedly mistaken for other people; when he is out with his friends it is not uncommon for someone to greet him as someone else and not be corrected. These constant moments of mistaken identity suggest that, within the world of the novel, it isn't really important who somebody is because the characters' value and knowledge of one another is entirely superficial. In a community where no one has any real relationships, no one truly to truly know or connect with, Bateman ends up isolated inside his mind, where he eventually begins to crumble and go insane. In fact, Ellis borrows the idea that isolation is inherent in a capitalist society from the communist thinker Karl Marx, and creates for his narrator and reader an experience of isolation in a hyper-capitalist community. Ellis amplifies this notion for the reader by surrounding Bateman with a rotating group of fellow Wall Street bankers (who almost always refer to one another by last name) and offering little-to-no introduction for new minor characters. While this can lead to immense confusion, it also sets up a world in which people are interchangeable, not worth getting to know, and exist more as objects than humans. With no other characters to get to know, the reader is left alone and isolated with Bateman and his (increasingly psychotic) mind. Ironically, the one person who seems to truly care for and be interested in Bateman is his secretary, Jean ("who is in love with me"). For the majority of the novel Bateman treats her rudely, telling her what she should be wearing and how to behave and ordering her around coldly. Despite this, Jean has an affection for Bateman that is evident nowhere else in the novel, and she often attempts to better get to know him. But just when it seems as if the two may be nearing a closer and intimate connection, Bateman brushes off her affection and friendship. Unwilling (or unable) to open up to her (to engage with and reveal his true self and identity) Bateman recedes into his isolation. This connection between mistaken identity and isolation comes to a head surrounding the murder of Paul Owen. After killing Owen, Bateman buys a ticket to London in Owen's name and then sets up Owen's New York apartment to make it look as if Owen has left town. When a private investigator looking into the disappearance comes to speak with Bateman, he mentions this and says that Owen has been possibly sighted in London. Knowing that Owen is dead, Bateman assumes that these witnesses were mistaken. But when Bateman later approaches his lawyer regarding a voicemail in which he confessed to the murder, his lawyer tells him that he "had dinner… with Paul Owen… twice… in London… just ten days ago." Suddenly a number of questions arise: Is Paul Owen alive or dead? Did Bateman simply imagine or fantasize about killing him? Did Bateman kill someone else he only thought was Owen? But Ellis (or Bateman) never gives the reader more knowledge, and it's never even clear if it is Ellis or Bateman who is leaving the questions unresolved. And so, suddenly, the reader who has been in Bateman's head through his first-person narration is thrust out of Bateman's head, leaving Bateman alone and isolated with the truth of what he has done, alone with his own questions, guilt, or confusion. The novel suggests that Bateman is the ultimate result of a society where identity is tied solely to material worth, and so he is unable to connect with others and recedes into his own mind – unable even to recognize or understand other people, and in the end is driven so far into his own mind as to be inaccessible even to the reader. - Theme: Monotony and Desensitization. Description: Patrick Bateman leads a monotonous life. This affects both his behavior and the way he communicates with the reader. In the novel's second chapter, titled "Morning," Bateman describes his fastidious and meticulous morning routine, involving exercise, multiple skin- and hair-care products, and a highly-organized breakfast. By introducing the reader to Bateman's life in this way, Ellis sets up an understanding of our narrator as someone who lives a very specifically regimented life with day after day of identical, repeated routine. This monotony then extends into Bateman's relationships and social life. It is Bateman's violence that, at first, interrupts the monotony of his life. Early in the novel, it comes by way of his fantasizing about a violent act while at dinner with Evelyn or his friends, and it later evolves into full-blown torture, murder, and cannibalism. It can be imagined, then, that one of the things leading Bateman down his spiral of violence is this very monotony that both he and the reader experience: Bateman has become entirely desensitized to life, and torture and murder are a cure for his numbness. The revolving door of interchangeable people, restaurants, clothing, and events in Bateman's life is, at first, difficult for the reader to follow, but by repeating these patterns continuously, Ellis demonstrates the insignificance of the details and allows the reader to become desensitized to this high volume of similar information and experience. The numbness to the monotony of Bateman's life that Ellis creates for the reader is joined by an identically-created numbness to Bateman's violent acts. Though the novel's vivid and graphic depictions of sex, torture, and murder can be initially unsettling, the sheer volume and detail of these descriptions allows the reader to experience a desensitization to upsetting material. As the volume of graphic violence described and the intensity and perversion of the gore both increase, the reader grows more and more accustomed to the language and images. The methodical listing of violent acts thus becomes not unlike Bateman's methodical descriptions of his daily hygiene routines or meticulously detailed descriptions of the clothes that everyone around him is wearing. Ellis creates an environment in which the reader can become as unfazed by intense sexual and physical violence as Bateman, and while the reader may not have the affection for and addiction to it that Bateman has, they are slowly and steadily brought down his spiral with him. By creating a parallel between the numbing monotony of Bateman's life contributing to his appetite for violence and the monotony of the descriptions of these violent acts numbing the reader to their upsetting nature, Ellis creates similar experiences for his novel's narrator and his reader, leading the reader to contemplate that the violent acts of Patrick Bateman my be something we are each potentially capable of. - Theme: Vice and Violence. Description: Patrick Bateman seems to live off sex and drugs as much as he lives off expensive food, alcohol, and clothing. Early in the novel, his appetite for sex and drugs remains concurrent but distinct from his violent acts, however as things develop and his addictions grow beyond his control, the lines between sex and violence and between drugs and violence are blurred, and Bateman's vices become intertwined in his torture and murder. This leads him down a path of even more perverted and reckless behavior. Bateman is obsessed with sex. He is constantly sizing-up women and renting porn videos. Many of his victims early in the novel are prostitutes he hires (often two at a time) for aggressive, coercive sex. Early on, though, there is a distinction between sex and violence: he will have sex (albeit rough) with the women and then move into torturing and murdering them afterwards. This distinct progression from sex to violence changes as Bateman descends further into madness, and the lines between sex and violence blur. The sex itself becomes more violent, and Bateman begins incorporating his torture tactics into sex more and more. Furthermore, towards the end of the novel, Bateman seems to really get sexual satisfaction directly from killing; he often describes himself as having an erection while torturing women. He also begins to commit sex acts on dying women and dead bodies, for example in the chapter "Girl," when Bateman tells the reader, "She only has half a mouth left, and I fuck it once, then twice, three times in all." Instead of sex moving into torture and murder, the acts become one and the same. Bateman and his friends are also heavy drug users. Early in the novel, Bateman's cocaine use is largely social, but he later does more and more of the drug and his attitude towards it become increasingly aggressive. Bateman begins taking pills, too – downers like Halcion, Valium, and Xanax. At first, he claims to be taking them for his anxiety, but he eventually becomes so addicted that his "body has mutated and adapted to the drug." As the variety, volume, and frequency of Bateman's drug use increases, he begins to have less and less control over himself and his violence, leading to reckless behavior that would be highly uncharacteristic for the meticulous and image-conscious man we met at the beginning of the novel. For example, in the chapter "A Glimpse of a Thursday Afternoon," Bateman has such a strong reaction to taking pills to fend off "a pounding migraine" and "a major-league anxiety attack" that he ends up stumbling through the streets and, ultimately, he kills people in public and without protecting his identity. This public killing leads to a massive police chase and also results in Bateman being recognized, threatened, and robbed. While at the beginning of the novel he was meticulous about who he would kill and how, he loses control and care for such considerations as he spirals further down into drugs. Throughout the novel, Ellis shows that Bateman's excessive behaviors with sex, drugs, and violence are uncontrollable. While he was, at the beginning of the novel, able to separate these behaviors and keep them, like all other aspects of his life, organized and compartmentalized, his vices and violence quickly begin to spill over and control all facets of his life. This is, perhaps, Ellis's gesture to discuss morality in the novel. Even for a man as regimented and married to his set of values as Patrick Bateman, it is impossible to resist the overpowering nature of vice, and the reader follows Bateman as his vices lead him to lose track of even the things most important to him, such as appearance and order. In doing this, Ellis slightly humanizes Bateman; though his actions are horrific and inhuman, he is as vulnerable to vice as the rest of us. - Theme: The Truth. Description: Patrick Bateman is an unreliable narrator. By pairing the reader with a storyteller who may or may not be trustworthy in a landscape of drug-addled confusion and hallucination, Ellis creates a world for the reader that is constantly in flux and unstable, mimicking the experience of being inside the mind of a deranged and depraved serial killer and, ultimately, revealing the possibility for the spark of an "American psycho" to be dormant within each of us. The relationship between the events Bateman talks us through and when those events actually take place in time is often unclear. In the chapter "Girls," Bateman moves immediately and without transition from describing how "Christie has kept on a pair of thigh-high suede boots from Henri Bendel that I've made her wear" to "Elizabeth, naked, running from the bedroom, blood already on her, is moving with difficulty as she screams out something garbled." The passage of time between chapters is also often left unclear. Sometimes when Bateman refers to "yesterday," he will describe the events of the previous day he has relayed to us. But more often, especially when moving from one chapter to the next, it will at first seem to the reader that time has been continuous until Bateman mentions events of "yesterday" that do not align with what we have seen in the timeline we've been following. Not only does this make Bateman's story difficult to follow, but it leads to questions about whether or not Bateman's portrayal of events is honest and trustworthy. Is he leaving things out intentionally or unintentionally? What and why? Is his memory faulty? Early in the novel, Bateman describes hypothetical violent acts to the reader, as well as violent acts he has committed in the past – people he has tortured and killed. It is unclear in these moments whether or not he is being honest. The reader does not yet know if Bateman is someone who fantasizes about violence and tells fake stories about it or someone who actually commits these acts. As Bateman's descent into heavier drug use and more violence continues, the truth becomes even more difficult to discern. In "Chase, Manhattan," Bateman describes a large and elaborate police chase which ends with him hiding in his new office while multiple police cars, SWAT teams, and helicopters surround the building. The chapter then ends abruptly and moves onto a detailed description of Huey Lewis and the News. We never learn more about what happened during the night of the police chase, and there do not seem to have been any consequences for Bateman. Though we later learn that he definitely left the voice messages he describes leaving during the case (because his lawyer discusses receiving them) this huge event is left unresolved and unclear. Did Bateman hallucinate the chase or did he intentionally exaggerate the events for the reader? As the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult for the reader to hold onto an understanding of truth. As time moves more erratically and Bateman's descriptions (or lack thereof) of his life become wilder and more unreliable, the reader is left to question the entire novel, which now exists somewhere in a limbo between the truth, Bateman's honesty and forthcoming in telling his story, and the memories and perceptions of a drug-addicted psychopath. The largest nail in the coffin of truth is Harold Carnes' assertion that he had lunch the previous week with a very much alive Paul Owen in London. The reader is left to wonder if Owen's murder, one of the novel's most central events, happened or not, and, thus if the events of the entire novel can be trusted. It is entirely possible (and intentionally left open by Ellis) that Patrick Bateman never committed a single violent act, but instead either hallucinated or fabricated his tales based on his personal fantasies of violence. But whether he did or did not rape, torture, and murder multiple people, the reader realizes that it doesn't really matter if Bateman committed the violent acts he's described throughout the novel. In leading the reader to this realization, Ellis proposes that even a person who is not torturing and murdering strangers and friends could have the desire and capability for such violence inside of them, especially when under the influence of drugs and sex. Bateman's existence in a capitalist society has bred in him a violence; Ellis doesn't need him to act on this violence in order to critique the hyper-capitalist, materialistic, and shallow society he saw growing to dominate American life and culture in the late 1980s. The truth – erratic and fleeting throughout the novel – is, in many ways, unnecessary to the novel's argument. - Climax: Bateman's police chase and his confessional voicemails to his lawyer, Harold Carnes - Summary: American Psycho begins with a quote from Dante's Inferno: "Abandon all hope ye who enter here" is graffitied across the side of a bank in blood-red paint. It is the late 1980s in New York city. The reader is introduced to the novel's narrator, Patrick Bateman, a 27-year-old Wall Street investment banker. Bateman, who relays the action of the novel, as well as his innermost thoughts, opinions of others, and musings on popular culture, is with his friend, Timothy Price, on their way to have dinner at the home of Bateman's girlfriend, Evelyn Richards. Evelyn's best friend, Courtney Lawrence, with whom Bateman is having an affair, will also be in attendance, along with two friends of Evelyn, Stash and Vanden, strange, artistic types who graduated from Camden. From this first dinner, Bateman goes on to relay the stream-of-consciousness musings and events of his highly-regimented life. He describes his morning routine, which consists of a fitness regimen, skin-care regimen, and a carefully planned breakfast. He watches "The Patty Winters Show" (a daytime talk show) religiously, often calling his friends to ridicule the guests for their strange habits, fears, or perversions, and is always renting and returning VHS tapes of his favorite films. Bateman and his circle of Wall Street friends – which often includes Price, Craig McDermott, and David Van Patten – dine at only the chicest and most expensive restaurants, wear only the finest designer clothes, and pay attention to only the most physically attractive women (those they deem "Hardbodies"). What may appear at first to be the perfect life for a wealthy man immersed in the capitalist, materialistic society of 1980s Wall Street, however, has a dark underbelly. Not only is Bateman unhappy in his relationship with Evelyn, he has a sex obsession and occupies most of his evenings with lovers, porn, and prostitutes. He and his friends are also heavy drinkers and drug users; cocaine is the drug of choice for the men, while Courtney and the novel's other women tend more towards anti-depressants and other pills. Despite spending lots of time together, Bateman and his crowd have little-to-no real connection with one another. They focus solely on the clothes they wear, the places they are seen, and who they are with. They despise and mock anyone who does not have their wealth or taste, especially the homeless, who they often ridicule and taunt. In his world of extreme capitalism and consumption, where people are simply other objects to be valued or discarded, Bateman and his vices are isolated inside his own mind. To top it all off, Patrick Bateman is revealed as a sociopathic serial killer. Early in the novel, Bateman fantasizes about committing violent acts. When he is out to dinner with Evelyn or at a nightclub with his friends, for example, he will describe the painful things he would like to do to others; he also references murders he has committed in the past, though it is initially unclear whether or not these events truly transpired. As the novel continues, however, Bateman's violent thoughts are accompanied by violent actions, as he describes in detail acts of rape, torture, and murder. Patrick Bateman kills people who he believes are devoid of value. One of the first attacks the reader experiences through Bateman's narration is the murder of a homeless man named Al and his dog. Bateman spots him sitting on the sidewalk and stops to taunt him, calling him worthless and disgusting and asking why he doesn't simply "get a job." Al begins to cry, and then Bateman suddenly stabs him in the eye. After slicing and gouging out one eye, Bateman goes after the next. Al's dog begins to bark, and Bateman stamps on his legs, breaking them. He tosses a quarter at the man and walks away. (Later in the novel, he will see Al again and stab him to death on the street.) Bateman also describes to the reader the torture and murder of a number of women. He hires call girls to come to his apartment (or occasionally takes a woman home after a date), gets them drunk or high, and has sex with them. The sex, which he describes graphically, is often coercive and very rough and leads into Bateman raping the women, tying them up, and slowly torturing them to their deaths. The most prominent murder committed by Bateman in the novel is that of Paul Owen, a fellow Wall Street investment banker who Bateman despises. Owen is the manager of the mysterious "Fisher account," a bank account Bateman is obsessed with and always asking after. On top of that, Owen is constantly confusing Bateman for another banker named Marcus Halberstam. One night, Bateman (or, rather, Halberstam) takes Owen out to dinner. He gets him incredibly drunk, has him pay the check, and the two go back to Owen's apartment. There, Bateman murders Owen with an axe. He cleans up the scene, packs a suitcase of Owen's things, and books a one-way ticket to London to throw off any suspicions surrounding Owen's disappearance. Bateman disposes of Owen's body, but will later use his apartment for other murders and leave a number of dead bodies behind. One day, while at work, Bateman's doting secretary Jean (or, as he calls her, "my secretary who is in love with me") tells him that a detective has come to see him. The detective, Donald Kimball, tells Bateman that he has been hired by Paul Owen's girlfriend to investigate his disappearance. He wants to ask Bateman for some general information about Owen and details of Bateman's whereabouts on the night of the disappearance. Bateman tells Kimball that Owen was "part of that whole Yale thing" and "ate a balanced diet" and that he had a (fictional) date with a woman named Veronica on the evening in question. When Bateman asks Kimball if Paul Owen has been seen by anyone in London, he replies that, yes, two people have mentioned possibly spotting him on the other side of the pond. Somewhat relieved, Bateman ends their conversation. Meanwhile, Bateman is growing more and more erratic in his behavior and sadistic and reckless in his crimes. His drug use increases heavily, as he begins adding to his cocaine habit an addiction to a number of different pills, leading to frequent hallucinations. On one day, he describes to the reader a reaction to pills that leaves him sick and stumbling through the streets of New York, before ending up in a diner where he is so high he isn't even able to place an order. His torture and murder of young women also escalates. The killings become much more drawn out, and often include Bateman performing sex acts on his victims' dying or dead bodies. In one particularly gruesome moment, he disintegrates a woman's vagina with acid until he is able to stuff it with cheese and then insert into it the end of a cage—where he has been keeping a rat which he found in his toilet. He describes to the reader the rat eating away at the woman's flesh and crawling around inside her body, only to be revealed later when Bateman cuts off the woman's head. He also descends into cannibalism, at one point taking the reader through the meticulous preparation and consumption of a woman's flesh. Bateman also stops reserving his killing for people who may not be missed; he murders his ex-girlfriend Bethany after getting her drunk at lunch and even stabs a young child to death in a public park. One night, as he is walking through New York, Bateman sees a man playing saxophone on the street corner. Bateman quickly pulls out a gun and shoots the man to death, not noticing that he is within sight of a police car. This begins a police chase throughout Manhattan during which Bateman kills several other people, including a taxi driver whose car he hijacks. The chase ends with Bateman hiding in his new office, as SWAT teams and helicopters surround the building. Hysterical, Bateman makes a phone call to his lawyer, Harold Carnes, and confesses all of his crimes, including the murder of the missing Paul Owen. Bateman begins to hallucinate, staying in the office until the sun starts to rise, and then breaks from the action to detail to the reader the entire career of the band Huey Louis and the News. Days later, Bateman (somehow still free and living his normal life) returns to Paul Owen's apartment, preparing to be greeted with the smell of rotting corpses. Instead, he finds the apartment open and miraculously clean; a realtor is showing the apartment to potential buyers. She asks Bateman if he "saw the add in The Times." Bateman looks around in disbelief, and quickly leaves. Several weeks later, at the opening of a new club, Bateman spots his lawyer across the room. He decides to go over and confront him about the voicemails he left the night of the police chase. Carnes, his lawyer, is amused, mistaking Bateman for someone else and teasing that the "joke" was unbelievable because Bateman is "such a bloody ass-kisser" that he would never be able to commit the acts described in the voicemail. What's more, Carnes tells him, Bateman couldn't have killed Paul Owen because he dined with Owen twice just the week before. The novel ends much like it began: with Bateman out for drinks with his friend, discussing clothing, their work, and other vacuous topics. The reader is left to wonder how Bateman's scattered life of drugs, sex, and violence will continue, as his eye is caught by a sign hung on the wall of the bar. The sign reads: "This is not an exit."

- Genre: Fiction - Title: Americanah - Point of view: Third person limited, following Ifemelu and Obinze - Setting: Nigeria, America, England - Character: Ifemelu. Description: The novel's main protagonist, an intelligent, stubborn, outspoken Nigerian woman who moves to America to attend university. She has difficulty adjusting there but eventually becomes a citizen, wins a fellowship at Princeton, and starts a popular blog about race. She has periods of deep depression at times and often feels like an outsider. She has three serious boyfriends: Obinze, Curt, and Blaine. She eventually moves back to Nigeria, reconnects with Obinze, and builds a life for herself there. - Character: Obinze Maduewesi. Description: The other protagonist, a calm, thoughtful, intelligent young Nigerian man. He is raised by his mother, a professor, and is very well-read and obsessed with America. He moves to England after graduating university and tries to become a citizen, but is ultimately deported. He then becomes rich selling real estate in Nigeria. He marries Kosi and has a child, but never falls out of love with Ifemelu, whom he dated as a teenager. - Character: Aunty Uju. Description: Ifemelu's aunt, an intelligent, strong-willed doctor. In Nigeria she becomes the mistress of The General and lives off of his wealth, but then she has to flee to America, where she lives a life of stress and hardship. She is always the closest to Ifemelu of any of her relatives, even after she seems to change and harden in America. - Theme: Race and Racism. Description: While Americanah is a tale of individual characters, it is also a sweeping analysis and critique of race and racism in America, England, and Nigeria, and the novel is peppered with Adichie's biting observations on the subject. In Nigeria, Ifemelu doesn't really think of herself as black. There is still a racial hierarchy in Nigerian culture, however, as light-skinned or mixed-race people are considered more attractive, and people use products to make their skin lighter. But when Ifemelu and Obinze go to America and England respectively, they find that racism is a much more pervasive part of life. Ifemelu first truly discovers race—and starts to consider herself black—only when she is forced to adapt to America's complex racial politics. Adichie gives many examples of racist incidents, like Obinze being mocked for scraping his knee because he's a "knee-grow," people assuming the white Curt couldn't be dating Ifemelu, or patients refusing to have Aunty Uju as their doctor. Ifemelu then starts a blog about race, and Adichie scatters blog posts throughout the novel. Through these posts Adichie is able to be most outwardly critical of racism in America: Ifemelu describes many microaggressions, incidents, and assumptions she has experienced that many whites wouldn't always notice or understand, and she is able to do so bluntly and humorously. Many of these posts (as well as Ifemelu's relationship with Blaine) involve navigating the differing experiences of African-Americans and "American-Africans," or Africans who come to live in America and experience racial prejudice for the first time.Most of the novel's discussion of race involves pointing out racism and humanizing it (both the victims and the perpetrators), but Adichie also gives some examples of people overcoming racism through close friendship and romantic love. Characters like Curt, Kimberly, and Nigel achieve this to varying degrees of success in their relationships with Ifemelu and Obinze. As Shan complains about in describing her own book, most editors don't want a novel that focuses on race—the issue must somehow be made more "complex" or described so beautifully that the reader doesn't even notice it. With this Adichie comments on her own work, declaring that race and racism are big and complicated enough issues on their own, and they deserve a novel as sprawling and complex as Americanah. - Theme: Identity. Description: Identity is an important theme in the novel, as the plot follows Ifemelu and Obinze growing up and finding their place in the world. Because of their life situations, identity as a person is inextricably linked to racial and national identity for both these main characters. When they are teenagers Ifemelu is already smart and outspoken, and Obinze is calm and thoughtful, and as they grow up these qualities are then affected by outside cultural forces. In America, Ifemelu must struggle with her identity as an American-African, or someone seen as an outsider. First she deals with this by taking on an American accent and straightening her hair—seemingly giving in to a new identity as an American. She even has to use a fake identity to look for work, as she only has a student visa. Later Ifemelu gains confidence and comes to embrace her Nigerianness, even as she adapts more easily to American culture and finds success there. She gives up her American accent and lets her hair grow naturally, while at the same time dating a rich white man and later winning a fellowship to Princeton. This blend of cultural identities seems healthy and natural for Ifemelu, but it then means that she inhabits a kind of in-between place, where she is neither wholly American nor (when she returns home) wholly Nigerian: she is an "Americanah."Obinze has a more difficult experience adapting to a new cultural identity in England. His visa expires and he is forced to take on other people's identities to find work, and to buy into a green-card marriage. Everywhere there is a fear of immigrants, and Obinze feels invisible and worthless. He is finally caught and deported back to Nigeria and then sets about building a new identity for himself, having been forced to give up his old dream of America. The new Obinze makes lots of money, marries a beautiful but uninteresting woman, and becomes a Nigerian "big man." He is seen as a huge success by his peers, but it all feels slightly false to Obinze until Ifemelu returns. Ifemelu, having her own identity crisis in returning to Nigeria and feeling out of place, then reconnects with Obinze and the two begin to work toward reconciling the differing identities they have constructed in their separation. Apart from these two, many secondary characters also relate to this theme, like Emenike, who totally changes his personality to become a cultured and wealthy British citizen. Overall the situations and characterizations of the novel show the many forces working upon the creation of someone's identity: cultural, racial, and economic ones, as well as personal will and preference. - Theme: Romantic Love. Description: The central plot tying Americanah together is the romantic relationship between Ifemelu and Obinze. They have a kind of idealized teenage love as they find each other in school and become incredibly close, but they are then separated when Ifemelu goes to America. Ifemelu cuts off contact with Obinze during her period of depression, and this silence goes on for years. During this time each character has their own romantic experiences: Ifemelu dates Curt and Blaine, while Obinze marries Kosi. Even while Obinze and Ifemelu are separated, their romantic lives remain the central plot focus, particularly as Ifemelu deals with racial and cultural issues in her romantic relationships. With this Adichie not only creates tension and an interesting plot, but also delivers social commentary through an individual and emotional lens.Apart from this central relationship, Adichie examines other kinds of romantic relationships as well, like Kimberly's idolization of her narcissistic husband Don, Aunty Uju becoming the devoted mistress of The General, and many of the women of Lagos dating and marrying for money alone. Most of the novel's romantic relationships are portrayed as somehow unhealthy or lacking, and the contrast to this is the kind of pure, romantic love and connection between Ifemelu and Obinze. The novel ends without them reaching any definite conclusion, but it does at least end on a hopeful note, implying that Ifemelu and Obinze's love might be able to rise above the world of materialistic, one-sided, or unhealthy relationships. - Theme: Separation vs. Connection. Description: A more metaphorical theme that spans the novel is the idea of separation versus connection. This involves personal misunderstandings, physical distances, and cultural and racial divides. The most obvious separation that defines the plot is when Ifemelu and Obinze are physically separated by thousands of miles, with Ifemelu going to America and Obinze staying in Nigeria and then going to England. This then leads to the personal separation between the two when Ifemelu breaks off contact with Obinze. The later parts of the novel are then about reestablishing that close connection between the two, as they reconnect geographically by both returning to Nigeria.Other personal separations concern the other characters as well, like Ifemelu's mother's disconnection from the corrupt realities of life, Aunty Uju's disconnection from Dike's experiences, and Obinze's personal distance from Kosi. Among all these personal and physical separations, there are also the many cultural and racial divides focused on in the themes of race and identity. Ifemelu's experience and blog focus on the many misunderstandings and prejudices that fill her life in both America and Nigeria. But just as Ifemelu's relationships with Obinze and Dike are shown as hopeful portrayals of real connection, so there are also examples of human connection crossing racial and cultural divides, as with Ifemelu's friendship with Kimberly and her relationship with Curt, the diverse characters at Shan's "salon," and Obinze's friendship with Nigel. - Theme: Cultural Criticism. Description: As with the themes of racism and identity, Americanah allows Adichie to observe and critique the cultures of Nigeria, America, and England through scenes that are sometimes humorous and sometimes tragic. In Nigeria (particularly Lagos), Adichie focuses on the culture of corruption and materialism, where most people get rich through fraud or corruption, officials expect bribes, and women date or marry a man based on his wealth and prestige. Everyone is expected to grovel before the rich, who are expected to ostentatiously show off their wealth by visiting Western countries and sending their children to Western schools. This leads to a Nigeria where essentials are lacking for most of the population (there is rarely consistent light or water), and Western culture and whiteness are idealized over Nigerian culture.In America, Adichie focuses mostly on the racial hierarchy and prejudices Ifemelu discovers there, but she also comments on the prevalence of depression and anxiety in American society. She especially focuses on liberal white Americans, who like to criticize their own country but still imagine it as superior to others, the one dispensing charity instead of needing it. Adichie spends less time on England/Europe, and much of that involves racism, but she also highlights the fear of immigrants—a fear that ignores England's own colonial past, as the people from the countries England itself created eventually make their way to England. Along with all these serious criticisms, the novel also contains many lighthearted observations about the different cultures, like ways of speaking or dressing. Americanah is a large and complex enough book that it can encompass individual stories of romance and personal growth, searing critiques of racism, and many astute observations about the cultures of Nigeria, England, and America all at once. - Climax: Dike's suicide attempt - Summary: Ifemelu, a Nigerian woman living in America, gets her hair braided at an African salon. She interacts with the women there and remembers her past. Meanwhile Obinze, a rich man living in Nigeria, emails Ifemelu and remembers his own past. The chapters are also scattered with posts from Ifemelu's blog about race in America. Ifemelu grows up in Lagos, Nigeria. She is close with her Aunty Uju, who becomes the mistress of The General, a wealthy married man. Ifemelu meets Obinze at school and they fall in love. Obinze introduces Ifemelu to his mother, a professor. Aunty Uju gets pregnant and has The General's baby, named Dike. The General dies and Uju flees with Dike to America. Ifemelu and Obinze go to university together. They start having sex and Ifemelu has a pregnancy scare. There are many strikes and the university is shut down. Ifemelu considers going to America, and she gets a visa and a scholarship to a university in Philadelphia. When Ifemelu arrives she stays in Brooklyn for the summer with Aunty Uju and Dike. Uju seems stressed out and unhappy. She gives Ifemelu a fake identity card to find work, and Ifemelu goes to Philadelphia for school. Ginika, her friend from Nigeria, helps introduce Ifemelu to American culture and its racial politics. Ifemelu can't find a job, and she starts using an American accent. She makes friends with some African students. Ifemelu's money runs out, and she accepts a job helping a tennis coach "relax." He touches her sexually and gives her $100. Ifemelu goes home and feels guilty and depressed. She breaks off contact with Obinze, and stops eating and sleeping. Ginika finds her a job babysitting for a wealthy woman named Kimberly. Kimberly and Ifemelu become friends. Ifemelu visits Aunty Uju who has gotten married and moved to Massachusetts, and flirts with a young man named Blaine on the trip there. Ifemelu starts dating Kimberly's cousin Curt, a rich, handsome white man. Curt takes Ifemelu on many trips and helps her get a good job and a green card. Meanwhile Obinze is hurt by Ifemelu's sudden silence. He graduates and moves to England. He stays with friends but can't find a good job, and his visa expires. He rents an identity card and finds menial work. He makes friends with a boss and coworker, but then is turned in as an illegal immigrant. Obinze borrows money from Emenike, an old friend who has gotten rich in England, and pays for a green-card marriage with a girl named Cleotilde. On the day of his wedding, though, Obinze is arrested and sent back to Nigeria. Ifemelu, feeling the pressure of her interracial relationship, cheats on Curt and he breaks up with her. She gets depressed again. Her parents visit. Ifemelu starts her race blog and it gets very popular. She becomes well-known and is asked to give talks. She meets Blaine again and they start dating. He is a professor at Yale and very principled. Ifemelu also meets his domineering sister Shan. Ifemelu and Blaine start following Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. They have a fight when Ifemelu skips a protest Blaine arranges. They get back together, but are mostly united by their shared passion for Obama. Ifemelu wins a fellowship to live at Princeton. After a while she grows restless and decides to quit her blog, break up with Blaine, and move back to Nigeria. It is a week before she plans to return to Nigeria when Ifemelu goes to the hair salon. As she leaves the hair salon, Aunty Uju calls to tell her that Dike tried to kill himself. Ifemelu rushes to be with him. Obinze has gotten rich selling real estate. He is married to the beautiful Kosi and has a daughter. Ifemelu spends lots of time with Dike and then goes to Lagos. Her old friend Ranyinudo helps her readjust, teasing her about being an "Americanah." Ifemelu goes to a club for Nigerians back from living abroad. She starts working for a women's magazine but then quits and starts a new blog about life in Lagos. Dike visits her. Ifemelu finally calls Obinze and they meet up. They start seeing each other daily and rekindle their romance. They spend blissful weeks together, but then break up again in the face of his marriage. Obinze tries to divorce Kosi, but she won't accept it. After seven months Obinze shows up at Ifemelu's door, saying he is leaving Kosi and wants to try again with Ifemelu. She invites him in.

- Genre: Speculative Fiction, Dystopian Fiction, Children's Novel - Title: Among the Hidden - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: A farm and a nearby housing development, at an undetermined point in the future - Character: Luke Garner. Description: The protagonist of the novel, Luke is a 12-year-old shadow child, or illegal third child. For his safety, it's essential that Luke hide from anyone outside his immediate family. But since Dad is a rural farmer, Luke is able to play outside near the house, work in the garden, and help out in the barn, and he and his older brothers Matthew and Mark sometimes play outside. Luke understands he has to hide, but he thinks this makes him special because he gets to spend a lot of time with Mother, who's a homemaker. But this changes when Dad is forced to sell his woods to the Government, who build houses on the land. Confined to his windowless attic bedroom, Luke yearns for independence and freedom. It's difficult for him to not even be allowed to look out the windows, and there's nothing for him to do but nap, read, and play with his toys—which seem increasingly juvenile. One day, Luke discovers that there's another third child living in the new neighborhood, Jen, and he befriends her. Jen is a wealthy Baron, which makes Luke aware for the first time of how poor his family is. Jen is also more knowledgeable about the Government and the wider world, so she encourages Luke to see that Mother and Dad are being overly paranoid about protecting Luke. She gives Luke books and independent articles offering differing views on shadow children, which at first make Luke think it's morally wrong that he exists—but ultimately, he decides his existence is just illegal, not immoral. Luke keeps his friendship with Jen a secret, and his loyalty to his parents means that he refuses to accompany Jen to her rally to protest for shadow children's rights. Though he refuses in part because he doesn't believe poor people like him can successfully change things, he changes his mind when he meets Jen's dad, discovers Jen was killed at the protest, and is offered a fake ID. Luke realizes assuming a new identity will allow him to become educated and help other shadow kids, so he ultimately assumes the identity of Lee Grant and leaves his family for a boys' boarding school. - Character: Jen Talbot/The Girl. Description: Jen is Luke's neighbor and a fellow shadow child. Though she has to live in hiding for her safety, like Luke, her life differs greatly from his because her family are wealthy Barons. So, Jen has met other third children at play groups, she has a computer and access to the internet, and her parents have set up mirrors in the house so she can see outside without having to go to the window and look out. Jen's mom loves shopping, so she has a forged shopping pass for Jen so she can take Jen along into public spaces with her (something Jen detests, as she's not into "prissy" activities like shopping). Jen is extremely independent and she wants nothing more than to live freely, with all the rights that first and second children enjoy. To further this goal, Jen has created a password-protected chat room for shadow children that has about 800 daily users, and she spends much of the novel planning a protest rally. When she meets Luke, she also takes on the responsibility of educating him about why the Population Law exists, and why it's immoral. Jen believes that if a bunch of shadow children join the protest and demand the same rights as other people, there's no way they'll fail. Secure in her privilege, she's certain the Population Police won't kill children, particularly not when those children have parents in the Government. She's so committed to her vision that when Luke refuses to go to the rally, Jen ends their friendship and insists that active protest is the only way to change things. She later makes up with Luke just before she leaves for the rally. Soon after, Luke learns that Jen and the other protesters were shot and killed at the rally. Luke suspects Jen might have known she'd die, but he takes comfort in his knowledge that Jen wanted to help and serve others—and her sacrifice does help others. It inspires Luke to accept a fake ID from Jen's dad so he can receive an education and create positive change for shadow children in smaller ways, so that Jen's death won't be in vain. - Character: Mother. Description: Luke, Matthew, and Mark's mother and Dad's wife is a homemaker on the farm at the beginning of the novel. She's kind and compassionate, and she fiercely loves her children, especially Luke. When she was younger, she desperately wanted to have four sons and to name her final son John. However, she was never able to have a fourth child, and since she implies that she underwent the Government's sterilization procedure after Mark's birth, she describes Luke's unexpected birth as a "miracle." When Luke was little, Mother went out of her way to protect him from the truth (that he must stay hidden forever or risk his life), and she still works hard to try to make him feel loved, secure, and not too worried about the danger he's in. This means that she treats him like a much younger child than he actually is, reading him bedtime stories, tucking him in, and kissing him long past when she stopped doing the same for her older sons. Mother's days consist of cooking, cleaning, and managing bills and other household matters, in addition to spending time with Luke and keeping him company. However, her lifestyle changes when Dad is forced to sell his pigs, and Mother has to get a job at a chicken factory. Though she continues to spend as much of her spare time with Luke as possible, she's too exhausted to give him her full attention. When Mother finally learns of Luke's visits to Jen and that Luke plans to accept a fake ID and leave the farm, she's distraught—she wants Luke to stay and remain in the attic, at least until he's an adult. But she's overruled and allows Luke to leave the farm. - Character: Dad. Description: Matthew, Mark, and Luke's dad and Mother's husband is a rural farmer. Dad is often stressed, a little bit angry, and short with his family members. This is mostly because life is hard for Dad: he and Mother worry constantly about money, and Dad has to do whatever the Government tells him to do when it comes to his farming work. It's extremely stressful for Dad when the Government tells him to sell all his pigs, or to stop researching hydroponics. Dad's short temper also seems partially rooted in his desire to protect Luke. He's extremely cautious and is willing to go to extreme lengths to make sure nobody finds out about Luke, such as forcing Luke to stay in his attic bedroom; refusing to let him into the kitchen; and forbidding him from using the television, phone, or computer. (Dad believes the Government will identify and track Luke down if he uses technology.) Mother is unwilling to stand up to Dad and advocate for any more freedom for Luke, though she seems to find Dad's paranoia somewhat extreme. However, when Luke finally tells his parents about Jen and shares that he's getting a fake ID, Dad becomes an unexpected ally. Dad reveals that he's been asking around to see if third children in their area can ever live normal lives—and his informal research suggests they can't. For this reason, Dad supports Luke accepting the fake ID and leaving the farm. - Character: George Talbot/Jen's Dad. Description: Jen's dad is actually her stepdad, but she considers him her father. He's a large, imposing man who works in Government for the Population Police. However, he doesn't agree with their goals—instead, he uses his position to sabotage the Population Police. To do this, he helps Jen set up a secret chat room for shadow children, and he also works to secure fake IDs for shadow children. Luke doesn't learn much about Jen's dad, except that he's a lawyer in the Government and Jen's mom's third husband. He learns more after Jen's death, when Jen's dad comes home to discover that Luke broke into his house. Their meeting starts off rocky—Jen's dad has a gun—but once they realize they can trust each other, Jen's dad clarifies a number of things for Luke. For instance, he explains that he believes the Population Law is morally wrong, in addition to unnecessary. In his opinion, if people hadn't panicked when the famines hit, he believes their country could've gotten through the difficult period without taking people's rights away. This helps Luke see that his existence is just illegal, not immoral. Jen's dad also accepts responsibility for Jen's death, as he was the one to give her articles insisting that forcing shadow children to hide is a major crime—he wanted to give her hope and had no idea she'd plan a rally that would lead to her death. Jen's dad protects Luke from the Population Police who come to his house, and though the officers fit him with a listening device, he still gets Luke a fake ID. He's the one to drive Luke, posing as Lee Grant, away to Luke's new life. - Character: Jen's Mom. Description: Jen's mom never appears in the novel, but Jen speaks about her often. Jen is constantly exasperated by her mom, because her mom's greatest love is shopping—she even got Jen a forged shopping pass so she can take Jen shopping, even though this is extremely dangerous for shadow children like Jen. She's been married three times, each time to a lawyer, and her second husband is Jen's biological dad. As Barons, they had the money to use assisted reproductive technology to conceive Jen and select her sex; Jen's mom wanted a girl after having two boys. - Character: Mark Garner. Description: Mark is Luke's older brother; he's 14, a few years younger than Matthew. Though Mark insists he'd never betray Luke, he's also antagonistic to his brother, frightening Luke by yelling "Population Police!" when he enters Luke's room, or teasing Luke for being effeminate when Luke tries to make bread. He also makes little effort to hide the fact that Mother still tries to make him play games with Luke. - Character: Matthew Garner. Description: Luke and Mark's oldest brother is about 16 years old. He dreams of being a hog farmer one day, so he's distraught when the Government commands Dad to sell the family's pigs and to not raise them anymore. Luke and Matthew seem to get along fine, as Matthew is quiet and is more interested in other things, like his girlfriend, than in either spending time with Luke or in tormenting him. - Character: General Sherwood. Description: Jen's dad tells Luke about General Sherwood, who took control of the country and promised law, order, and food for everyone at the height of the famines and riots. Technically, he was able to deliver, but to do so he curtailed everyone's rights. He's responsible for drafting the Population Law. - Character: Carlos. Description: Carlos is one of Jen's friends in the secret chat room for shadow children. He lives somewhere warm, as he complains about having to suffer in 105°F heat when Luke first meets Jen in early winter. Carlos initially thinks Jen's rally is silly, but he eventually comes around and helps her plan it. It's never specified if he attends the rally. - Theme: Propaganda, Fear, and Control. Description: Among the Hidden introduces readers to a world where, following a multi-year drought and an ensuing food shortage, the government of an unnamed country has seized control of every aspect of citizens' lives. So in addition to mandating what crops farmers grow and forcing factories that once produced junk food to produce more nutrient-dense food, the government has also implemented the Population Law, a controversial policy that states families can only have two children. Twelve-year-old Luke is an illegal third child, known as a shadow child, and he's spent all his life fearing that if anyone outside of his immediate family learns of his existence, he'll be made to disappear. To protect him, Mother and Dad force Luke to stay away from the windows and stay in his attic bedroom, and they don't allow him to watch television or use the computer—they believe the government is always spying on them and will be able to see Luke through the television. To them, the government is all-seeing and all-knowing, and so they live in a constant state of fear. When the government seizes the woods near Luke's house and clears it to build a housing development for wealthy people (who are known as Barons), Luke makes a shocking discovery: he's not the only illegal third child in the world. He soon befriends Jen, a third child in the new housing development, and their friendship changes Luke's understanding of how the government works. Jen spends most of her day on the computer in a secret chat room with other shadow children, and she rejects outright the idea that the government is always watching people—it's far too inefficient and incompetent, she insists, to be able to spy on people through their computers or televisions. But what she suggests is essentially that the government uses propaganda, like TV commercials saying all televisions are recording devices or books insisting that having more than two children will drive the world to ruin, to instill fear in the population and scare people into complying. Propaganda that uses fear to convey its message, the novel shows, is an extremely effective way to control people, as it's controlled his family's choices and hence Luke's life. And while the novel ends with Luke only just becoming aware of the extent of his country's propaganda machine, he nevertheless realizes that the only way to change things for other shadow kids like him is to face his fears—and to uncover, and then tell, the truth. - Theme: Privilege, Wealth, and Perspective. Description: Through Jen and Luke's friendship, Among the Hidden explores how privilege and wealth dictate how a person sees the world. Though both kids are shadow children (third children who, thanks to the government's Population Law dictating that parents can only have two children, are illegal and live in hiding), they live vastly different lives due to their families' economic statuses. Luke has grown up in near poverty, as Dad is a farmer. Luke is used to hearing his parents worry about money, and it's normal for his family members to wear worn and patched hand-me-down clothes. And though Luke is shocked to hear the news, his brothers and Dad aren't at all surprised when Mother takes a job at a local factory and begins working 12-hour shifts every day. In Luke's world, the only thing that matters is trying to scrounge enough money to survive and keep food on the table. Anything beyond that, like becoming educated or thinking critically about the world, is simply not a concern. When Luke meets Jen, it's a shock to realize that not all families live like his does. Jen's family are Barons, or wealthy Government officials. They live in a fancy house filled with technology like televisions and computers, have access to junk food (which is technically illegal), and most surprisingly for Luke, Jen doesn't live in fear of losing her life like Luke does. This is because being a Baron affords Jen's family privileges that Luke's family could only dream of. For instance, Jen is able to do things like go out and shop with her mom because Jen's dad, who works for the Population Police, bribed someone to get Jen a shopping pass. His money and his high status in the government mean that he can barter with or bribe people to better secure Jen's safety. But Jen's family's privilege also means that Jen has grown up knowing way more about the government and how it works. Since her dad works in the government, Jen knows that the government is nowhere near as competent as its propaganda would have people believe—and this knowledge motivates her to organize a protest, as she's certain she knows how the government works and believes it won't hurt a bunch of protesting kids. Ultimately, however, Among the Hidden shows that privilege can also blind people. While Luke grows up not knowing anything about how his government really functions or what's possible when a person is wealthy, Jen is overconfident that her privilege, wealth, and status as a government official's daughter is enough to guarantee that the Population Police won't murder her—and she's wrong. Only once he learns of her death does Luke understand the importance of perspective. Wealth and privilege, he realizes, can improve a person's quality of life, but a more nuanced perspective and understanding how the world actually works (and not just knowing how the wealthy or the poor live) is perhaps a more effective path to change. - Theme: Protest and Resistance. Description: When 12-year-old Luke meets Jen, a fellow shadow child (an illegal third child who lives in hiding), his life changes. One of the most significant changes is that for the first time, Luke is introduced to the idea that it's not just possible, but morally imperative, to protest and resist the Population Laws that mean he, Jen, and thousands of other shadow children live in fear and in hiding. Jen believes that resistance should take a very specific form: public protest in the form of a rally, where thousands of shadow children will assemble in front of the president's house and demand the same rights as others in the country. As the organizer of the rally, Jen believes fully in her mission and encourages Luke to see that making a public spectacle is the only way to change things. The alternative, she insists, is to essentially sit back and do nothing. In her mind, there is no other option than to protest publicly. However, when Luke sneaks over to Jen's house a week after the rally, meets Jen's dad, and learns that Jen and the other protesters were murdered at the rally, the novel suggests that Jen wasn't entirely correct. There are many other ways to protest, and it's possible that those other methods might do more good in the world. For instance, Luke learns that Jen's dad works for the Population Police, but he uses his position and his prestige to protect shadow children and procure fake IDs for shadow children when possible. And Luke realizes that by refusing to accompany Jen to the rally (which means he didn't die with her), he may have opportunities to resist and change things in other ways, such as by becoming a scientist and finding more ways to grow enough food for people, or by getting involved in politics and working to abolish the Population Law. But while Among the Hidden suggests that these less showy forms of resistance might be more effective than Jen's rally, it shows that Jen's sacrifice has an effect too. Jen's sacrifice is what inspires Luke to accept a fake ID from Jen's dad so he can assume a legal identity, receive an education, and go on to change things in the future. Put another way, Jen's rally might not have changed any laws about shadow children, but it does inspire Luke to find his own way to resist. - Theme: Coming of Age, Independence, and Family. Description: Over the course of Among the Hidden, 12-year-old Luke comes of age. Through his journey, the novel suggests that coming of age happens as young people become independent from their families and discover their place in the world. At the beginning of the novel, Luke, a shadow child (an illegal third child), has to endure a difficult change when the government purchases the nearby woods and cuts them down to build houses. The woods sheltered Luke and gave him the opportunity to play outside while still being protected from anyone who might see him and turn him in to the Population Police. Their disappearance means that Luke has to stay inside—something he finds untenable. And it doesn't help that Mother treats Luke like he's much younger than he is, tucking him in at night, reading him stories, and giving him kisses, all things that Luke appreciates but also resents—a mark of his burgeoning maturity. And for Luke's safety, Mother suggests that he can never become independent and grow up—he'll spend his life living in the attic and when she and Dad can't care for him anymore, it'll fall to his brothers, Matthew and Mark, to continue hiding Luke. Mother's desire to effectively keep Luke a child forever, however, ultimately fails. As Luke feels increasingly claustrophobic in his attic room, he discovers another shadow child, Jen, living in one of the new houses next door. He asserts his independence from his parents by sneaking over to see her during the day when Mother and Dad are out working, and his visits with Jen afford Luke a life of his own—one that he doesn't share anything about with his parents. Moreover, Jen takes it upon herself to educate Luke about the Population Law forbidding their existence, something that has a profound effect on Luke and his growing independence. As Luke reads government-sponsored books and then independently published articles on the subject, he initially begins to doubt whether his existence is morally acceptable. Is he, as the books insist, taking precious food away from starving people who exist legally? Eventually, though, Luke comes to agree much more with the views expressed in the articles: that his existence is merely illegal, not immoral; and that he has as much right to exist as any other person. Thinking critically and clarifying his beliefs leads Luke to agree to accept a fake ID and leave his parents' house to assume a new identity as Lee Grant, an action that completes Luke's coming of age journey. As he's still only 12, his identity is still changing—but Luke is nevertheless secure in the belief that he deserves to live and continue growing up long after the novel ends. - Climax: Luke meets Jen's dad and discovers that Jen died at the protest. - Summary: On the day that his dad sells his woods, 12-year-old Luke's life changes. Luke is the third child in his family, and per the Population Law, his existence is illegal—families can only have two children. Though Luke has never gone to school or met people aside from Mother, Dad, and his brothers Matthew and Mark, he's been able to play and work outside on Dad's farm a little bit, sheltered from sight by the woods. But with the woods coming down so the Government can build houses, Luke can't go outside anymore. Instead, he's confined to his windowless attic bedroom to play with toys that suddenly seem juvenile and read the same books over and over again. Over the next few weeks, Luke discovers that he can see out the roof vents at either end of the attic. From one he can watch Government workers tear down the woods. Watching out the vents becomes the best part of Luke's day, especially since Dad decides that it's too dangerous to allow Luke to eat meals at the table with the rest of the family (someone might see his shadow through the window shade and get suspicious). Over the next few weeks, things get progressively worse for Luke's family: the Government forces Dad to sell all his pigs, the tax bill that's three times the usual amount arrives, and Mother gets a job at a chicken factory. With Mother working outside the house, Luke is home alone all day. He watches the construction on the houses and watches wealthy Baron families move in. One day, when Mother and Dad forget to raise the shades in the kitchen, Luke decides to bake and do some housekeeping as a nice surprise for Mother. Dad, though, discovers Luke midday and insists it's too dangerous for Luke to leave his attic room. When Luke looks out the vents that afternoon, he's shocked: he sees a child's face in a window of the nearest house. The family must have a third child. Soon after, Luke decides to sneak over to the neighbor's house and meet the other third child. He has to break the neighbor's screen door, but he enters into a lavish home and finds a girl typing on a computer. She tackles him, but she's thrilled to realize Luke is a "shadow child," like her. She introduces herself as Jen. Before talking too much to Luke, Jen calls Jen's dad and tells him to disable the alarm system. Luke is terrified the Population Police will get him, but to his surprise, Jen says he's safe. The Government is inept, and all of what Mother and Dad believe about the Government being able to watch and identify shadow children through televisions, computers, and phones is just propaganda. She explains that as a Baron, she has to hide like Luke, but her parents can bribe people to keep her safer. Luke has never been more ashamed of his family's poverty, but he still wants to see Jen again. They come up with a signal so Luke can know it's safe to visit, and Jen makes it look like she broke the screen door so they can keep their secret. When Luke visits a few days later, Jen introduces him to junk food like potato chips and soda, which is technically illegal. Then, she tells him junk food is only illegal because a few decades ago, the government ran out of food. That's why the Population Law exists: the Government believes if families only have two kids, there will always be enough food. But Jen says this is nonsense, and she's planning a rally for shadow kids outside the president's house. Jen goes on to show him the chat room she created for shadow kids. There are about 800 that log onto the password-protected site every day, and they all deserve to be free. Luke is anxious, afraid, and guilty that he even exists. Jen sends Luke home with two massive books and several printed articles. From the books, Luke learns about the famine and the drought that killed people and decimated crops. The Government passed the Population Law in response, in addition to moving farmers to more fertile areas. Luke feels extremely guilty for taking food from hungry people, but he begins to feel better when he reads the articles, which insist that the way shadow children suffer is effectively genocide. When Luke returns to Jen's and asks which side is right, Jen says the books are just government propaganda, so the articles are right. Luke isn't sure, but Jen says this is why her rally is important: shadow children don't deserve to live in hiding. She says she'd never accept a fake ID (which allow shadow children to assume legal identities), because she wants to live freely as herself. Luke, as well as the kids in the chat room, don't agree—Luke, at least, is too afraid of being killed to think the rally is a good idea. Over the next few months, Luke only visits Jen a few times and feels increasingly guilty about his own existence. When he visits early in April, Jen is ecstatic—she thought she'd have to just pick Luke up on Thursday to go to the rally. She explains that she's stealing her parents' car, and that a thousand kids will be at the president's house to protest. They'll be safe, since the Population Police would never shoot that many kids, especially when so many of them are Government officials' children. When Luke refuses to go, insisting only wealthy Barons like Jen can make change, Jen says she doesn't have time for Luke anymore. Luke is enraged and terrified for Jen. She might die. On Thursday night, Luke wakes up to Jen shining a flashlight in his face. He says he's still not going to the rally, so Jen apologizes for being mean, says Luke was a good friend, and tells him goodbye. For the next week and a half, Luke listens to the radio every chance he gets for news of the rally. He flashes the signal to Jen's house and gets no answer. Finally, Luke decides to sneak over to see if Jen is okay. He has to break into Jen's house, and when he doesn't find her, he pulls up the chat room on the computer and asks where Jen is. Suddenly, a hulking man with a gun appears behind Luke. The man is Jen's dad. When he learns that Luke is a shadow child and a friend of Jen's, he lowers the gun and reveals that all 40 protesters, including Jen, were killed. The Government is suppressing news of the rally. He says that by logging into the chat room, Luke set off an alarm at the Population Police. Jen's dad has been able to keep his bosses from realizing he's Jen's dad, but he works for the Population Police—and they'll be on their way now. Luke snatches the gun, terrified, but Jen's dad calms Luke down and explains that he works to sabotage the Population Police from within. He doesn't think it's true that there's not enough food for everyone, and he doesn't believe the Government had to take people's rights away (such as by passing the Population Law) in order to fix things when the famines hit. He offers to get Luke a fake ID just as the Population Police knock on the front door. Jen's dad tells Luke to hide in the closet and tries to ward off the Population Police, but they insist on searching the house anyway. They only search the closet where Luke is hiding and then leave. When they're gone, Jen's dad writes on a piece of paper that he and the house have been bugged, so he can't speak. In writing, he explains that he bribed the officers with fur coats, but the Population Police will be after him. If Luke wants a fake ID, he needs to say so now. Luke realizes he can only help other shadow children if he has a legal identity, so he says yes. Luke tells his parents everything when he gets home that night, and a few days later, Jen's dad drives up. Luke is now Lee Garner, a Baron boy who ran away from home, and his punishment is to go to a boarding school. Luke is sad to leave his family, and he's afraid—but he gets in the car and drives away with Jen's dad, excited for the future.

- Genre: Middle-Grade Novel, Historical Fiction, Fictional Biography - Title: Amos Fortune, Free Man - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Africa, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire in the 18th century - Character: Amos Fortune (At-mun). Description: Amos was a real-life historical figure whose story is fictionalized in Amos Fortune, Free Man. In the book, Amos Fortune is born as At-mun, the son and oldest child of the chief of the At-mun-shi, a group of people living in African jungles. He adores his physically disabled younger sister, Ath-mun, caring for her tenderly. Slave hunters capture him and take him to the colonies in North America, where he becomes enslaved first in the home of Caleb, Celia, Roxanna, and Roger Copeland, then in the household of Ichabod Richardson and his wife Mrs. Richardson. Amos gains his freedom following Mr. Richardson's death, and through his hard work, he purchases the freedom of his first wife Lily. When Lily dies, he finds love again with Lydia, and when she also passes away soon after their marriage, he makes a third family with Violet and her daughter Celyndia. At-mun's people in Africa love him because he's smart, kind, dignified, and a natural leader. All through the long decades of his enslavement, Amos never loses his dignity or self-esteem, and he becomes both an indispensable worker in his enslavers' homes and businesses and an important leader in his local Black communities. Amos also understands the value of hard work and holds himself to high standards. This is why he becomes one of the most renowned tanners in New England during his life, and why so many of his fellow citizens in Jaffrey look up to and respect him. Amos is also spiritual, which manifests itself in prayers to the gods of his people in his youth and a full-hearted conversion to Christianity once he arrives in the North American colonies. He sees similarities between his life and the lives of biblical patriarchs like Abraham, Moses, and Joshua. He practices his faith both by attending church and through charity, especially for the neediest families like the Burdoos. Valuing the education given to him early in his life by Celia Copeland and Roxanna, Amos continues to encourage education both by insisting Celyndia attends the local school in Jaffrey and by making a generous bequest to the school in his will. Amos dies at 91, eager to meet God in heaven after a long life well lived. - Character: Violet. Description: Violet is Amos Fortune's third wife and the mother of Celyndia, whom Amos adopts as his own daughter. When she meets Amos, James Baldwin is her enslaver. Like Amos, Violet is a hardworking Christian woman who strives to use her freedom responsibly. She expresses faith in God despite her fears over moving to Jaffrey, and she brings flowers with her as a reminder of how God faithfully fulfills his promises. In Jaffrey, she helps Amos establish his new tannery and earns money for the family by spinning and weaving. Her attitude and actions oppose those of Lois Burdoo, whom Violet disrespects for not working to support the Burdoo children after their father's death. - Character: Ath-mun. Description: Ath-mun is Amos Fortune's younger sister. Like him, she is born free in Africa as the daughter of a trial chief. Because she has a physical disability, the white captors who raid the village leave her behind. Still, she exercises a continuing influence over Amos. Although she was born with a physical disability, their father refused to sacrifice her to the tribe's gods but allowed her to live. Therefore, her existence reminds Amos to practice love, kindness, and charity. When Amos helps those less fortunate then himself (especially Lois and Polly Burdoo and his second wife, Lydia, who also has a physical disability) he does it in honor of his sister and the bond they shared. - Character: Celyndia. Description: Celyndia is Violet's daughter and Amos Fortune adoptive daughter. James Baldwin enslaves her from birth, but she's freed at the age of four when Amos purchases her and her mother from their enslaver. As Celyndia grows up, she models the good use of a free life by showing respect for her parents, sharing with the needy, applying herself to her education, and working hard in the family businesses of leather tanning and weaving. - Character: Celia Copeland. Description: Celia Copeland is a Quaker woman married to Caleb Copeland. Roger and Roxanne are her children. While she allegedly opposes the institution of slavery, she doesn't protest much when her husband returns home with the enslaved Amos. And while she professes more belief in Amos's intelligence and capabilities, she also seems to believe that he benefits from his enslavement because she teaches him how to read, write, and speak English and encourages him to adopt a Christian faith. Still, although she claims to consider Amos a family member, she chooses not to manumit him but includes sells him like another piece of furniture in an auction of household goods after her husband's death. - Character: Caleb Copeland. Description: Caleb Copeland is a Quaker (a sect of Christianity emphasizing mistrustful of hierarchies and traditionally committed to pacifism and abolition of slavery) and a weaver living in Boston with his wife, Celia, and children Roger and Roxanne. Although his faith teaches him to renounce slavery, he buys Amos Fortune and then dies before he can follow through on his promise to manumit him. He excuses enslaving Amos by focusing on the allegedly civilizing influence he believes his family has as they teach Amos to speak, read, and write in English and to accept the Christian faith. - Character: Roxanna Copeland. Description: Roxanna Copeland is the daughter of Celia and Caleb Copeland and the sister of Roger. The book calls her an early and important "friend" of Amos Fortune, although his enslavement means that their relationship cannot be truly reciprocal. Amos treasures Roxanna for teaching him the word "king," thus giving him the English word necessary to describe his innate sense of dignity. - Character: Ichabod Richardson. Description: Ichabod Richardson and his wife, Mrs. Richardson, are Amos Fortune's second enslavers. Richardson owns a tannery, and he teaches Amos the trade that eventually allows him to make a living when he becomes free. Richardson thinks of himself as a fair man, feeling that he does better than other enslavers by paying Amos. But he doesn't pay Amos a fair wage, and although he claims to want to set his enslaved laborers free while they still have life left to enjoy, he fails to manumit Amos before his death. - Character: Mrs. Richardson. Description: Mrs. Richardson is Ichabod Richardson's wife. The Richardsons are Amos Fortune's second enslavers. While Mrs. Richardson profits by the underpaid labor Amos provides the family business, the idea of enslavement sits somewhat uncomfortably on her conscience. After Richardson's death, she releases Amos from his indenture agreement several years early, finally granting him his legal freedom. - Character: Lois Burdoo. Description: Lois Burdoo is a poor Black widow in Jaffrey who lives with her five children, including Polly and Moses. She receives charity from the town—and Amos Fortune—to support her and her children after her husband's death, but she fails find a livelihood for herself or to ensure that her children attend school or take care of themselves. She provides a contrast to the hardworking Amos and Violet, proving by negative example how important hard work and self-reliance are. - Character: Polly Burdoo. Description: Polly Burdoo is Lois Burdoo's daughter and Moses's sister. She grows up under the care of her "shiftless" mother and fails to learn responsibility or a good work ethic. Amos Fortune bids for a year of her labor at the Public Vendue, and her death shortly thereafter reminds Amos of the Christian faith that gives him hope for the future even when life is hard. - Character: Lydia. Description: Lydia is Amos Fortune's second wife, whom he redeems for £50 from her enslaver, Josiah Bowers. Lydia reminds Amos of his sister Ath-mun because she is walks with a crutch, but her disability results from the injuries she suffered at the hands of her captors on her voyage from Africa to the North American colonies. She dies within a year of marrying Amos. - Theme: Freedom and Slavery. Description: Amos Fortune, born At-mun, finds himself captured and sold into slavery in the North American colonies at the age of 15. He receives a document of manumission legally granting his freedom from his second enslaver at the age of 60, just two years after the Declaration of Independence and amid the American Revolutionary War. Born free, Amos understands the importance of freedom, yearning for it while enslaved and treasuring it after he achieves it. In a way, the book poses Amos's story alongside American history to claim that both provide examples of freedom triumphing over tyranny—the tyranny of chattel slavery on the one hand, and of imperial overreach on the other. Thus, Amos's story isn't just an American story, it is the American story. But, although the book rejects some of the worst abuses perpetrated by enslavers, such as excessive beatings, forced marriages, or breaking up the families of enslaved people in their employ, it stops short of fully critiquing the practice of slavery. Worse, it uses Amos as a mouthpiece for beliefs historically used to excuse the institution. Amos pities his enslaved friends whose enslavers abuse them but refuses to help them plot their escapes, asking them to wait for their freedom with the same faith and patience he practiced. This not-so-subtly suggests that freedom is not a human being's birthright but a reward they must earn, which directly contradicts the book's stated claims—and the ideas in the Declaration of Independence—that everyone has a fundamental right to freedom. Amos also predicts that a period of forced labor and potential beatings will teach the young Moses Burdoo discipline. And he takes deep pride in the fact that he purchased his own freedom and that of his wives with the hard-earned wages of his own labor without questioning the right of his—or their—enslavers to own other human beings. Thus, while Amos Fortune, Free Man emphasizes the importance and value of freedom on an individual and communal level, it often deflects opportunities to grapple with the hypocrisy of mass enslavement in a country allegedly founded on the idea of personal liberty. Thus, it fails to fully explore the opposition of freedom and enslavement that it foregrounds. - Theme: Dignity and Racism. Description: As the son of the At-mun-shi people's chief, Prince At-mun (later renamed Amos Fortune) expresses a lordly self-possession and dignity during the short part of his life lived in Africa, which he retains even after he's captured and forced into enslavement in the North American colonies. It protects him from the dehumanizing effects of the way the white captors treat their victims; unlike the rest of his people, At-mun never forgets that he is a human, not an animal. Notably, he only enters conversation with the white people who have enslaved him after he learns the English word that represents his royal identity, "king," from Roxanna. The book celebrates Amos as an example of human dignity that readers would do well to emulate. And it shows how dignity can earn a person respect, no matter what their situation in life may be—even during the years of his enslavement, Amos finds himself a trusted workman to his enslavers. But by casting Amos as a notable exception, the book suggests by contrast that other enslaved people bear some (if not all) responsibility for their own loss of dignity. This serves a narrative that casts marginalized people as complicit in their own marginalization rather than holding their oppressors accountable. Likewise, while the book shows how ongoing racism challenges Amos's dignity, even after he becomes free, it frequently emphasizes the personal nature of these interactions. A few (bad) white people consider Amos childish or unworthy, but most respect him. White society enforces segregation in the church (where the Fortunes can't have their own pew) and school (where Amos's adoptive daughter Celyndia is ostracized), but Amos considers this the result of individual people's poor education rather than systemic racism. Moreover, his dignity keeps him from succumbing to anger in any of these instances, but it also prevents him from acknowledging or expressing the essential injustice of the society in which he lives. He even worries that racism harms white people as much as—if not more—than it does Black people. Thus, while the book celebrates the value of personal dignity and expresses an awareness of the ways in which systemic dehumanization and abuse can compromise this core component of a person's humanity, it fails to fully contend with the ways in which chattel slavery and ongoing segregation and racism deny dignity and humanity to Black people and enforce a sense of white supremacy. - Theme: Hard Work and Good Character. Description: As an enslaved person, taken from his home in Africa to the North American colonies, Amos Fortune quickly learns that rewards like respect, freedom, and equality come from hard work. Applying himself to Celia Copeland's lessons allows him to communicate and earn the regard and trust of the Copeland family, which in turn gives him the opportunity to roam Boston Harbor during his free time in search of his long-lost family. Amos's second enslaver, Ichabod Richardson, promises to grant Amos's freedom—but only after Amos has worked hard and long enough to repay the price Richardson paid to purchase Amos's labor and to provide his food and shelter. The book directly claims that the respect and acceptance Amos earns from his white neighbors in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, where he spends most of his free life, arise directly from his good work ethic and good character, which he manifests through participation in community organizations like the church and library, and through acts of charity in the community. Likewise, the book portrays Amos's enslavers favorably, as men and women who believe in God and human dignity, who work hard, and who practice honesty. The book most clearly demonstrates the idea that hard work expresses good character in the difference between the Fortune and Burdoo families. Amos and his wife Violet work hard to establish their family businesses of tanning and weaving, while Violet's daughter Celyndia applies herself dutifully to her studies. Accordingly, most everybody in Jaffrey respects the Fortunes. In contrast, Lois Burdoo and her family live off the charity of the community, too lazy or shiftless to try to improve their own lot. No matter how much help Lois receives from the community, she never establishes a livelihood for herself that would allow her to feed her children. Indeed, Violet suggests that ongoing charity discourages Lois from putting in the hard work of making a living. In celebrating Amos—and contrasting his experience with that of people less inclined to hard work—Amos Fortune, Free Man participates in the American celebration of hard work as the best path toward earthly reward. - Theme: Providence and Faith. Description: Born free in Africa, Amos Fortune begins his life practicing a pagan religion. After his capture and forced enslavement in the North American colonies, he adopts the Christian faith of his enslavers. Faith and a trust in the work of providence thus form an important aspect of his story. He shows this through participation in the church, his professions of faith, and the way he understands and interprets his life through spirituals and Bible stories. He's particularly drawn to the figures of Abraham, Moses, and Joshua, whose stories are recorded in the book of Genesis. God promised Abraham a land flowing with milk and honey in which his people could live; for Amos, discovering Jaffrey is akin to finding the promised land. Moses led the Israelites out of enslavement in Egypt in a tale that parallels both Amos's journey from enslavement to freedom and his ongoing efforts to secure freedom for others. But Moses failed to guide his people to the promised land, a task that fell to other men like the brave and bold Joshua, another figure Amos likens himself to. Amos's life demonstrates the importance of his faith as a guiding principle and demonstrates his trust that God will take care of him and make all things just and right in time. Supporters of imperialistic projects and enslavement often emphasized the importance of Christianizing or "civilizing" non-white people. This sentiment lies under Celia Copeland's school for Black children in Boston (most or all of whom readers can assume to be enslaved). Amos himself expresses this idea when he tells Violet he's glad he didn't kill his captors and escape back to his people in Africa because freedom itself means little if a person isn't right with God. Still, the book shows how Amos's belief system helps him find order and meaning in his life and helps him to maintain hope even in the darkest times. - Climax: Amos opens his own tannery in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. - Summary: Amos Fortune, Free Man is the fictionalized story of a real-life African prince who was sold into slavery. In the early spring of 1725, white hunters surround and overwhelm the village of the At-mun-shi people during their planting rituals. Among their victims is the chief's son, At-mun (later renamed Amos). The hunters take their captives to the coast, where At-mun and the others board ships for the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. As he leaves, At-mun promises himself to never forget where he came from or his disabled sister, Ath-mun, whom he was forced to leave behind. After two months at sea and another few weeks hopping from port to port up the coast of the North American colonies, the slave ship arrives at Boston Harbor, where a Quaker weaver named Caleb Copeland buys At-mun on impulse. At-mun, renamed "Amos," grows into adulthood in the Copeland home alongside children Roxanna and Roger. He converts to Christianity, Celia Copeland teaches him to read and write, and Caleb teaches him the weaver's trade. Eventually, Amos becomes a trusted member of the family, although he never forgets his past and frequently goes to the harbor and slave auctions in search of his sister. When Caleb Copeland dies before granting Amos his freedom, Amos joins the rest of the household goods at auction to pay off the family's debts. His new enslaver, Ichabod Richardson, brings him to the town of Woburn, where he teaches Amos the business of turning animal hides into leather. Although he draws up manumission papers for Amos, Richardson also dies before granting Amos his legal freedom. When Mrs. Richardson finally releases her family's claim on Amos, he is 60 years old. Amos continues to work in the tanning business in Woburn for several years, during which time he purchases the freedom of his first two wives, Lily and Lydia, each of whom die within a year of their marriages. A journey to Keene, New Hampshire brings Amos through Jaffrey, where he decides to settle after receiving a sign from God. He moves there in 1781, at the age of 71, with his third wife, Violet, and adoptive daughter Celyndia. Amos quickly builds a reputable tannery business in Jaffrey, where he ultimately becomes a well-respected and integral part of the community. At the age of 80, he purchases a plot of land for himself and his family and spends the final years of his life here. Just before he dies, Amos leaves a sizeable bequest to the church and the school of Jaffrey. When he passes away at the age of 91, the village shows its respect for him by burying him beneath a handsome tombstone in the local cemetery.

- Genre: Literary Fiction - Title: An American Marriage - Point of view: First person alternating among three characters - Setting: Atlanta, Georgia and Eloe, Louisiana - Character: Roy Hamilton Jr.. Description: Roy Othaniel Hamilton Jr. is the husband of Celestial Davenport, the son of Olive, and the adopted son of Big Roy. Raised in the fictional rural town of Eloe, Louisiana, Roy attends Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he develops a reputation as a ladies' man. A promising marketing executive at the start of the novel, he has been married to Celestial for only a year and a half when he's wrongfully accused of attacking a woman at a motel and sentenced to twelve years in prison. There, he discovers that his cellmate, Walter, is his biological father. Roy tries to maintain good spirits while incarcerated, though he finds himself feeling betrayed by his wife as she focuses more on her art career and eventually develops a relationship with his former college classmate, Andre. Roy emerges from prison a changed man, having experienced unspeakable hardship while incarcerated. Though he comes close to reuniting with Celestial, he ultimately realizes that their relationship has been irrevocably broken and instead returns to Eloe engaged to his former high school classmate Davina Hardrick. - Character: Celestial Davenport. Description: Raised in Atlanta by wealthy parents Gloria and Franklin Davenport, Celestial is married to Roy at the beginning of the novel and is also the lifelong best friend of Andre, who lives next door to the couple in Atlanta. Celestial is a burgeoning artist who often makes dolls that draw from her husband's likeness. Soon after Roy is sent to prison, Celestial discovers she is pregnant; she and Roy decide it would be best to terminate the pregnancy. She later reveals in a letter to Roy that this is her second abortion, having been impregnated by one of her college professors at Howard University before transferring to Spelman College—incidentally, where she was originally introduced to Roy through Andre. Though she tries to remain faithful to and supportive of her husband throughout his sentence, as she grows more focused on her blossoming artistic career she becomes lax in her visits and letters to Roy. When Roy eventually questions Celestial's dedication to him, she tells him she can no longer be his wife but also does not file for divorce. She becomes romantically involved with and eventually engaged to Andre. Though Celestial considers trying to remain married to Roy after he is released, both realize that too much has changed between them in the time Roy has been away. She and Andre remain together, though unmarried, and Celestial is pregnant at the end of the novel. - Character: Andre. Description: Celestial's best friend since childhood Roy's friend since college. Andre is shorter than Roy, with a slighter build and lighter skin. Though he has loved Celestial all his life, he is initially supportive of her relationship with Roy. He does not make the first move while Roy is in jail, instead allowing Celestial to pursue him. He has a fraught relationship with his father, Carlos, who abandoned him and his mother, Evie, when Andre was young. By the end of the novel, however, their relationship has healed somewhat, and Andre seeks his father's advice regarding his relationship with Celestial. Andre has a slightly more progressive view of relationships than Roy, understanding that no one will ever "possess" Celestial and supporting her independent streak even as he longs to be her husband. - Character: Big Roy Hamilton. Description: Big Roy is Roy's adoptive father, having married Olive and accepted Roy as his own when he was a baby. Though Roy was given his biological father's name, Othaniel, at birth, Big Roy changed his name to Roy upon adopting him. Big Roy is extremely supportive of Roy and welcoming to Celestial, despite Olive's skepticism of the latter. He also serves as a model of marital dedication in his relationship with Olive and is devastated when she dies of lung cancer while Roy is in prison. - Character: Olive Hamilton. Description: Roy's devoted mother, who has always been insistent on giving her child a better life than she had growing up. Seduced by Roy's biological father, Othaniel, as a teenager, Olive was abandoned by him when he discovered she was pregnant. Olive cleans hotel rooms until giving birth to Roy and eventually marries Big Roy, who readily accepts both her and her son as his true family. She is skeptical of Celestial, worried that her daughter-in-law's more privileged upbringing will cause problems for Roy. She dies of lung cancer while Roy is incarcerated. - Character: Gloria Davenport. Description: Celestial's mother and the wife of Franklin. Gloria is a school administrator and a woman committed to keeping up appearances, though she doesn't necessarily care about financial success. When she was a baby, a little white girl pointed at her and said, "Look! A baby maid!" After this, Gloria's mother committed to raising her daughter to be more than a maid. - Character: Franklin Davenport. Description: A successful scientist, father of Celestial, and husband to Gloria. He met Gloria while still married to his first wife; the two had a relationship for three years before Franklin filed for divorce in order to marry Gloria. As a young man he taught chemistry and performed experiments in his basement, eventually inventing a chemical that prevented orange juice from separating. His subsequent financial success allowed his family to rise in social class. He sides with Roy when Celestial tells him she's leaving her husband for Andre. - Character: Walter/Othaniel/Ghetto Yoda. Description: Roy's biological father and his third cellmate while in prison, though the two live together for some time before Roy discovers Walter's true identity. Walter's nickname, Ghetto Yoda, comes from his tendency to dole out wisdom to the other inmates. He fathered many children with different women before being incarcerated, and many women from personal ads visit him in prison. He refers to Roy as his son, though Roy only refers to Walter as his father in a goodbye letter to him. - Character: Davina Hardrick. Description: A former high school classmate of Roy whom he runs into at Walmart after being released from prison. Davina invites Roy to dinner, and her care for him helps Roy transition back into outside life. She has a complicated relationship with her son, Hopper, who was incarcerated in the same prison as Roy. She and Roy end up marrying after Roy divorces Celestial, though she doesn't want to have more children. - Character: Mr. Fontenot. Description: Roy's high school French teacher who wanted to help him travel to France, giving him James Baldwin books and a journal to record his goals. When it became suspected that Mr. Fontenot was gay, Roy's parents forbade Roy from working with him. It is later revealed that Mr. Fontenot died in the 1990s from what is assumed to have been AIDS. - Theme: Love and Marriage in Crisis. Description: Tayari Jones' 2018 novel An American Marriage expands upon one of the most common topics of modern literature: love and marriage. While many stories of marriage focus on some of the more typical challenges faced by couples—such as infidelity, competition, or class differences between partners—Jones' book centers on the repercussions of a world-shattering injustice on Roy and Celestial, a black couple living in Atlanta, Georgia: after having been married for just 18 months, Roy is wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Told in intimate detail from the perspectives of both parties, An American Marriage reveals the ways in which this event exacerbates many pre-existing issues between Roy and Celestial. Despite the specificity of its tragedy, the novel makes the broader point that otherwise normal issues can quickly bring a marriage to its breaking point in times of crisis. Roy and Celestial's relationship is already showing common signs of distress at the time of the former's conviction, but none of these issues on its own has been enough to divide the two. For example, before his incarceration, Roy accepts other women's phone numbers when he goes out with friends—a fact that bothers Celestial and makes her suspicious of her husband's commitment to her. Nevertheless, the two move past the issues created by such mistrust and to maintain a strong connection for some time, revealing the ability of their marriage to overcome suspicions of infidelity. The two face professional tensions as well, in part because of their vastly different economic backgrounds: ambitious, small-town Roy defines himself as being "on the come-up," while Celestial was raised in an upper-class, cosmopolitan family. Roy's mother Olive is loudly skeptical of Celestial because of her prim and proper ways, creating added stress for their relationship. Celestial and Roy also disagree about the right way to grow the former's artistic career. While Celestial imagines individually handcrafting her one-of-a-kind dolls for sale as fine art, Roy, who is working to establish himself in the business world, dreams of creating a mass-manufactured luxury toy. At first, however, these issues don't pose a significant challenge to their relationship—again underscoring the strength of this couple in the face of more or less typical marital strife. They are, in fact, in the process of establishing a business plan that is a compromise between their visions when their lives are upended by Roy's imprisonment. Once Roy is wrongfully convicted, all of these relatively common marital stresses in combination quickly bring the relationship to its breaking point. Though at first both parties express their sincere desire to remain together, this initial commitment proves naïve, as what were once seen as minor disagreements make the marriage seem utterly untenable. Roy resents Celestial's seeming lack of loyalty, believing she should visit at least as often as the wives of those prisoners who, unlike Roy, are actually guilty of their crimes. Celestial, for her part, feels herself unjustly pitied and looked down upon by the outside world for remaining true to her incarcerated husband. The fact that they are denied physical contact and forced to communicate primarily through letters further allows both members of the couple to develop a one-sided idea of the relationship. Perhaps the greatest factor in the disintegration of Roy and Celestial's marriage, however, is its youth. As Celestial points out, she and Roy were hardly more than newlyweds when he was taken away; "I danced the line between wife and bride," she says, adding that "marriage is like grafting a limb onto a tree trunk"—that is, it takes time for two people to bond as one. Their young marriage proves far more vulnerable to stressors—a limb far more easily snapped—than a marriage tested by time. Indeed, Celestial's faith in her commitment to Roy is irreparably broken at Olive's funeral, when she sees Big Roy, Roy's adoptive father, display sincere devotion to his wife even after she has died. This pushes Celestial to realize the weaknesses of her own marriage, as she does not share this sense of commitment to Roy. As a result, Celestial seeks comfort in a romantic relationship with her long-time friend Andre, who provides her the support and stability that Roy cannot. Not incidentally, she and Andre spent much of their youth sitting beneath Old Hickey, an ancient, sturdy hickory tree situated between their houses that acts as a physical representation of the deep roots of their relationship—and, it follows, the strength of their bond. Roy, meanwhile, finds much-needed comfort in the arms of his former high school classmate Davina. The fact that both Roy and Celestial ultimately end up with partners they have known nearly their entire lives suggests that, above all, even stronger than love is time. Celestial and Roy were denied the time necessary to graft their lives together, and, as such, their vows crumble beneath the weight of their separation. A longstanding, deeply-rooted partnership, on the other hand, can create bonds that no crisis can destroy. - Theme: Parenthood as a Choice. Description: Beyond exploring the difficulties of love and marriage, Jones dissects the demands and expectations of parenthood throughout the novel. Jones challenges and redefines conventional notions of parenting, ultimately presenting it a commitment that transcends bloodlines. In An American Marriage, parenthood requires conscious effort and great maturity. It is the mindful choice to provide for and support a child—and a choice that must be continually re-made. Varying conceptions of fatherhood, in particular, are present throughout the novel. Roy is named for his biological father, Othaniel, at birth. When Othaniel then abandons Roy and his mother Olive, however, Roy is adopted by Big Roy, who changes his son's name to Roy Jr.—reflecting the seriousness with which he takes his newfound parental duties. Indeed, from childhood into adulthood, Big Roy is the most significant male figure in Roy's life. In contrast, when Roy goes to prison and eventually realizes that his bunk mate is in fact his biological father, he refuses to call Othaniel "dad" until the latter has proven himself worthy of the title. While Othaniel was not a reliable parent to Roy as a child, however, he is able to provide Roy advice about the unfamiliar world of prison. Through this support, Roy eventually comes to see Othaniel as a father figure in his own right, as is evidenced by the fact that he signs his farewell letter to him as his "son." Andre has a similarly fraught relationship with his father, Carlos, throughout his childhood that mends somewhat by the end of the novel. When Andre seeks his advice regarding his relationship with Celestial, Carlos supports his son as best he can and, in his own subtle way, reveals his desire to have a closer bond with Andre by promising to have a present for him under the tree that Christmas. Through these relationships, An American Marriage highlights the complicated humanity of even the most absent of fathers and suggests that it is never too late for these men to form strong bonds with their children if they step up and provide support in whatever ways they are able. Motherhood, too, is presented as something that must be actively pursued throughout the novel. Just after Roy is incarcerated, Celestial discovers that she is pregnant. Though she is conflicted about what to do, she and Roy agree that it's best she not give birth to a child while Roy is in prison and she has an abortion. In later letters to Roy, Celestial implies that he forced her into this decision because he wouldn't be present to father the child. For his part, Roy seems to believe that Celestial made the decision because she did not want to raise a child as a single parent for what they assumed would be the first 12 years of the child's life. In either case, the decision to terminate the pregnancy was a conscious one, made in light of the serious responsibilities inherent to raising a child. Roy later laments that a child would likely have kept the couple together throughout his sentence, but ultimately realizes that children must not be used as a means to cement a relationship. That is why he accepts his eventual fiancée Davina's wish to not have any more children at the end of the novel, given that she has already experienced the devastation of being estranged from her incarcerated son Hopper. Celestial does become a parent during her time with Roy in one sense: she creates dolls, each crafted in the image of her husband, and, in many ways, as stand-ins for the child they didn't end up having. She devotes much of her energy to the dolls, as a mother would a child. Each is lovingly stitched by hand, and Celestial reveres them for both their beauty and their flaws, certain that the right adoptive parent will love each doll as much as she does. In this way, Celestial assumes a version of parenthood while Roy is incarcerated, creating "children" that she can mold as she sees fit before passing them on to others. In the novel's epilogue, Celestial reveals to Roy that she is pregnant with Andre's child—suggesting that she is finally ready to take on the responsibility of motherhood in a way she never was with Roy. Through these relationships, An American Marriage shows that being a parent involves much more than simply producing a child; it requires care, compassion, and consistent effort. Parenthood comes with great responsibilities, and all parents risks losing their status if they fail to satisfy those conditions. In portraying the variety of shapes that parent-child relationships might take, Jones suggests that parenthood goes beyond blood and demands conscious dedication. The bond between parents and children is powerful but never a given; on the contrary, it's importance is reflected by the fact that it must continually be earned. - Theme: Appearances vs. Reality. Description: In An American Marriage, Jones contrasts the reality of life with the appearances people choose to project. Throughout the novel it is possible to identify the ways in which characters shape the narratives of their lives to be more palatable to others. The novel suggests that this gap between appearances and reality can harm to the very thing a public image is supposed to represent. Celestial's dolls—or poupées, as Roy suggests she call them—emblematize the gap between real life and its representation in art. While Celestial had found some success in the art world with her dolls before Roy goes to prison, it is only after he is incarcerated that she makes a doll with Roy's face wearing a prison uniform; it is this doll that is awarded a great deal of attention and praise. While doing an interview about her incarceration-focused art, however, Celestial fails to point out that her husband has been wrongfully imprisoned and that this situation was the inspiration for the doll. Roy feels betrayed by this narrative elision, believing that Celestial mentioning his case might have brought it attention that could help overturn his conviction. Celestial, meanwhile, fears the stigma associated with having a husband in prison and fails to prioritize Roy's situation over her own career. Her refusal to publicly acknowledge Roy's wrongful conviction reveals how, in her art, she omits negative details about her personal life while enjoying the benefits of associating herself with a buzz-worthy political cause. This kind of picking and choosing is a privilege not available to Roy in his concrete cell. Celestial continues to embrace the media attention she receives and spends time focusing on growing her career, even at the cost of visiting her husband in prison. In this way she turns away from the cause she supposedly supports in favor of embracing the ways she can personally benefit from aligning herself with that cause. Roy notices that Celestial slowly begins to withdraw from him—first by visiting and writing less, and eventually by ceasing to communicate with him at all—and angrily tells his wife in a letter that her dolls do nothing to actually fight the cause of incarceration. Celestial uses her art to benefit from the appearance of being an activist against mass incarceration even as she abandons her personal responsibilities to her husband—the source of her inspiration to become involved in the first place. When Roy returns home, Celestial continues to try to hide the very real effects of Roy's incarceration, instead of allowing the messy truth to be out in the open. When Roy begins attacking Celestial's car to try to get her to answer his question of whether or not she still loves him, she would rather repeatedly bury the intensity of his attack by silencing the car's alarm than give him an answer she knows will be difficult for him to hear. Her concern about keeping up appearances with the neighbors proves ineffective, though, when the neighbors call the police to break up the fight between Andre and Roy. In this way, the book shows the dire consequences that can occur if one refuses to face the truth and attempts to maintain a façade. The distance between Celestial's true situation and the public image she projects serves as a comment on the hypocritical actions that people sometimes take to preserve their self-interests. While Celestial was able to keep her real life and the life she preferred to present separate for much of the novel, this separation breaks down when Roy is released from jail and Celestial is forced to face the double life she's been living. If Celestial had allowed herself to integrate the two parts of her life from the beginning, she might have experienced greater success in both her marriage and her career, though this would have required a risk that she wasn't willing to take. Because Celestial wanted to present a clean image to the world, only her career succeeded, at the cost of her marriage. - Theme: The Effects of Incarceration. Description: In An American Marriage, Jones reveals the extraordinary effect mass incarceration has on the lives of black Americans. The tightly-focused narrative reveals how incarceration can destroy families, placing them at a social disadvantage from which it is difficult to recover. The novel further suggests that incarceration is a destructive force with little practical ties to justice, and which does more to harm society than it does to keep it safe. Roy is a young, middle-class black man who falls prey to the codified racism of the American criminal justice system when he is wrongfully accused of a violent crime—something that happens disproportionately to black men—and sentenced to 12 years in prison. This sentence, of course, has a profound effect on Roy's life. He's forced to leave his job as a rising executive, stopping his budding career dead in its tracks. He is unable to attend the funeral of his mother Olive, who dies while he is in prison. He feels completely isolated from his family because none of them have experienced the pain and injustice with which he must contend on a daily basis. Even as a lawyer fights to get Roy's conviction overturned, Roy slowly begins to see that his life when he gets out will look nothing like it did before prison. Through the example of Roy, Jones underscores the fact that incarceration affects individuals' lives long after a sentence is served. While Roy experiences the effects of incarceration personally, there are also repercussions of his incarceration on everyone around him. Aside from being separated from her husband, Celestial, who had at one point longed to have a child with Roy, decides it is no longer the right choice given their situation and has an abortion. Additionally, Roy had been integral in the development of her career as an artist, but his guiding presence is no longer possible as she develops and grows her business. Roy's incarceration forces Celestial into a lonely position as her world is turned upside down and she must learn to live as an effectively single  woman. Later in the novel, Roy finds out that Davina's son, Hopper, is also incarcerated. Hopper refuses to talk to his mother, showing the extreme breakdown in a parental relationship that can also happen when a child is incarcerated. Hopper's refusal to communicate with Davina causes her later lack of interest in having additional children with Roy. As Roy comes to realize, prisoners are rarely able to resume life as it was before their incarceration, even when they are exonerated—not just because of the ways in which society disadvantages ex-convicts, but also because of the ways in which incarceration drives people apart from their loved ones. When Roy is ultimately released after serving five years of his sentence, it becomes clear that his time in prison has irrevocably changed him. He finds himself prone to bouts of violence and anger that frighten both himself and those around him. At one point he even threatens to rape Celestial, telling her that he could "take it"—meaning her body—if he wanted to. Celestial braces herself for what she feels is an inevitable violation, but Roy stops himself. The following morning, he guiltily reflects on this moment as a mark of what prison has done to him. Later, when he and Andre fight over Celestial, the latter is surprised by Roy's brutality, and wonders whether he learned to fight with such rage in prison. Through these examples, Jones highlights the deep, lasting effect of incarceration on a man's psyche. In this way, the book takes an extremely critical stance in its examination of the practice of incarceration in general, which Roy reflects too often has little to do with guilt or innocence. Distancing family members from one another reduces the possibility of a prisoner returning to a stable home life, placing not only the prisoner, but their entire family at a disadvantage. When such a practice is then echoed throughout a community, it can lead to a vicious cycle of crime and oppression. An American Marriage ultimately suggests that the prison system—ostensibly designed to keep a community safe—in reality destabilizes and disrupts the lives of everyone in its orbit. - Theme: Race and Class. Description: In An American Marriage, Jones notably focuses on a well-educated, successful black couple to explore the tensions between partners of different economic backgrounds as well as the broader intersection of race and class. The fact that Roy and Celestial's upward mobility cannot shield them from the criminal justice system's prejudicial assumptions about black people allows Jones to specifically highlight the insidious reach of racism. Even before Roy's arrest, much of the tension in Roy and Celestial's relationship arises from their different upbringings. Roy, in fact, begins the novel by stating that Celestial views him as a "country boy," a designation he "never cared for." Roy is the first of his family to leave rural Louisiana to attend college, while Celestial grew up in relative privilege in Atlanta. Celestial believes that Roy's mother, Olive, thinks she's stuck up, and though Roy dismisses Celestial's concern, this is in fact true. In the end of the novel Roy reads a letter his mother wrote to him years earlier, indicating that she believes Roy is marrying a woman who reflects the class he hopes to be a part of rather than a partner with whom he is truly compatible. Roy assures his wife that Olive will grow to like her with time, when she sees that Celestial is more down to earth than her background might suggest. Privately though, he knows that his mother criticizes his choice of a lighter-skinned black woman, a mindset reflective of societal associations of light skin with wealth and sophistication (and, in Olive's mind, snobbery). Instead, Olive would prefer that her son pick a woman who is more like himself—and, it follows, like Olive: darker-skinned and from their small town of Eloe, Louisiana; she sees Celestial as a rebuke of her own life and values. Celestial's parents, on the other hand, embrace Roy. Both Davenports are successful professionals—Gloria a school administrator and Franklin a scientist—who experienced an extra boost in fortune when Franklin was able to sell one of his inventions. Celestial, though, desires to remain tied to her earlier roots, at one point reminding Roy of her grandparents' occupation as sharecroppers when he expresses concerns about not being high class enough to satisfy Celestial's parents. This acknowledgement of their shared humble beginnings, rather than their current statuses, shows Celestial's desire to meet her in-laws in the middle, drawing comparisons between their lives rather than establishing differences. The lower class, meanwhile, appears to resent the upper class for allegedly compromising their culture in an attempt to assimilate to the standards of white society. The novel ultimately suggests that the issue of race, however, supersedes that of class. Prejudice is something both families experience regardless of their wealth or status. For example, when Andre goes to Eloe to find Roy, he drives carefully, well-aware that his nice car combined with the color of his skin make him suspicious to law enforcement. When Roy takes Celestial to spend the night at the Piney Inn, he reveals that Olive used to work as a maid there, at a time when Confederate flags hung in the rooms. Roy himself was almost born at the Inn, but Olive refused to let her son enter the world under a symbol of the Confederacy. Nevertheless, Roy is arrested in the same place his mother once cleaned rooms; the flags may have been removed, but the racist societal attitudes they represented live on. The circumstance of Roy's arrest creates a shocking reminder of the ever-present prejudice hovering over the characters' lives. Seemingly aware of stereotypes of black men as dangerous, Roy is demonstrably polite in his interaction with the woman in the hotel who will go on to accuse him of rape. He goes above and beyond in helping the woman, carrying her ice bucket back to her room and even trying to fix the bathroom plumbing. He says he behaves as "the gentleman my mama raised me to be" and that he even "called her ma'am" before leaving. Nevertheless, he is immediately singled out as a suspect and ultimately convicted of attacking the woman. Given the time period of the novel's writing and the reality of the extensive societal criminalization of black men, it is clear that Roy's race factors into his conviction and sentence. Roy's incarceration destabilizes his family's hard-won conception of safety and stability. If this could happen to someone like Roy, Jones suggests, then those of a lower social class stand even less of a chance of being treated fairly by a prejudiced criminal justice system. The novel thus ultimately underscores the frequent inability of black Americans to completely extricate themselves from a system that seeks to keep them entrenched in poverty and crime. - Climax: Upon returning home after being wrongfully incarcerated for five years, Roy fights Andre for having a romantic relationship with Celestial but stops short of killing his friend. - Summary: Roy, an up and coming executive from the small town of Eloe, Louisiana, and Celestial have been married for a year and a half. The two live in Atlanta, Georgia, where Celestial grew up. A burgeoning artist, Celestial models much of her work on her husband's likeness and has found success making artisan dolls. Together with Roy, she plans to grow her art into a larger business. Over Labor Day weekend the couple visit Roy's parents, Olive and Big Roy, in Eloe. Celestial is apprehensive about the trip; Olive has always believed that her daughter-in-law's comparatively cosmopolitan upbringing will cause issues for the couple. Celestial, meanwhile, believes that the only thing that will make Olive love her is if she has a baby. Celestial's apprehensions prove apt when Olive is dismissive of her artistic success. Celestial defends herself by showing Olive one of the dolls she was commissioned to make by the mayor of Atlanta. Olive marvels at its likeness to Roy but feels that Celestial is rubbing her success in her face. Later, at the motel room Roy has booked for himself and Celestial, Roy reveals that Big Roy is not his biological father but rather adopted him as a baby; Celestial is offended that he hadn't shared this information with her sooner. After an argument, Roy leaves the room to get ice and runs into a woman with her arm in a sling. He helps her bring ice back to her own room before returning to Celestial, who has just hung up with her best friend, Andre—incidentally, the one who introduced her to Roy in college. Celestial and Roy talk more calmly about Roy's parents and then make love. That night, the police break down the door to their room while they are asleep and arrest Roy, accusing him of raping the woman he assisted earlier. The couple hires Uncle Banks to defend Roy, but he is sentenced to twelve years in jail. Celestial and Roy write frequent letters to each other, in which Roy tells Celestial about his cellmate, Walter, and expresses how difficult life in jail is. He adds both her and Andre to his visitors' list. When Celestial visits Roy, however, they experience the strangeness of being monitored during their time together. Roy later questions Celestial about the pregnancy she aborted after Roy was arrested, wondering if they made the right choice. Celestial tells Roy that she is even sadder about their lost child than he is and asks him to stop questioning their decision. She's focused on her work, hoping to sell the poupées, or baby dolls, to young black girls as much as to art collectors. When Roy continues to question her, however, Celestial reveals that she was pushed into an abortion in college after having an affair with a professor. It was then that she transferred to Spelman College and also learned to make baby dolls as a way of assuaging her guilt. Over the years Celestial opens a retail business with her father, Franklin Davenport, and has a solo show in which she exhibits all of the work made in Roy's likeness. Her fame grows after she wins a contest through the National Portrait Gallery and is featured in an article in Ebony Magazine. The contest-winning doll looks like baby Roy but wears prison johns and was inspired by a time she saw a little boy on the street and worried that he, like Roy, was destined to be imprisoned because of his skin color. Roy worries about why she didn't mention him in the Ebony article, wondering if she is becoming romantic with Andre. Celestial defends herself, saying the story of Roy's incarceration is too personal to share. Roy apologizes, but Celestial doesn't write back. Roy then writes to Celestial to share that he has discovered that his cellmate is actually his biological father, and that he understands her earlier sense of betrayal upon discovering he hadn't told her about Big Roy. Celestial finally writes to ask Roy's forgiveness, saying she was at first angry, but then just busy, and that she'll visit soon. Roy says something seems different about Celestial, asking if she is seeing someone else, and also shares that Olive has lung cancer. Olive dies, and after attending her funeral with Andre Celestial writes Roy to tell him she can no longer be his wife; seeing the dedication Big Roy displayed towards Olive only highlighted the weakness of their own marital connection. Roy writes back to Celestial asking her not to come visit him. Over the next few years, Celestial writes Roy on special occasions but Roy doesn't return her letters. At the five-year mark of his sentence, however, Roy writes Celestial to tell her he's being released and that he believes there's a reason she hasn't yet divorced him. Andre, who reveals he has been involved with Celestial for the past three years, says he has loved her since they were children. Though he was genuinely happy when Roy and Celestial married, he won't apologize for their current relationship. He comes home one day soon after Celestial has finally agreed to file for divorce from Roy only to find out that Roy is being released. Andre proposes to Celestial, despite her insistence that she no longer believes in marriage. She ultimately agrees, and they announce their engagement at the Davenports' house on Thanksgiving. Big Roy meets Roy at the prison on the day of his release, asking Roy if is sure that Celestial is still his wife. Roy isn't, and prays that Celestial will take him back. In Atlanta, meanwhile, Celestial thinks back to seeing Roy four years after college in New York. Roy remembers the same night, during which Celestial first told him about her dolls. He'd then chased down a man who'd burglarized Celestial's apartment. The thief kicked Roy in the mouth, causing him to lose a tooth. Flashing back to shortly before Olive's funeral, Andre thinks about how Roy asked him to take his place and act as pallbearer for Olive's casket. After the funeral, Andre and Celestial went to a bar to drink. Celestial made an advance on Andre, but he told her she was drunk and that they made a conspicuous pair in the tiny town. They then returned to their hotel, however, where they finally consummated their love. Back in present-day Eloe, Roy runs into Davina Hardrick, a classmate from high school. She invites him to dinner, makes a feast for him, and they sleep together. Later, Andre calls Big Roy's house and is surprised to find that Roy is already home. He tells Roy it will be a couple of days before he can come pick him up to bring him to Atlanta, and Roy realizes he'll need to get to Celestial himself to see if he can save his marriage. He borrows Big Roy's car and withdraws money from a savings account Olive had made him while he was away. Roy figures out that Celestial told his parents that his cellmate was his biological father. Big Roy tells Roy that the news killed Olive. Overwhelmed with the situation before him, Andre talks to his father, Carlos, despite the emotional distance between them. He tells Carlos about being engaged to Celestial, and that Roy has been released from prison. Carlos, at first judgmental, eventually expresses support for Andre and tells him that he'll need to accept the punishment Roy gives him for trying to steal his wife. On his way out of town, Roy stops at Olive's grave to weep and then at Walmart to tell Davina he's leaving. Andre arrives in Eloe with the intention of telling Roy that he and Celestial are together, but that they still intend to help Roy get back up on his feet. When he arrives to Big Roy's house, however, he finds out Roy has already left. Big Roy tells Andre not to call home, so that Celestial can figure out her feelings for Roy without Andre's influence. In Atlanta, Celestial finds Roy in her house. Roy asks if she still loves him and she can't answer. When he asks if she's with Andre, she says the answer is both yes and no. He continues to try to convince her that he's the same old Roy, eventually leading her to the bedroom. When Celestial asks Roy to use a condom, however, he is offended and goes to sleep in the sewing room with Celestial's dolls. Sure that Celestial has rejected him, he calls Davina and tells her that he remembers her son, from whom she is estranged, from prison. In Eloe, Andre Big Roy tries to convince Andre that while he wants Celestial, Roy needs her. In the morning Roy tries to appeal to Celestial again, eventually asking if he can gather his things. He sifts through boxes Celestial has packed but can't find the tooth he lost on their first date. Overwhelmed with emotion, he begins attacking Celestial's car, and then attempting to chop down the old hickory tree in front of the house when Andre arrives. The two men try to talk about what's happened, but Andre insists that none of the details matter, only that he and Celestial are together now. Roy and Andre fight. Celestial threatens to call the police, but Andre talks her out of it. Roy bangs his head against the hickory tree and Andre goes back into his house, while Celestial tries to keep Roy awake, worried he's given himself a concussion. Celestial goes to Andre's house in the middle of the night to tell him she has to try to be with Roy again. Roy wakes up to a Celestial who is tender to him. He asks for his tooth, which she retrieves from a box in her dresser. As they eat breakfast, Roy asks why Celestial told Olive about his biological father being his cellmate. Celestial claims that the news didn't kill Olive as Big Roy claimed, but rather released her from her worry about Roy because she knew there was someone taking care of him in jail. When Roy calls Davina to wish her a merry Christmas, she asks if what they have is something or nothing. Roy responds that while he is still married, what they had is something. Celestial puts on lingerie to seduce Roy, but he can sense that she fears him now and that what they had is no more. Celestial tells him she tried, and they turn out the light, unable to fall asleep. In an epilogue, Roy writes Celestial to tell her he's signed the divorce papers. Celestial writes back to say that she's pregnant with Andre's child, and asks for his prayers. Roy responds that he and Davina are getting married and that he and Big Roy have gone into business opening a barbershop together. He tells Celestial his life is good, though a different good than he expected.

- Genre: Short story - Title: An Astrologer’s Day - Point of view: Third person - Setting: An unnamed Indian village - Character: The Astrologer. Description: The nameless protagonist of the story, the astrologer is not truly an astrologer, but a con man. He sets up shop each day beneath a tree in a market, wearing a priest's garb and face paint and posing as a holy man with cosmic wisdom. For a small fee, he listens to people's problems and offers what seems like sage advice, dressing his common sense and manipulations in an astrologist's vernacular. Despite having no actual astrological wisdom, he is quite perceptive and offers comfort to his customers by giving them self-affirming answers and easing their minds. It is revealed at the end of the story that the astrologer is in hiding, having fled his home and past life as a farmer after he drunkenly attempted to murder Guru Nayak. As far as he knows, he actually did take Guru Nayak's life, and feels a great burden at the thought of being a murderer. His burden is not borne out of pity for Guru Nayak, however, but of his own self-interest. Even when the astrologer meets Guru Nayak, he makes no attempt to atone for his crime. Although he is the protagonist, the astrologer is not the hero of the story. The astrologer has a wife and child, neither of whom know anything of his murderous past. - Character: Guru Nayak. Description: Guru Nayak is the man whom the astrologer tried to murder several years before the story takes place. Very little is said about Guru Nayak other than that he has left his village and gone searching for the man who tried to kill him so that he can strangle him to death. Guru Nayak is introduced merely as an aggressive stranger who is immediately skeptical of the astrologer and his supposed wisdom. Though he is standing in front of him, due to the darkness of the evening and the paint, turban, and long beard that the astrologer wears, he does not recognize his attacker. He eventually believes that the astrologer is a prophet when the astrologer tells him the specifics of his attack and even Guru Nayak's own name. He is disappointed when he is told that his attacker died under the tires of a vehicle some months before, but satisfied enough that he promises to return home and never venture to this village again. Although Guru Nayak is positioned as the antagonist in the structure of the story, he actually could be considered as occupying the role of the hero in the relationship between the two characters. Although the story was written in English, Guru Nayak's name is actually two Hindi terms: "Guru" meaning teacher or spiritual initiator and "Nayak" meaning hero. - Character: The Astrologer's Wife. Description: Introduced only at the end of the story, the astrologer's wife is pleased that her husband has brought home more money than usual from his day's work. At the same time, she is shocked to learn that her husband had tried to murder Guru Nayak before he left his village and they were married. - Theme: Mysticism and Religious Hypocrisy. Description: Indian author R.K. Narayan's "An Astrologer's Day" tells the story of a fraudulent astrologer who makes his living by selling cosmic insights to gullible villagers. Although he has no knowledge of the cosmos or actual spiritual insight, the astrologer exploits his customers' search for meaning and reassurance, robing his lies in the vagaries of mystery and religion. Narayan's portrayal of astrology and holy men does not eviscerate or prosecute religion, but certainly prods at it. The astrologer is presented as a mere man, full of greed and fear and suffering from the woes of marriage, money, and tangled relationships much like any other human being. He possesses no cosmic insight of his own, and so must borrow and fabricate it. At the same time, the author recognizes that such religious mysticism, whether real or fantasy, offers an architecture of meaning for common people suffering common problems, but fearing insignificance and a lack of control above all else. The astrologer's appearance, produced by his garb and equipment, are all designed to create an air of mysticism and power. In the opening lines of the story, as the astrologer's character is being established, he lays out his "professional equipment," which is nothing more than a number of cowrie shells, a cloth chart that is too obscure to be understood but looks sufficiently mystical, and a bundle of ancient writings and scrolls. These props help him sell the illusion that he is a holy man; he never actually uses the items. The astrologer has also painted his forehead with sacred ash and wrapped himself in a saffron turban—saffron ironically being symbolic in Hinduism of purity and the quest for light. The astrologer seats himself beneath a large tamarind tree, drawing upon the classical image of holy men instructing their disciples beneath a grand tree, like Buddha attaining enlightenment or icons of Jesus Christ teaching his followers. By associating himself with a grand piece of nature, he further reinforces the notion that he is a man connected with and harmonizing with the world and the cosmos. Yet even as his eyes, settled between the striking colors of his headwear and his black beard, take on a sharp, otherworldly quality that evokes powerful wisdom, the astrologer is fully aware that in such garb, "even a half-wit's eyes would sparkle." In fact, the narrator notes, "half the enchantment of the place had to do with the fact that it did not have the benefit of municipal lighting"—that is, marketplace itself only seems mystical, essentially, because it lacks adequate lighting provided by the government. Such details comically undercut any notion of the astrologer as a true mystic, and reject outward trappings of mysticism as shallow and meaningless. The astrologer's keen insight and religious vocabulary thus mask the fact that he has no cosmic wisdom. The astrologer admits to himself that he had never intended to become an astrologer and does not understand the stars or planets nor their astrological implication better than any other peasant. His position as a fraudulent holy man, which is a risky endeavor in a highly religious community, is only the result of unfortunate circumstances that forced him to flee his home years earlier after (supposedly) killing another villager, Guru Nayak. Even so, the astrologer has sharpened his perception and formed a broad analysis of human problems, being that they almost always center around marriage, money, or tangled relationships. With this insight and a good listening ear, he is able to give vague advice and positive affirmation dressed in astrological language. He has learned what people want to hear, though they do not know that they want to hear it. They are comforted by what he has to say and thus happy to pay him his fee. The astrologer's guise, then, however elaborate, is dependent upon the fact that people are searching for meaning and immediately inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. Interestingly, the narrator calls the astrologer's work as honest as any man's labor and believes he deserves his wages. Indeed, the astrologer acts as a sort of therapist for the community—not a particularly good one, but one who does make his patients feel encouraged and affirmed in their struggles. His customers crave some level of cosmic significance in their life, and he offers it; there is a symbiosis to their relationship. However, the imbalance between their mundane problems and his astrological explanations is often absurd, such as when he connects a poor temperament to the position of Saturn. The fact that the astrologer himself uses his disguise to evade punishment for his past crime presents the story's ultimate hypocrisy. In the late hours of the evening, the astrologer has an encounter with a skeptical stranger whom he recognizes as Guru Nayak, the man he had attempted to murder years before. Guru Nayak has not recognized him in return, and, knowing that he will be killed if his identity is discovered, the astrologer uses his guise as a religious man to convince the skeptic that his would-be murderer was killed months ago, ending Guru Nayak's hunt for his assailant. Narayan, himself a member of the religious and powerful Brahmin caste, would have seen examples of holy men hiding behind their masks first-hand, and is taking the opportunity to satirize it. At the same time, the story lays some culpability for this sort of cosmic fraud on those who too quickly seek mystical solutions to their worldly problems. The readiness of people to believe that men like the astrologer have all the answers suggests an innate human desire to imbue one's life with meaning and control. Men like the astrologer, then, are simply giving customers what they want. - Theme: Guilt, Fear, and Identity. Description: The astrologer is not truly an astrologer, but merely a man masquerading as one. He has taken on a new, fabricated identity to escape the just consequences of his attempt at murder. The astrologer no longer has any opportunity to practice authenticity; his livelihood, marriage, and very survival are all predicated on lies. Narayan uses the astrologer to contemplate the ways in which fear and guilt can push an individual to live an unauthentic, self-deceiving life. The astrologer's fabricated identity is a fear-driven act of self-preservation, protecting him from justice and preserving his life. The astrologer was forced to flee his home after he stabbed Guru Nayak in drunken brawl. His new profession, as well as his makeup and turban, conceal his old identity from anyone who might recognize him. No one will question the identity of a holy man, as they are more inclined to think of him by title only, rather than as a person with a name, a family, an origin. For those who believe that he is a man of great power, they would not dare to question his integrity. Even the narrator does not give a name to the man, he is only ever "the astrologer." He has thus escaped justice and judgment at the hands of his community. Indeed, when Guru Nayak approaches him, he does not recognize the face of the man he seeks (that is, the man who tried to murder him). This is due in part to the failing light at the day's end, but also in part to the clothing and equipment that the astrologer has surrounded himself with. Had Guru Nayak recognized the astrologer, he would likely have killed him on the spot. The astrologer is playing a long-practiced part and Guru Nayak, despite his initial skepticism, fell for it. His deception has again allowed him to escape justice, thereby prohibiting him from living honestly or sincerely. The astrologer's fabricated identity also hides him from his own guilt for the blood he has shed. Although the narration is written in the third-person, it is reflective of the astrologer's state of mind. Before it is revealed that he tried to murder Guru Nayak, the telling of his leaving the village is written in an off-handed tone: an event which was slightly unfortunate, but necessary, and now long-past. This suggests that the astrologer has committed himself to his new identity, fraudulent as it is, in an effort to bury his guilt. At the end of the story, when the astrologer reveals to his wife that he had once attempted to murder a man, he shows no remorse or sense of responsibility. His only concern is that he is not a true murderer, but spares no thought for the toll that his actions had on Guru Nayak. Even when his wife is understandably shocked at the knowledge that her husband tried to kill another man, the astrologer brushes it off as the actions of "silly youngsters." He has separated his current self from the one who attempted murder. He has effectively buried his own guilt underneath the layers of his new identity. Motivated as he is to deceive the world and himself, the astrologer is unable to undertake genuine introspection or grow, let alone to take responsibility for what he has done. The astrologer is mired in deceit, every aspect of his life is a lie. His livelihood, though it does serve a function within the village, is based on lies. He has deceived himself that his crime will never need to be atoned for, nor should it. It is especially ironic that his chosen profession is that of a holy man, one whom others look to for virtue and counsel. The astrologer is trading on the esteemed role of religion and thousands of years of teaching, but is unwilling to absorb any of it himself. He has cynically compartmentalized his world. When given the opportunity to face his victim and take responsibility for his crime, the astrologer dodges it. During his encounter with Guru Nayak, never does the astrologer even consider the possibility of confessing. Fate presents him with the opportunity to embrace the truth, to set aside his false identity and deceptions. Instead, the astrologer uses his guise as an omniscient figure to cast another lie, convincing Guru Nayak that his attacker was killed months before. With this in mind, the astrologer's fear during his meeting with Guru Nayak may be as much an existential fear of facing himself as it is a simple fear for his own life. Guru Nayak's presence resurrects the past and threatens the astrologer's own self-deceiving identity. If one piece of his identity comes loose, it all does, and his deceptions are laid bare to himself and the world. When the astrologer tells Guru Nayak that the man he used to be was killed, the astrologer does effectively kill him; any possibility of living as his authentic self has now been shattered. Guru Nayak works as a simple foil for the astrologer's inauthenticity. Out of fear for his life and guilt over what he has done, the astrologer has buried his true self in the robes of religious mysticism to such an extent that Narayan never even gives him a name, referring to him exclusively as "the astrologer." This sits in contrast to Guru Nayak, whose name literally means "teacher hero" in Hindi. Fittingly, Guru Nayak is closer to being a heroic character than the astrologer ever is, because Guru Nayak is, though bent on revenge, at least true to himself. Though it may be argued whether or not Guru Nayak's cause is noble, there is a truthful simplicity to it that is wholly lacking in the astrologer's life, regardless of what "good" he may offer to others. The astrologer's guilt and fear of retribution drive him to bury his identity until every aspect of his life is a deception. Lies must supplement lies until nothing is true, and whoever the astrologer truly is is lost. Narayan's story thus reflects the way in which guilt and fear may drive an individual to lose sight of who they are. This is true and often happens in any culture, but would have been particularly poignant in India at the time, where honor, shame, and social standing effected every aspect of life. The challenge of living a simple, introspective, and self-aware life is especially great, and takes far more courage than the astrologer has. - Theme: Modernization, Tradition, and Inequality. Description: Throughout the story, Narayan intentionally contrasts the mix of ancient and modern, primitive and sophisticated that makes up modern India, particularly in the rural regions. Under British occupation, India was thrust into the modern world as the ruling class introduced technology and built infrastructure to suit their own tastes. Because of the speed at which this happened, as compared to the gradual progression of technology in Europe or America, much of the development happened unevenly, with old-world ideologies and methods mixing with new-world technologies and values in dynamic, asynchronous ways. Narayan uses ironic pairings of images to depict the ways in which Indian culture, built on ten thousand years of tradition, is synthesizing with a quickly changing technological world. Rather than argue that they directly contradict each other, he shows how they interweave into daily life. Technology and modernization are signified by the presence of gaslights, cars, and notebooks in the marketplace. As these items help people literally function in the modern world, tradition and culture help the people to find their broader place in the world, offering answers to existential questions and creating the illusion that fate can be foretold and controlled. The astrologer sets up shop beneath the tamarind tree, which sits next to a road leading to the Town Hall Park. Narayan almost humorously contrasts the mystic teacher sitting beneath the tree against all the hallmarks of modern administration and democracy, pointing to the usefulness of both. Despite the modern organization of society, newfound technology, and the quickly changing aspects of daily life, the astrologer still has a lively trade. People still seek comfort in face of marital and financial strife, and even the illusion of significance and control is a valued commodity. Even though the people of the village would have understood that the cosmos spins around the sun, they were still comforted by knowing that their bad disposition was able to be explained on cosmological events, such as the current position of Saturn in the sky. Modern of technology has begun to interpenetrate and even ironically enhance mysticism and the astrologer's religious practice, rather than threatening to destroy it. The astrologer's trade utilizes aspects of both modern convenience and old-world tradition. His "professional equipment" contains a medley of ritualistic items, such as cowrie shells and a mystically unreadable chart, as well as a simple notebook, perhaps for keeping records or remembering customers' problems so that he can keep up his appearance of omniscience. The enchanting and mystical lighting of the marketplace is also only the result of gas lights and naked flares on torches, sputtering their chemical flames. Yet, ironically, if there were proper municipal lighting (the full extent of technological progress and administration), it is implied by the text that the marketplace would take on a more anti-septic quality and the astrologer's work would be more difficult to convincingly sell. Although the marks of modernization are laced throughout the story, Narayan gives no indication that the astrologer's trade is reaching the end of its day. Villagers are just as happy to pay their meager livings for some cosmic comfort, and poor, flickering light only helps to sell the image. Modern development, happening at such an extreme rate, leaves many people economically behind, including the astrologer himself. A consequence of non-gradual technological progress is that inequality increases, evidence by the fact that, within the astrologer's earshot, people are driving cars to work, (assumedly) spending their days in electrically-lit administrative offices. Narayan further demonstrates inequality by describing how, in the din of the crowd, the honking of car horns is listed alongside jutka (a two-wheeled carriage) drivers cursing their horses. Meanwhile, the astrologer himself does not have a shop or even a simple flare to light his work, borrowing the light of others and the shelter of a tree to do his business. Yet the astrologer's appeal is that he offers something timeless, a cultural anchor that has lasted millennia in the face of rapid changes and modernization. The astrologer is markedly poor—his wife is thrilled with the extra money he earns from Guru Nayak because she will be able to buy her daughter the small luxury of sweets—as are his clientele, shopping in such a marketplace. Economically unstable and watching the world change very quickly, the future would have felt incredibly uncertain. Being able to put some faith in wisdom gleaned from the orientation of the stars, which have been moving in the same way since the dawn of civilization, may have been a needed comfort. Narayan's depiction of the clash between the old world and the new in India does not fit into a simple framework. At times, the mysticism and religiosity that pervades Indian life is enhanced, sometimes ironically, by the presence of new technological development, and in such a quickly-changing landscape, the familiarity of ancient tradition is needed. At the same time, modernization is deepening the divides of economic inequality as the rich are now able to afford amenities and luxuries that create a massive qualitative difference in day to day life, which perhaps increasing the need for mysticism and meaning to unite the country across different social groups. Ancient tradition and religion, then, maybe be a means to help people stay connected to the social fabric of their country. - Climax: Guru Nayak bets the astrologer a large sum of money that he cannot foretell anything worthwhile or true. The astrologer draws on the experience of a secret past and wins the bet. - Summary: An an unnamed village in India, an astrologer lays out his tools of the trade, a mix of cowrie shells, obscure charts, a notebook, and other such curios. They serve no purpose but to create the illusion of mysticism. The astrologer has also painted his forehead with sacred ash, wrapped his head in a turban, and seated himself and his gear beneath a large tree. All of these things serve to give him an air of wisdom, transcendence, and prophetic power, though the narrator is quick to point out that none of these qualities actually belong to the man. The astrologer has set up his little shop amidst a busy marketplace among people fencing stolen goods, presenting the same cheap food as a variety of gourmet delicacies, and auctioning off low-quality fabrics. The astrologer, quickly established as a fraud, is in the company of other fraudsters and spin doctors selling their wares and making their livings. The marketplace is lit by various shop lights and flares, the dancing shadows of which enhance the astrologer's mystical quality. He notably has no light of his own, but simply borrows that of the other vendors. The astrologer had never had any intention of becoming one, but had been forced to leave his ancestral home and travel several hundred miles away with no plan and no money. Even so, he is a convincing holy man, using his own insights into human problems to offer vague but comforting advice to people in the market. He functions as a sort of therapist, offering self-affirming advice that he wraps in the guise of astrological wisdom. He is good at his trade; he tells people what they want to hear, and they leave comforted by it. Though it is not an honest living that the astrologer makes, it is still a well-earned one. As the marketplace is emptying and the lights are being put out, a stranger named Guru Nayak appears. In the darkness, neither can see much of the other's face. Seeing the opportunity for one more client, the astrologer invites Guru Nayak to sit and chat. The stranger does so, but is instantly skeptical of the astrologer. He aggressively wagers that the astrologer cannot tell him anything true or worthwhile. They haggle over the price and the astrologer agrees. However, when Guru Nayak lights a cheroot, the astrologer catches a brief glimpse of the man's face and is filled with fear. He tries to get out of the wager, but Guru Nayak holds him to it and will not let him leave. The astrologer tries his usual tack of vague, self-affirming advice, but Guru Nayak will have none of it. The astrologer sincerely prays for a moment, and then changes course. He reveals to Guru Nayak that he knows he was once stabbed through the chest and left for dead, and that now Guru Nayak is here searching for his assailant. He even reveals that he knows Guru Nayak's name, something he attributes to his cosmic wisdom. Guru Nayak is greatly excited by all of this, believing the astrologer to truly be all-knowing. He presses the astrologer for the whereabouts of the man who stabbed him so that he can have his revenge. The astrologer tells him that he died several months ago, crushed by an oncoming lorry. Guru Nayak is frustrated by this, but satisfied that at least his attacker died terribly. He gives the astrologer his money and leaves. The astrologer arrives home late at night and shows his wife the money he has made, becoming briefly bitter when he realizes that although Guru Nayak has paid him a great sum, it is not quite as much as promised. Even so, his wife is thrilled. As they lie down to sleep, the astrologer reveals to his wife that a great burden has been lifted off of his shoulders. Years ago, the astrologer was the one to stab Guru Nayak and leave him for dead, which forced him to flee his home and make a new life as a fraudulent astrologer. He had thought himself to be a murderer, but was now content that he had not in fact taken a life. Satisfied by this, he goes to sleep.

- Genre: Realism, American Naturalism, Short Story - Title: An Episode of War - Point of view: Third-Person Omniscient. - Setting: An anonymous Civil War battlefield. - Character: The Lieutenant. Description: The lieutenant, the helpless and frail protagonist of Crane's story, suffers a gunshot wound then searches for the field hospital, while enduring the belittlement of the surgeon and the officer. Readers don't learn much about the lieutenant—not even his name—though the story's conclusion hints at naiveté and innocence: his mother greets him when he returns home, and though he has a wife, he has no children yet. Furthermore, everything about the man suggests powerlessness, a quality readers wouldn't ordinarily expect from a military leader. First, though he is surrounded by subordinates in the beginning, the office of lieutenant is a substitute role for a higher-ranking general, suggesting that whatever responsibilities the man has are secondary. Next, he is shot in the arm not while fighting valiantly but while portioning coffee to his men on the sidelines of battle—a situation so inglorious that he spends the rest of the story in a state of profound embarrassment that culminates when he returns home with an amputated arm. Third, his reaction to the injury is almost cowardly: instead of charging toward enemy (he can't even see them, as they're shrouded by the forest), he clumsily sheathes his sword, and he stands silently while his corporals look on in surprise. By depicting the lieutenant's weakness, Crane brings out several of the story's themes that center on humankind's insignificance and the humbling effects of military experience. As he crosses the camp for the field hospital, his character develops in two ways. First, he begins to see the world and the battle more clearly—a string of discoveries that show how strongly war can cloud people's clarity and thinking. Second, his private sense of self-doubt at being shot deepens into a public sense of shame when an officer and a surgeon belittle him for his injury. These embarrassing encounters show Crane's argument that people disregard rank when judging others. - Character: The Surgeon. Description: The curt, hot-headed surgeon, denigrates the lieutenant when he finally reaches the field hospital, and he mocks the lieutenant's fear of amputation. Building on the dismissive behavior of an officer earlier in the story, the surgeon makes it clear that people in war can look down on the injured. He is "busy" when the injured lieutenant finally reaches the hospital, a stressful and hectic place, but he still has time for a "friendly smile" and a "Good morning." When he spots the man's injury, however, the surgeon's kindness freezes into dramatically curt treatment and a look of "great contempt." He now acts "impatiently," "disdainfully," and with "scorn." This instant switch in demeanor makes it clear to the reader that the man sees illness and injury as evidence of weakness. By being so mean to the undeserving lieutenant just because he's hurt, the surgeon illustrates one of Crane's central themes: that people judge each other less by rank or status and more by their own private value systems, like health or inherent ability. Aside from illustrating the ways in which people can be judgmental, the surgeon also shows how people can damage the self-esteem of others. "This wound," says Crane, "evidently placed [the lieutenant] on a very low social plane." The surgeon uses language that makes this low social opinion clear both to the reader and to the protagonist. He makes the lieutenant act "very meek" and guilty for the simple accident of having been shot. And when the surgeon scolds the man's fear ("Come along. Don't be a baby"), he makes the lieutenant seem as inexperienced and irrational as a child. (It doesn't help that the terrified lieutenant won't enter the hospital, a converted schoolhouse, in fear of the treatment he'll find there.) The surgeon's suggestion of infancy is crucial to the lieutenant's shame, a feeling that takes root when he's injured under embarrassing circumstances and worsens as he discovers his own ignorance and ill-preparedness. Arriving at the climax of the story, the surgeon's belittlement cements Crane's theme that war has a unique ability to show people—in this case, the lieutenant—their own shortcomings in painful detail. - Character: The Officer. Description: The over-eager and dismissive officer scolds the injured lieutenant for improperly treating his wound, further adding to the protagonist's deep sense of shame. Though his exact rank is unclear, this officer is likely the equal or the superior of the lieutenant. As such, he is the first one to belittle him from a position of authority. When he meets the officer, the lieutenant has just been relieved of duty after suffering a gunshot under embarrassing circumstances. The officer heightens this fresh shame in two ways. First, when they cross paths, he asks the lieutenant about "things of which he knew nothing." For a military leader to be ignorant is embarrassing indeed. Second—and far graver—the officer immediately "scolds" him for improper care of his wound (a verb Crane repeats for effect). Without really asking, the brash officer tries to fix it, cutting the lieutenant's sleeve and laying "bare the arm," as the lieutenant's "nerve[s] […] softly fluttered under his touch." His over-confidence makes the lieutenant hang his head and feel inadequate. And the whole process, with the officer unwrapping trembling, naked skin, resembles a parent changing a baby's diaper—a feeling of belittlement that later solidifies when a surgeon chides the fearful lieutenant for acting like a "baby." This surgeon, furthermore, lets readers know that the officer's bandage was poor from the start, a revelation that suggests the lieutenant has been denigrated by someone as clueless as he is. The officer's "scolding" behavior in the moment, and his brazenness toward the meek lieutenant, help introduce two of Crane's themes: that people (such as the officer) tend to treat the injured with snobbishness, and that war makes people (such as the lieutenant) keenly aware of their own inadequacies. - Character: The Orderly-Sergeant. Description: The orderly-sergeant, a timid and fearful subordinate, helps the lieutenant sheathe his sword after he's shot in the arm. At the story's opening, the sergeant is one of a large group of men who surrounds the lieutenant as he divides their portions of coffee. When the lieutenant is shot, the surprise is so great that the men—including their injured superior—stand in awestruck silence. Two major themes arise from this behavior. First, the men's silence and inactivity show how ill-prepared they are for the trials of war. The orderly-sergeant, as an implied part of the wide-eyed and fearful group, certainly contributes to this theme. But his main role in the story occurs when he helps the lieutenant sheathe his sword: he approaches him "tenderly," "leaning nervously backward" (a phrase Crane repeats), making sure not to let "his finger brush the body" of the wounded man. "A wound," says Crane in explanation, "gives strange dignity to him who bears it." The orderly-sergeant's extremely careful treatment here illustrates the heightened "dignity" with which some people treat the wounded. Until now, the sergeant and his comrades had "thronged" forward to get their coffee, but now, as the sergeant makes clear, his wound commands a certain respect. This is the first clue to Crane's argument that people ignore rank, instead paying closer attention to health and innate ability, when judging others. Soon, characters like the officer and the surgeon will prove this further, in opposite ways, when they denigrate, rather than revere, the wounded man. - Character: The Lieutenant's Family. Description: The lieutenant's sobbing family—his sisters, mother, and wife—meet him when he returns home missing an arm in the story's conclusion. Though Crane only gives the family only three lines of description, he intends them to say a great deal about his protagonist's inexperience and sense of shame. The fact that his mother is here makes the lieutenant seem young; this is heightened by the fact that, presumably, he has no children. If he is merely a teenager (as many Civil War fighters were), then his accidental injury while dividing the company's coffee takes on the greater meaning of an inexperienced teenager thrown into forces beyond his control. Furthermore, the absence of any brothers or a father suggests that perhaps they, too, are off at war. The young lieutenant's premature return without them, then, would have acutely heightened his shame. Last, their tears add yet another layer of embarrassment. A mother might weep at a son's dramatic escape from death, but likely not at the inglorious reality: a fumbling accident over coffee. The fact that she weeps gives readers a clue into the heroism that the outside world expects from returning soldiers, an imagined heroism that weighs heavily on the conscience of Crane's embarrassed protagonist. - Theme: Rank vs. Human Judgment. Description: In "An Episode of War," Stephen Crane's snapshot of a wounded Civil War lieutenant's search for medical treatment, Crane gives none of his characters a name or even a memorable personality. What he gives them is a military rank, which the men immediately flout with their behavior or attitude toward each other. The anonymity of Crane's characters, and their disregard of status, suggest that low-ranking buglers and high-ranking generals, rather than staying separate in a rigid military hierarchy, are all part of the same basic humanity. The lieutenant's gunshot wound, however, marks him as exceptional. As he crosses the battle camp toward the infirmary, he meets soldiers who either revere or denigrate him for his injury. Through these different attitudes toward the wounded general, Crane argues that people naturally want to organize themselves into a hierarchy—if rank doesn't accurately define them, people will find their own, more instinctive ways to create status. Crane is careful to specify soldiers' ranks, but his word choices show that he finds such designations artificial. At the story's opening, Crane's protagonist, the lieutenant, stands among subordinates like "corporals," representatives of "grimy […] squads," and an "orderly-sergeant." As soon as a bullet strikes him, however, these characters become merely "men." The lieutenant soon passes "a general" and his "aide," a "bugler, two or three orderlies, and the bearer of the corps standard." But as he watches from afar, these designations give way to more general, anonymous words like "aggregation," "unity," "mass" (twice), "chorus," and "battery." By swapping these official ranks for abstract nouns, Crane prepares readers for the idea that military titles cannot accurately capture human nature even on a battlefield. A gunshot wound—not the title of lieutenant—is the first thing to make the hasty men respect Crane's protagonist. Before the gunshot strikes him, the lieutenant's men "throng" forward rather ignobly to grab their allotments of coffee. But after the lieutenant is hit, the men stare at him in reverence, "statue-like and silent." A sergeant, the first to approach the wounded man after a period of silence, "tenderly" sheathes the lieutenant's sword and leans "nervously" backward," careful not to "brush" a finger against the man. The sergeant is not only scared of harming his lieutenant further; he is awed by the "strange dignity" given to any wounded person. A wound, says Crane, has the power to make "other men understand sometimes that they are little." By explaining the sergeant's reverent body language, Crane shifts the typical value system in a war story. From this point on, the lieutenant is no longer active in the fight. So it is now his wound—not the uniform or badges that readers can expect him to wear—that define him on the battlefield. Other men soon denigrate the lieutenant for his wound. This fact shows that injury, as an identifier of status, elicits more complicated, more realistic attitudes than mere rank might do. The lieutenant meets several officers on his way to the hospital. Though they are his equals, they treat him like a child and "scold" him (a verb Crane repeats) for neglecting his wound. This insult gives readers a sense that although some men revere the "dignity" of injury, as the sergeant did, others clearly do not. Shortly after, when the lieutenant arrives at the hospital, the behavior of workers there reinforces this feeling. The surgeon's "smile" fades to a look of "scorn" and "contempt" when he sees his superior's wound. He treats the lieutenant "disdainfully" and mocks his fear of amputation. After the officer and surgeon's reproaches, Crane explains that the lieutenant's "wound evidently placed [him] on a very low social plane." These belittling responses are the exact opposite of the sergeant's instinctive respect for infirmity. By giving two diametrically opposed attitudes toward the lieutenant's wound—the sergeant's respect and the surgeon's disdain—Crane illustrates a basic fact about humanity: despite the widespread use of rank in war or society, people will settle on more instinctive ways to judge others, such as health or inherent ability. - Theme: Inexperience and Shame. Description: Stephen Crane's short story "An Episode of War" depicts a Civil War lieutenant as he sustains a wound in the battle camp and searches for medical attention. A plot like this might normally appear in a valiant and patriotic war thriller, but Crane uses it ironically: to show the fragility, stubbornness, and naiveté of humans in war. Through the attitudes of secondary characters, Crane makes his wounded protagonist look and feel childishly ill-prepared for the rigors he has supposedly been trained to handle. Crane portrays his protagonist in this way not to make fun of him but to argue that the trials of war can reduce otherwise adept humans to a state of inadequacy. Crane uses the lieutenant's feeling of childishness to make a larger narrative comment about shame: his growing humiliation shows that the public nature of war—with its esteemed ranks in battle and its promise of glory back home—has a unique ability to expose people's shortcomings to themselves. In the opening scene, Crane shows his lieutenant as technically skilled, but only at a distance from the fight—a perfect setup for failure when real danger strikes. First, a lieutenant is necessarily a deputy role, an emergency deputy for a higher ranking officer. (The phrase "in lieu" means "in the place of.") It's a respectable office but clearly a substitute. By choosing this role, Crane hints that the highest official in his story has only secondary abilities. Behind the front lines, the lieutenant has plenty of skill—only the wrong kind of skill. He carefully distributes coffee to his men by misusing the implements of war: he spreads the grounds on his rubber blanket (a new technology designed to protect soldiers from the damp earth) and divides "astoundingly equal" portions with his sword. Wearing a "frowning and serious" face, he is "on the verge of a great triumph in mathematics." His tools of choice and grave appearance suggest the concentration of a war strategist poring over a map, but the punchline is that Crane's protagonist is merely serving drinks. The man's tactical ability disappears the moment a bullet strikes his arm (a wound that hurts him but does not endanger his life), and Crane reverses his scene of "triumph" into a total failure. At this crucial moment, instead of brandishing his sword against the enemy—as would be expected—the lieutenant hides it. But even this is difficult for him. He remains stationery and silent while "engaged in a desperate struggle" to sheathe it with his left hand. The tool he once wielded with precision at a safe distance from combat has now "become a strange thing to him […] as if he had been endowed with a trident." Crane's ironic use of the war terms "trident" (the weapon of the Greek god Poseidon) and "struggle," combined with his depiction of a sword as a harmless object, draw attention to a skilled man's total inability in war. Soon, other characters belittle the lieutenant and help turn his newfound self-doubt (a private feeling) into shame (a public one). An officer "scolds" the lieutenant for failing to wrap his arm, and, a surgeon treats him with "scorn" and "contempt." Before these bullies, the lieutenant hangs his head, feels demoted to a "very low social plane," and believes (absurdly) that "he did not know how to be correctly wounded." His embarrassment takes on the terms of childhood inexperience. First, he fails to answer basic factual queries about the battle and regards his questioners with wide-eyed "wonder." Second, the scolding officer unwraps his sleeve, laying "bare the arm, every nerve of which softly fluttered under his touch," as a parent might do when changing a baby's diaper. Third, the surgeon mocks his fear, saying "Come along. Don't be a baby." Last, when he approaches the field hospital (a converted schoolhouse), the wounded lieutenant won't approach "the door of the old schoolhouse." Because he's so squeamish, readers are told, he stubbornly neglects his wound, which ultimately leads to the amputation of his arm. Although the lieutenant's justifiable fear stems from the pain and medical treatment he'll face on the other side of the door, he seems overly preoccupied with the schoolhouse itself—just as a child might hate going to school. Crane's language of adolescence perfectly captures the lieutenant's new relation to world. Once presumed competent for leadership, he is now publically seen as "helpless" and feels lesser as a result. When the lieutenant returns home, his family's grief represents society's public glare, and it is here that he feels the heaviest shame for his inexperience. The lieutenant's sisters, mother, and wife greet him. But by limiting this homecoming to two short sentences, Crane invites his readers to ask certain questions about its emotional impact on the lieutenant: where, for instance, are his brothers? Did they achieve the glorious death that he missed? Also, the lieutenant has a wife but no children. Does that imply that he is no older than a teenager? Crane's implications here—of a failed young man returning home—gives readers a new way of feeling his embarrassment. His family "sobbed for a long time" over his lost arm, and it seems that his family has pieced together a traditional wartime narrative: a valiant struggle and a narrow escape from death. The ironic truth, however, is that he was hit while serving coffee and lost an arm due to his fear of medical treatment. Because he stands "shamefaced amid these tears," readers assume he is painfully aware of the difference between his family's vision and the reality of his bumbling, inglorious accident. Crane asks readers to imagine the types of war stories they expect to hear, and to compare those stories to the reality of his bumbling lieutenant. Once readers do this, the heaviest burden upon the lieutenant is not the judgment of officers on the battlefield; it is his family's (and, by extension, society's) expectation of a valiant hero at home. - Theme: War, Clarity, and Beauty. Description: In Stephen Crane's Civil War vignette "An Episode of War," the protagonist, a lieutenant on his way to the field hospital, undergoes a radical change in his perception after a bullet strikes him in the arm. He soon discovers that people removed from the battle have a remarkably clearer understanding of it than he does. He also begins to notice the beauty in the world, realizations that Crane conveys with the type of language he uses to describe them. He asks readers to pay close attention to his word choices so that they can discern an argument about the way people pay attention in a military scenario. War, argues Crane, clouds logic and disguises basic truths about the world. Only those removed from it can see the world—and the war itself—as it really is. Crane's opening in the battle gives readers the feeling that combat complicates a person's mere ability to think. Crane shrouds his opening battlefield scene in confusion. He describes the protagonist's wound only indirectly: "suddenly the lieutenant cried out and looked quickly at a man near him as if he suspected it was a case of personal assault." Crane never uses words like "gunshot" or "gunfire," nor does he provide a loud bang to clue readers in to what's happened. By leaving readers to discern a gunshot entirely from the lieutenant's behavior, Crane places them in the shoes of his confused and unsuspecting soldiers. Just after being shot, the lieutenant tries but cannot find the direction of the gunfire. All he sees are "little puffs of white smoke" emerging from "the hostile wood." Crane uses irony here ("little puffs" seem hardly dangerous) to heighten the confusion of the moment. Throughout this opening scene, Crane uses words like "mystery," "astonished," "mystically," "puzzled," and "awed" to cement this sense of confusion. By the time the lieutenant leaves his men to look for the infirmary, readers have a very good sense of how combat can frustrate the use of logic. Encounters with non-active soldiers give readers the sense that real knowledge exists only outside the battle. At one point, the lieutenant asks a group of stragglers for directions to the hospital. They describe "its exact location" and then describe with perfect precision "the performance of every corps, every division, the opinion of every general." The lieutenant meets this recitation with a look of "wonder." The men's perfect knowledge is clearly different from the lieutenant's silent stare. Crane explains that "these men, no longer having part in the battle, knew more of it than others." This is the first clue to his argument that those on the outside of conflict (such as these men) have a clearer understanding it than those in the middle of it (such as the lieutenant). The lieutenant soon meets another group of men who ask him for details "of which he knew nothing." The word "nothing" is a powerful contrast to the stragglers' repeated "every" ("the performance of every corps, every division, the opinion of every general"), an adjective which might as well amount to everything. In these encounters between a soldier straight from the front line and the camp life behind the scenes, readers get a deepening sense of the knowledge that is curiously denied to people who are closest to the battle. Though he's missed basic facts about his own battle, the wounded lieutenant soon learns more important, more universal truths about the world. Now that he's safely removed from the fight, he takes an "intent pause" at the battle and suddenly notices the aesthetic value of the world around him. He can now observe things as a painter might, not just as a lieutenant: a "black horse," some "blue infantry," and the "green woods" combine into "a historical painting." In the paragraphs surrounding the lieutenant's release from combat, Crane's deeply poetic language echoes this sudden shift in perception. Crane uses more alliteration ("glistening guns"), more similes ("as dramatic as the crash of a wave on the rocks"), more metaphors ("The sound of it was a war chorus"), and closer attention to psychological effect (the spectacle "reached into the depths of man's emotion"). In order to stress his argument about the clarity that people gain with distance from combat, Crane describes this drastic shift in his protagonist's awareness: "he was enabled to see many things which as a participant in the fight were unknown to him." Though Crane does not discuss art or writing with any depth in "An Episode of War," readers can reasonably draw an autobiographical conclusion from the lieutenant's sudden aesthetic epiphanies. Aside from writing fiction, Crane was a war correspondent in the Spanish-American War among other conflicts, traveling to front lines and then digesting his experience in print. The lieutenant's awakening stands a metaphor for the role of the writer—especially the journalist—in society. Only someone, argues Crane, with a deliberate distance from his or her life experience can make compelling sense of it to others. - Theme: Nature and Human Insignificance. Description: In Stephen Crane's "An Episode of War," readers watch the moment a Civil War lieutenant is wounded on the sidelines of combat. But instead of launching into a tale of allies and enemies—as a typical war writer might do—Crane focusses on the fragility of his group of soldiers. They can't understand what's happened, and they struggle to take any action at all. People, argues Crane, are often powerless to understand or change their fate—especially in situations as stressful as war. To heighten the sense of their insignificance, Crane portrays nature as a domineering, mystifying force that both conceals the men's enemies and stands as a looming reminder of their frailty. By making his Civil War soldiers passive and confused, Crane suggests that even hard-boiled, trained fighters can be helpless. Though his wound is minor, once the lieutenant is shot in the arm, he and his men stand "silent," rather than charging into battle. The lieutenant's audible "hoarse breathing" heightens this silence as he struggles to sheathe his sword—itself a symbolically passive action. His body language, too, gives the impression of weakness: he walks "slowly" and "mournfully," and he holds his arm "tenderly," as if it's made of "brittle glass." More than quiet and overly gentle, Crane's soldiers—he calls them "spectators"—are unable to move in this decisive moment. Though unwounded, they stand "statue-like" and "stone-like." Their main verbs are passive ones like "look," "watch," "stare," and "gaze." This silent passivity on the battlefield is a far cry from the strong-willed behavior readers expect from fighters. This opens readers up to the idea that people, in Crane's view, are ultimately frail. But, by keeping their enemy hidden from the story, Crane makes his men seem helpless not just against a particular opponent, but helpless simply as human beings. The lieutenant soon sees very serious action, but Crane uses ambiguous diction to make it unclear who is fighting whom. Crane names fighters only with an indefinite article—"a general," "an aide," "a bugler"—in order to divert readers' attention from a specific man-to-man conflict. Crane also never mentions historical facts of the fight. There is no Confederacy, for instance, and no Union: just soldiers against each other. Crane doesn't even name the battle he's depicting, the date, or the place, forcing readers to view the men's uselessness as a universal human fact, not just a fact about the Civil War. If Crane detailed the Confederates' historical disadvantage to the Union, for instance, readers might simply think these men were poorly trained. Instead, Crane's ambiguity of diction and action makes readers feel that all humans in all times, no matter how trained or prepared, face the same fundamental disempowerment. In absence of a visible enemy, Crane uses the distant forest—a symbol for the vastness and power of nature—to heighten the men's sense of smallness. Eight separate times, the lieutenant and his men stare at the "wood," the "forest," or "the woods." Because a specific enemy never appears from it, the forest becomes the closest thing to an aggressor. At first the men turn toward the wood to find the enemy—but instead find vague "little puffs of white smoke" indicating only the obvious fact of gunfire. Soon, the forest itself becomes "the hostile wood." While Crane of course knows that trees cannot themselves be malicious, he uses this ironic personification to heighten the men's sense of vulnerability in the world. Then, as the "puzzled" lieutenant tries "awkwardly"—and fails—to sheathe his sword, he glances again at the forest. And he takes a parting glance at it again as finally he sulks away from the font lines, feeling "helpless." That the lieutenant glances at the forest in these particular moments of weakness seems to contrast nature's vastness and power with humankind's helplessness. Crane's figurative language in two places gives readers one final clue to his view that nature can be a reminder of humans' insignificance. First, when the orderly-sergeant feels awe at the "little[ness]" of humankind, Crane expresses this with a metaphor about "the curtain which hangs before the revelations of all existence." Second, Crane describes the forest as a thing "that veiled [the lieutenant's] problems." In a story so short, Crane expects readers to connect these two mentions of fabric—a curtain or a veil—that separates humans from the fundamental truths they are desperate to learn. By including the distant forest in this symbolic barrier to truth, Crane hints that nature can be seen as a realm of permanent and fundamental truth, but that it is beyond humankind's comprehension. Though Crane never himself demonizes nature against the humans in this story, he hints that nature is indifferent to the conflicts of humans on Earth. As such, nature, for Crane, is one more means to suggest the smallness, impermanence, and fickleness of human beings. - Climax: The wounded lieutenant becomes overwhelmed by his fear of medical treatment. - Summary: In the opening scene, a lieutenant is dividing coffee for his troops in a camp behind their battlefield. The men wait eagerly as he draws portions on his blanket with a sword. Suddenly he is shot, but it takes everyone a minute to understand what just happened. The lieutenant tries to brandish his sword, but, unable to do so with his arm wounded, he tries even more awkwardly to sheathe it. The men stare helplessly, looking first at the lieutennant and then toward the distant forest where the bullet originated, until an orderly-sergeant nervously steps up to help him. The man's over-carefulness captures the general feeling of vague fear, awe, and respect that surrounds the newly wounded lieutenant. Sad, silent, and humiliated, the lieutenant departs slowly for the field hospital, glancing at the woods as he does so. As he passes the growing battle, he notices things that he never could before. The spectacle of war starts to appear beautiful and poetic. A general and his aide—an otherwise unremarkable sight—now appear colorful and remind him of a historical painting. The appearance of a battery, as gunmen launch it into battle, captivates him. He dwells on its sights and sounds even as it fades well beyond his sight. As the lieutenant makes his way to the hospital, he passes two groups of off-duty soldiers who make him feel increasingly ignorant and helpless. Incredibly, a group of stragglers seems to know everything about the fight, even facts that the lieutenant himself never learned while in the front lines. A while later, another group of officers belittles the lieutenant further when they ask him questions he can't answer. Worst of all, one officer from this gathering scolds the lieutenant like a parent for not dressing his wound. Brashly, the man rips open the lieutenant's sleeve and attempts to dress it, all the while making the lieutenant feel silly and ignorant. The lieutenant finally arrives at the chaotic field hospital, which is a converted schoolhouse. A surgeon is kind to the lieutenant at first, but then, noticing his wound, becomes mean and cold, begrudgingly tending to him. He mocks the lieutenant's inadequate bandage and calls him a baby when he shows fear. But the lieutenant, reduced and embarrassed, stops cold at the doors of the schoolhouse and refuses to enter. Despite the surgeon's insistence, the lieutenant is terrified of amputation. Crane jumps forward in time to the lieutenant's return home. He has lost the arm after all, and his family weeps. He stands in shame as he tries to brush off their grief, insisting—unconvincingly—that the injury isn't as bad as it looks.

- Genre: Historical Fiction - Title: An Imaginary Life - Point of view: First Person - Setting: The Roman Empire and its outlying territories, around 1 C.E. - Character: Ovid. Description: Ovid is a Roman poet whom Emperor Augustus exiles to Tomis for his indecent writing and rejection of national virtues. Ovid initially hates Tomis for its barren landscapes and isolation. He longs for the sophistication of Latin speech and cultivated gardens. However, as Ovid gradually learns the villagers' language and customs, he grows from his hardship and learns to appreciate both the "stern nobility" of people in Tomis and the subtle beauty of untamed nature. When Ovid learns of a Child living amongst the deer in the wilderness, he is entranced by the boy and eventually convinces Ryzak to catch him and bring him back to the village. Ovid intends to teach the Child how to live in society and speak human language. However, as Ovid spends time with the Child, he discovers that the boy is more at home in the natural world than the man-made world. Moreover, the Child begins to teach Ovid about the "true language," an unstructured universal language that connects all things. Ovid has difficulty grasping this language, since it requires letting go of his sense of self, but feels as if he can touch the edges of it. When the village eventually becomes convinced that the Child carries a demon that kills Ryzak, Ovid realizes that they are no longer safe in Tomis. He takes the Child and the pair flee across the River Ister, making their way into the northern untamed lands. As Ovid leaves human society behind, he realizes that he is entering the final stage of his personal transformation. He begins to comprehend the true language and consequently realizes that he is part of a universal whole, one element in nature indistinct from any other. Ovid grows old and starts to die, but sees his physical death as another beginning since his body will return to the earth and nourish new life. Through that new life, he will live on. - Character: The Child. Description: The Child is a feral boy who grows up in the wilderness amongst the deer. The narrative reveals nothing about the Child's history or his true nature, though the story hints that he is not entirely human, since he can survive naked in harsh winters. Ovid feels as if he knew the boy when he himself was a young child, implying that the Child has not aged since then. However, the Child seems to age at a normal rate between the first time the adult Ovid sees the boy in the birchwoods outside Tomis and when Ryzak's hunters capture the Child and take him back to the village. The Child reacts poorly to life in Tomis and suffers from being enclosed in human society. Although the Child cannot speak any human language, he understands the universal "true language" that connects all things in nature together. As Ovid tries to teach the Child human language, the Child shares the true language with Ovid and shows him how to interact with nature by becoming a part of it. The Child adapts to life in Tomis during the summer, when he can still go into the forest, but when winter sets in he grows terribly ill and his spirit starts to fail. The old woman accuses the Child of carrying a demon from the forest, and he does trigger a series of illnesses, but the novel leaves it ambiguous as to what actually causes his, Lullo, and Ryzak's sickness. Regardless, the villagers' animosity toward the Child causes Ovid to take the boy and flee into the wilderness across the river, and the Child's spirit returns to its former strength. He travels with Ovid and cares for him until the poet's death. Although the Child cannot speak and does not understand human society, the story presents him as an ideal human: he is both self-sufficient and playful, enjoying the environment around him. He embodies the true language and is united with nature, indistinguishable from the natural world. - Character: Ryzak / The Headman / The Old Man. Description: Ryzak is the leader of Tomis who shares his dwelling with Ovid. The stern and powerful Ryzak makes Ovid feel weak by comparison. Although Ovid initially thinks that Ryzak will eventually execute him, since he is technically Ovid's captor, he grows to see Ryzak as the closest friend he has ever had. Ryzak teaches Ovid skills like how to ride a horse without a saddle and how to honor the dead, and his stories reveal the way the villagers' language shapes their perception of the world around them. Although Ryzak does not understand Ovid's interest in the Child, Ryzak helps bring the boy back to Tomis and protects him from the old woman (Ryzak's mother), who is immediately hostile toward the Child. However, when the Child comes down with a fever that passes to Ryzak's grandson Lullo, all of the villagers (including Ryzak) suspects that the Child brought a demon with him into Tomis. After Lullo recovers, Ryzak is stricken with a mysterious illness that causes him to spasm and growl like an animal. The old woman finds teeth marks on Ryzak's wrist which she claims proves that a demon entered his body. After Ryzak falls into a coma, the elders of the village beat him to death so that his spirit will leave his body in a violent state, and thus be more difficult for other demons to take control of. - Character: Ryzak's Mother / The Old Woman. Description: The old woman is Ryzak's mother, and she lives in Ryzak's hut along with the young woman (Ryzak's daughter), Lullo (Ryzak's grandson), Ovid, and eventually the Child. Although the old woman doesn't have a significant role until late in the story, she ultimately becomes the only real antagonist in the narrative. The old woman uses her mysticism and spirituality to instill others with fear, thus wielding greater power than even Ryzak has as the village headman. The old woman is wary of the Child from the start and suspects that he carries a demon or a beastly spirit inside of him. When the Child develops a fever during the winter, the old woman believes it is the demon trying to escape from his body to steal someone else's soul. When the fever passes to Lullo, the old woman convinces both the young woman and Ryzak that the demon is real and that the Child is therefore a threat. Although Lullo recovers, when Ryzak falls ill, the old woman reveals a bite mark on his wrist, which she claims proves that the demon entered his body. She orchestrates the killing of Ryzak to fight the demon, which prompts Ovid and the Child to flee the village. - Character: Ryzak's Daughter-in-Law / The Young Woman. Description: The young woman is Ryzak's daughter-in-law, the former wife of his dead son. She is Lullo's mother. Because she is a foreigner and not blood-related to anyone in Tomis, the young woman is an outsider like Ovid, and the two of them become loose allies. When the Child falls ill, the young woman defies the old woman's warnings and helps Ovid care for him. However, when Lullo falls ill as well, the young woman believes that the Child brought a demon into their home and withdraws from both Ovid and the Child. - Character: Lullo / Ryzak's Grandson. Description: Lullo is Ryzak's grandson and the young woman's son. Although Ovid briefly teaches Lullo some Latin, when the Child joins the village, Ovid shifts his attention to the new boy. Lullo resents both Ovid and the Child because of this. When the Child comes down with a terrible fever during the winter, it passes to Lullo, leading the old woman to believe that the Child's demon is trying to steal Lullo's soul. However, Lullo recovers. - Theme: Suffering and Personal Growth. Description: David Malouf's An Imaginary Life gives a fictional account of the Roman poet Ovid—a historical figure notorious for being the Roman Empire's most irreverent public personality—after he is exiled for his indecent poems. Though most of the details of the real-life Ovid's exile are lost to history, Malouf imagines what may have become of the infamous, hedonistic poet in his last years. In Malouf's story, Ovid is exiled to the tiny village of Tomis, a humble settlement beyond the reaches of Roman civilization beset by long, brutal winters and constant raids from other tribes. Ovid eventually settles into his new home, but his relationship with the Child, a feral boy he finds in the forest—and whom the villagers believe carries a demon—forces him into exile once again. Despite Ovid's constant pains, his journey and hardships radically transform his character, demonstrating how difficult experiences can become the catalyst for personal growth. Ovid initially hates his exile and the hard lifestyle it demands, demonstrating that challenging circumstances might not immediately appear as an opportunity for personal development. After Ovid's poetry and philosophy rile Emperor Augustus, Augustus banishes Ovid from Roman territory and sends him to live in Tomis, far beyond the edges of Roman society. The emperor places Ovid under the care of the village headman, Ryzak. Ryzak lets Ovid live with him, though Ovid suspects Ryzak may someday kill him to conclude his punishment. Ovid finds Tomis desolate and primitive, and considers the villagers to be "barbarians." He thinks the landscape is "empty" and barren, without life or human sophistication, and describes his first year as "terrible beyond description." He does not understand the villagers' language, which he thinks sounds "barbarous and guttural," and so becomes socially isolated as well. Ovid's only hope is that the Emperor will reverse his decision. Ovid writes letters to his attorney in Rome asking for mercy, indicating that his sole hope is that life will return to the way it once was. Nothing comes of these pleas. Ovid's pain and bitterness thus initially demonstrate how a suffering person may be overcome by their hardships and not immediately see opportunity for growth. However, over several years, Ovid's difficult life in Tomis strengthens his character and helps him to appreciate other people and the land that they live in, demonstrating that hardship can develop and refine a person's character. Although Ovid scorned military service and duty for all of his life in Rome, the constant threat of raiders against Tomis's small population force Ovid to drill and practice fighting with the other men. His body and resolve grow stronger. He begins to almost enjoy the lifestyle, and thinks, "What a very different self has begun to emerge in me," indicating that the physical hardships, though they bring some pain, also make Ovid more resilient over the course of several years. Although Ovid initially looks down on the villagers as "relatively savage," after years of living together, he comes to regard Ryzak as "the closest friend I have ever had" and thinks it "strange that I have had to leave my own people to find him." This is particularly significant since Ryzak embodies duty and discipline, values that Ovid once detested. Ovid's new appreciation for Ryzak suggests that the hardship of living amid a different culture makes Ovid develop an ability to understand and appreciate all types of people—particularly those who challenge him to grow as an individual. Ovid even learns to appreciate the subtle beauty of nature. Though he once detested the barren landscape around Tomis, after several years he states, "I have even begun to find my eye delighted by the simple forms of this place, the narrower range of colors," indicating that years of exile in a relatively barren environment have taught him to appreciate the subtlety of nature. Ovid's deeper appreciation for work, for other people, and for subtle beauty all suggest that hardship can develop one's personal character. In Ovid's reflections on his sufferings, he ultimately argues that hardships are the catalyst of personal transformation—opportunities that are essential for human growth and development, even though they bring pain with them.  When the villagers become convinced that the Child carries a demonic spirit, the threat of violence forces Ovid to take him and flee north into the wilderness, beyond human society. Although Ovid once again must leave his home—since that is what Tomis becomes for him—he does not mourn the loss, but looks forward to the opportunity for new growth and challenge. As they trudge away from the village together, Ovid reflects, "What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of settings out into the unknown, pushing off into the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet become." Rather than dread oncoming hardships, Ovid's reflection suggests that one should lean into them, recognizing them as opportunities to further grow and develop one's character. Ovid argues that such challenges and subsequent growth are the essence of life. Ovid is eventually forced to flee Tomis when the villagers' superstition toward the Child manifests in violence. Although Ovid is an old man at this point, he asks, "What else is death but the refusal any longer to grow and suffer change?" Ovid's peaceful disposition and acceptance of hardship toward his final years—which will inevitably end in death during this second exile, without home or shelter—suggests that a life without suffering, and thus growth, is not a life worth living any longer. Ovid's transition from a poet devoted to leisure and comfort to an old man leaning into pain and hardship marks a complete reversal of his core values, which reiterates how suffering can be a powerful catalyst for personal growth, rather than a meaningless hardship. - Theme: Language, Perception, and Nature. Description: When the Roman Emperor Augustus exiles the poet Ovid to a small remote village called Tomis, Ovid must learn to speak an entirely new language. Although Ovid initially finds the villagers to be barbaric and strange, as he slowly absorbs their language he begins to understand how they see the world, which contrasts drastically with his own worldview. After learning the village language, Ovid again learns a new "language" when he meets the Child, a feral boy who grew up in the wilderness alone, and who knows how to speak to wild animals. As the Child teaches Ovid to understand this unstructured "true language," Ovid comes to see the natural world in an entirely different way. Through Ovid's journey, Malouf argues that one's language shapes one's perception of the nature, and that a universal language exists which could heal humanity's relationship to the natural world.  Although Ovid originally only speaks Latin, as he learns Tomis's language he discovers that each way of speaking results in an entirely different outlook, suggesting that one's language shapes their worldview. Ovid describes Latin as a "language for distinctions, every ending defines and divides." Latin is well-suited to describing "the rules of rhetoric, theorems, the facts of science, the facts of history, the theories of the philosophers." That is, Latin is an orderly, meticulous language that separates, organizes, and explains. As such, the precision and categorization inherent to Latin gives Ovid an analytical outlook toward the world around him. He thinks of himself as an individual being, and life as something to be organized, controlled, and explained. However, as Ovid learns the villagers' language, he realizes that their folklore is blunt and direct, "explain[ing] nothing, but speak[ing] straight out of the nightmare landscape of this place," which reflects their view of the world as "bare, cruel, terrible, comic," but without grander meaning. Rather than try to order and analyze the world, as Ovid's Latin does, the village language simply "presents the […] raw life and unity of things." Through the perspective of the villagers' language, life is no longer something to control and explain, but something to accept and endure. Ovid reflects, "Seeing the world through this other tongue I see it differently. It is a different world." His original worldview markedly contrasts with the view that the villagers' language reveals to him. This suggests that different languages, varying in both form and structure, fundamentally alter one's worldview. As Ovid learns the villagers' language, he begins to view his relationship to nature differently as well, suggesting that language shapes one's understanding of one's place in the natural world. The Latin language's tendency to separate and organize leads Ovid to initially see himself as superior to the natural world, and nature as something to be tamed. Ovid spends most of his pre-exile life in Roman cities, where nature is domesticated and controlled. He reflects that a sophisticated country like Italy with its "placid beauty" is a "created place" that humans shaped and mastered. In his mind, nature is only valuable or beautiful when a human being controls and cultivates it. Ovid's view of nature as something to be conquered and organized reflects Latin's propensity for categorizing and arranging ideas. By contrast, Tomis's language, with its tendency to simply observe and describe life rather than control it, leads the villagers to accept the harsh natural world around them. Rather than build cities and cultivate agriculture (ways of conquering nature) the villagers shape their lives according to nature's patterns: sleeping in winter, foraging in spring and summer, and hunting in autumn. Consequently, as Ovid understands the villagers' language, he internalizes their belief in cooperating with the natural world. Though he once hated the untouched, barren landscape around Tomis, he begins to recognize the subtle beauty of it. The contrasting views of humanity's relationship to the natural world reflects the different perceptions that each language creates. This further suggests, then, that a person's language shapes one's understanding of one's place in nature—whether one choose to submit oneself to it or to dominate it. The Child teaches Ovid the "language" of nature and animals, which challenges Ovid's distinction between human beings and the natural world. Through this natural, unstructured language, Malouf suggests that a universal language exists which can help humanity rediscover their harmonious relationship with nature. The Child, who knows no human language, teaches Ovid how to speak to animals like birds, wolves, and insects. Ovid realizes that rather than just mimicking their calls, the Child, "in entering the mysterious life of its language, becomes, for a moment, the creature itself." Ovid sees that the Child does this with all of nature—when a storm blows in, the Child thinks "I am thundering," rather than that there is merely thunder in the sky. As opposed to the Latin-style distinction between oneself and the world, the Child's language leads him to view himself as indistinct from his natural environment. Eventually, Ovid begins to understand this "unstructured" language himself and realizes he is not an individual, separate from nature, but just a piece of it like the wind and the grass. Ovid reflects that this new language "is a gesture of reconciliation," since through it, he no longer thinks of himself as a separate being, or nature as something to dominate and control. He is one part of a whole, whose will return to the earth and decompose to feed the soil. Malouf thus extends his argument about language and perception to suggest that a natural universal language exists, and could reshape people's perspectives and teach them to view the world as a harmonious, interconnected whole. Ovid states, "We knew that language once. […] We must discover it again," suggesting that this view of the world is inherent to humanity, but that the sophisticated language of society causes one to separate oneself from the natural world. - Theme: Frivolity vs. Practicality. Description: Before his exile, Ovid is a "metropolitan poet," a public figure and agitator who spurns Rome's culture of duty and nationalism. His life is carefree, colorful, and devoid of any responsibility. After Ovid is exiled to Tomis beyond the edges of Roman society, he finds that his formerly frivolous lifestyle leaves him utterly inept to live and operate in such a harsh environment. At the same time, Ovid recognizes that the villagers in Tomis err in the other direction, leading lives of such barren utility that they lead colorless, joyless lives. Through Ovid's former frivolity and the villagers' extreme utilitarianism, David Malouf argues that neither creates a healthy life—rather, the ideal life is a balance of self-sufficiency and playfulness. In exile, Ovid quickly realizes that his formerly frivolous lifestyle makes him ill-suited to the hardships of Tomis, whose villagers condemn such lightheartedness and rejection of responsibility. Before his exile, Ovid is one of Rome's leading poets and social figures. Since Rome enjoys a new era of peace and luxury and no longer needs to be so militaristic, Ovid calls for "no more civic virtues […]. No more patriotism. No more glorification of men at arms." Instead, Ovid argues that Rome is in its "age of play" and that life should be nothing more than "gay, anarchic, ephemeral, and […] fun." This indicates that Ovid's frivolity is only possible in a society that is unusually free of conflict or struggle. Ovid's former carefree life appears to be partially enabled by the fact that he is heir to a wealthy estate, which is maintained by slaves that his family owns. This suggests that Ovid's frivolity is enabled not only by Rome's peace, but also by his own lack of self-sufficiency, since everything he needs growing up is provided for him. He is only frivolous by being a burden on other people, suggesting that such a lifestyle is only possible when one burdens someone else. In Tomis, Ovid quickly realizes how ill-suited his comfortable life has made him for hard living: he is neither strong nor capable. Next to Ryzak, the village headman, who is "tough as [Ovid has] never been," Ovid feels "foolish" for his own lack of self-sufficiency. Even Ryzak seems embarrassed that he must show Ovid how to do simple things like ride a horse without a saddle so that he can hunt with the other men, suggesting that the villagers regard such skills as basic knowledge everyone must know. Although Ovid's former life was frivolous and untroubled, his struggle to survive in Tomis exposes his lack of self-sufficiency, suggesting that Ovid's carefree life rendered him soft and ill-equipped to take care of himself, operate in a challenging environment, or contribute to the village. Although Ovid admires Ryzak's "stern nobility" and toughness, he recognizes that the villagers tend to be so utilitarian that they lead a joyless life, suggesting that just as one can be overly-frivolous and irresponsible, one can also be overly practical. Ovid has deep respect for Ryzak and his apparent power. Looking at Ryzak's strong body and severe demeanor, Ovid wonders, "What can I know of the forces that have made this man, this tamer of horses, whose animal nature he somehow takes into himself and gentles?" indicating that Ovid recognizes the necessity of such toughness for surviving in Tomis. However, when Ovid plants wildflowers next to his hut to make a small "garden" in an attempt to add some color and life to his surroundings, the village women think him "foolish beyond belief" for spending time and energy on something that cannot be eaten. Ovid realizes that everything in their world "exists purely for use," and though the women are capable seamstresses, nothing they make has any ornamental or aesthetic element. In Ovid's mind, the villagers are so practical that they lack any concept of "play," suggesting that one can be so tough and utilitarian that they are unable to appreciate and enjoy creativity, beauty, or pleasure. Although Ovid recognizes his own past frivolity, which made him weak, he argues that "to play is to be free," since one plays for no reason other than simple pleasure, to give flavor to life. The villagers' inability to play thus suggests that extreme utilitarianism leads to a hardy and self-sufficient but joyless and constrained life. Ovid thus condemns the villagers' ultra-utilitarian outlook, just as he condemns his own former frivolity. David Malouf depicts the Child, the feral boy Ovid finds in the woods, as the ideal balance of frivolity and practicality, suggesting that the best life is one which complements self-sufficiency with joy and playfulness, allowing one to be both capable and free. The Child forages in the wilderness for food and survives on his own, thus embodying the same self-sufficiency and toughness as the villagers in Tomis. He survives the harsh environment and takes care of himself without burdening anyone else. At the same time, the Child plays in the snow, marvels at nature, and excitedly points out hidden animals in the forest to Ovid, demonstrating that he maintains his ability to play, enjoy life, and do things simply for pleasure. Although the Child is capable enough to survive on his own, he does not let his practicality take away his enjoyment of life. This mixture of self-sufficiency and ability to play makes the Child the freest character in the story, neither dependent on anyone else nor constrained by extreme utilitarianism. This ultimately suggests that the ideal life is one that balances toughness and self-sufficiency with enough frivolity to maintain one's ability to enjoy oneself and exercise one's own freedom. - Theme: Childhood, Fate, and Identity. Description: Although the Roman Ovid is known as a sophisticated, "metropolitan poet," he spends his childhood on a rural farm, living a simple, happy life surrounded by nature. After his irreverent poems earn the ire of the Roman emperor, the government exiles Ovid to the remote village of Tomis, which resembles his childhood home in that it is simple, quiet, and surrounded by nature. As the years in exile pass, Ovid recalls his early years and considers how they shaped his fate of spending the last years of his life beyond Roman civilization. Ovid's reflections on fate suggest that the past, especially childhood, sets one on a certain, unavoidable trajectory to fulfill their true identity. Ovid believes that his childhood experiences destine him for a simple lifestyle in close proximity to nature, suggesting that a person's early life shapes one's their fate, even though one may try to resist it. Ovid grows up on a farm, living a simple lifestyle close to nature with his father, brother, and family slaves. Often, while his father is away, Ovid and his brother live in the farmhouses with the nurses, who raise them alongside their own children. Looking back as an adult, in exile, Ovid feels as if something "was being revealed" to him during this simple, happy life which should have shaped him to take up that lifestyle himself. Ovid's recollection of those years, feeling that they were leading him to become a particular person, suggests that a person's childhood shapes one's future, putting one on a particular trajectory through life. Ovid's eventual exile out of Rome and into a simpler lifestyle in Tomis (despite his efforts to remain a sophisticated poet) suggests that one's fate, shaped by childhood, is inevitable. One must ultimately fulfill one's true destiny. In adulthood, Ovid runs from his childhood and becomes a man of the city, a "metropolitan poet." However, he recounts that at the height of his success, he feels "anxiety and some sense of disgust" at the contrast between his childhood and current identity. Rather than recognize that he is shaped by his simple and pleasant childhood, Ovid the poet sees himself as a "creature of my own impudent views and with no family behind me, no tribe, no country, no past of any kind." Ovid tries to reject the path that his childhood set before him by by "inventing a hundred false identities," suggesting that one may try to resist one's fate by constructing a new, alternate identity for oneself. Although Ovid tries to reject his fate, his exile from Rome ultimately fulfills that destiny by forcing him to live a quiet, simple life in Tomis, once again in close proximity to nature. As Ovid learns to accept his exile, he considers that life in Tomis is the inevitable result of his childhood, the fulfillment of the life from which he ran away. He says, "this place is the true destination I have been seeking, and that my life here, however painful, is my true fate, the one I have spent my whole existence trying to escape." That is, one's fate is inevitable, the natural and unavoidable result of one's childhood experiences. More than than just inevitable, however, Ovid regards his life in exile as his "second chance" to "become at last the one you intended to be," suggesting that a person's fate leads one to embrace one's real identity and be who one truly is. This idea is mirrored in the Child's journey as well. Ovid initially fears that, since the Child has grown up in the forest alone and feral, he has no childhood or ancestry to tell him who to be. However, in Ovid's final days, he sees the Child walking away from him and from human society to return to the wilderness where the Child is happy and free. The sight makes Ovid "unbearably happy," implying that the Child's rightful place is in the wilderness, where he came from and where he can be who he truly is. Ovid's joy at fulfilling his own destiny, embracing his own identity, and seeing the Child do the same suggests that the greatest fulfillment in life comes from one accepting who one is and where one comes from, following the course that fate lays for each individual. Although David Malouf never specifies what force draws a person along toward their fate, he presents it as a nonetheless powerful force in one's life and the key to one's personal fulfillment. - Climax: Ovid and the Child cross the River Ister. - Summary: The Roman poet Ovid states that he used to see the Child—whom locals call the "wild boy"—when he was young himself. They spoke together in some unknown language. Even as Ovid got older, the Child stayed the same age. Ovid never told anyone else about the Child, and when Ovid grew into a man, the Child disappeared. As an adult, Ovid lives in Tomis, a small village on the edge of the Roman Empire, leagues from anything like a city. He hates it. The landscape is barren and untamed; the village is sparse and colorless. None of the villagers speak Latin and Ovid cannot speak their language, which further isolates him. Ovid lives in exile under care of the village headman, Ryzak. Though he was once an important social figure in Rome, his rebellious poetry offended Emperor Augustus, who banished him to Tomis. One day, Ovid sees a lone red flower in the village and recognizes it as a poppy. The remembered name in his mind and the splash of color on the ground makes Ovid decide that he must "transform[]" himself in his new world. Compared to Ryzak's power and toughness, Ovid thinks that he himself is weak and useless, made soft by his life of comfort and leisure. Ovid accompanies Ryzak and the other hunters to the birchwoods to hunt deer, though Ryzak has to teach him how to ride a horse without a saddle. Before they reach the birchwoods, the villagers visit their resting grounds, where generations of horsemen have been laid to rest. Ryzak shows Ovid how to honor the dead by riding through the funerary mounds, shouting and throwing grain as an offering. Although Ovid does not believe in gods, he feels a certain thrill during the ritual. When the hunters reach the birchwoods, a tracker points out a bare human footprint in the snow, alongside the deer tracks. Ryzak explains through hand signals that the prints belong to a "wild boy" whom the villagers have seen in the forest for the past two years. Ovid has many questions, but cannot ask any of them due to the language barrier. He spots the child in the underbrush and some hunters try to catch the boy, but they cannot. They hunt for the rest of the day and return to Tomis. Winter comes and goes. Ovid finds the season dreadful, since everyone simply huddles in their huts for the long months until the snow begins to thaw, bracing against occasional raids from barbarian tribes. Ovid senses that the boy is the same Child he knew when he himself was a child, and presses Ryzak to send out a search party in the spring. The villagers are too busy working and acquiring food, however. In the fall, when the hunters return to the birchwoods, they find no sign of the Child. Ovid worries that he died in the previous harsh winter. Soon, it's winter again, and the season passes into spring. Ovid begins to understand some of the villagers' language and realizes that its form is very different from his native Latin. Latin divides and explains, while the villagers' language simply observes life as one unified thing and accepts it. That fall, in the birchwoods, Ovid spots the Child again. Ovid longs to meet him, but the other hunters seem afraid of the boy. At night, Ovid leaves a bowl of gruel out for the Child. He dreams that he is a pool of water in the dirt from which a deer and the Child drink. Meanwhile, the Child eats from Ovid's bowl—waking up and seeing this, Ovid hopes that the boy is now connected to the human world, having eaten from a man-made vessel. Another year passes and Ovid grows strong, sturdy, and well-versed in the village language. He begins to appreciate the simplicity of life in Tomis and even the subtle range of colors in the landscape. With his new language, the world appears different. He plants a little garden of wildflowers near his hut. The women in the village think he is foolish, since flowers serve no utility for survival, and Ovid mourns the fact that the villagers have no concept of "play." That winter, Ovid convinces Ryzak to send a search party in the spring and bring the Child back to Tomis. When the winter thaws, riders catch the boy in the birchwoods and bring him back. He shrieks and howls until the shaman chants to him, setting the Child into a long, deep slumber. For the first two weeks, the Child, though awake, lies passive in Ovid's hut. The villagers fear the boy, thinking that he possesses an animal spirit or perhaps is a werewolf. After two weeks, Ovid senses that the Child's intelligence is beginning to awaken. He watches curiously as Ovid writes with pen and ink, and even experiments himself with the tools. Ovid begins taking the Child out into the marshes, toward the River Ister, where he tries to teach the Child to make human sounds and the Child shows him how to make animal calls. Ovid notes that when the Child makes a bird call, he seems to become rather than merely imitate the bird in that moment. Thus, Ovid hopes that if the Child can form human words, he will become a man. The Child continues to teach Ovid about animals and plants. Ovid decides he will teach the Child the language of Tomis, which confirms in Ovid's mind that he will never return to Rome. He tries to understand the Child's way of thinking, of identifying himself with nature rather than thinking of himself separately from it, but he struggles to let go of his sense of self. As the winter approaches, Ovid worries about the effect that it will have on the Child, since they will have to stay inside all winter with Ryzak and his family. Ryzak assures Ovid everything will be alright, but Ryzak's mother, "the old woman," fears the Child and thinks he carries a demon. When the snow starts to fall and Ovid tries to bring the Child inside, the Child becomes hysterical, screaming and scratching at the walls until he exhausts himself and falls asleep. For weeks, the Child will not speak or move and only stares into the gloom. Ovid frets that they are losing any progress they made during the summer. The Child develops a bad fever that causes him to convulse. He seems unaware of his surroundings. Ryzak's mother thinks it is the demon trying to emerge, perhaps looking for a new body to possess. She warns everyone to stay away from the Child and Ovid worries she will kill the boy if given the chance. Ovid watches over him for days on end as the Child grows weaker and continues to convulse. During a particularly bad seizure, Ryzak's daughter-in-law defies the old woman and helps Ovid care for the Child. The Child begins to recover, but Ryzak's grandson Lullo falls ill instead, and even the daughter-in-law (Lullo's mother) fears that the Child's demon has passed into her son. Ovid watches fearfully, thinking that if Lullo dies, both he and the Child will be in great danger. Lullo recovers after many days, but then Ryzak falls ill with fever instead. The old woman finds a set of small teeth marks on Ryzak's wrist, which she interprets as the place where the demon entered his body. Ryzak convulses as well, making sounds that sound inhuman, even to Ovid. To prevent the demon from taking control of Ryzak's spirit, the village elders decide to kill him themselves. During the process, which involves an elaborate ritual, Ovid takes the Child and flees Tomis, knowing that their lives are now in danger since the village blames the child for their leader's death. Ovid and the Child cross the River Ister into the northern wilderness, where the barbarian tribes roam. Rather than mourning his loss of another home, Ovid feels as if he is fulfilling his destiny, embarking on the journey that will bring his final transformation. He and the Child travel for months with no destination, not even counting the days as they pass. The Child grows stronger now that he is back in the wilderness, and Ovid feels as if he now understands the unspoken language of nature that the Child tried to teach him. The universe seems interconnected and whole—Ovid senses that he himself is just one part of it, like a stalk of grass. Ovid can feel his body failing in old age. He is dying. However, as the Child cares for him in his last days, Ovid feels "unbearably happy" because the Child is now free. Ovid understands that by dying, he is returning to the earth from whence he came and being restored to nature so that his body can feed the soil. He feels timeless and "bodiless," complete.

- Genre: Short Story, Supernatural - Title: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - Point of view: Third-person omniscient, though the stream-of-consciousness structure focuses largely on Farquhar's perceptions - Setting: Alabama during an undefined point in the American Civil War - Character: Peyton Farquhar. Description: Farquhar is the protagonist of the story, and indeed most of the pertinent action involves him and him alone. He's the only character given a formal name (not even his wife gets such a courtesy), and Bierce spends a great deal of time on his physical description. He's a handsome Alabama plantation owner, a gentleman with "a well-fitting frock coat" and "a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers." He comes from a prosperous background and carries the air of an aristocrat about him. Yet Farquhar is about to be hanged, which gives Bierce a chance to indulge in the dry irony which his work became famous for: "The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded," Bierce writes. Farquhar is a slave owner dedicated to the Confederate cause, and willing to risk his own safety to advance it. Hence, he is duped into trying to sabotage a Union stockade at Owl Creek Bridge and sentenced to death by hanging as a result. This suggests a sincere devotion to his cause, but it also subtly paints him in a surprisingly negative light for a protagonist; though Bierce is careful to keep his descriptions of Farquhar objective and factual, hints crop up here and there that the story's "hero" is actually deeply morally compromised. He is " like other slave owners a politician," Bierce proclaims. This links his motivations clearly to the South, and as such to the concept of slavery. The reader may feel for him since he is the underdog and possesses the seemingly pure motivation of getting back to his family, but Bierce reminds the reader that the man "assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war," and thus suggests that justice may be served by hanging him after all. - Character: Farquhar's Wife. Description: Farquhar's wife never actually enters the story. She and their children are conjured in Farquhar's mind in the moments before his hanging, however, and become more symbol than character in the process. Nevertheless, Bierce spares a few sentences describing her for the reader. She's pictured as beautiful and feminine, "with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity." Bierce use terms of purity and matronly comfort—seen through Farquhar's eyes and driving him on after his supposed escape. Yet she too, is seen as a part of the same Southern society that Farquhar risks execution to save. When the Union spy arrives at their doorstep, she is "only too happy to serve him with her own white hands." That suggests that she's not accustomed to waiting on people—an aristocrat—and that most of her servants are black (and presumably slaves). Like her husband, she belongs to the Confederacy, and all her good manners still serve the corrupt institutions the Confederacy is trying to protect. - Character: Union Soldiers. Description: Farquhar has been captured by Union soldiers, defined more as a group than by any individual. Though led by a captain who commands the others and presented with specific terms here and there (a sniper with "grey eyes," for example, or the "dusty" spy who arrives at Farquhar's doorstep in a Confederate uniform), they remain anonymous and interchangeable, serving as easy stand-ins for the army advancing relentlessly through Southern territory. Bierce is careful to emphasize their precision, their military discipline, and their adherence to soldierly duties as they prepare to hang Farquhar. He describes them in silent, featureless terms—"The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge"—and they move with swift, emotionless efficiency. This stands in opposition to Farquhar's desperate, emotional yearning, which draws a quiet distinction between their side and his. They represent industrial efficiency, they have greater numbers, and they're concerned with doing everything according to protocol. Farquhar is outnumbered and wedded to romantic notions about his family. The soldiers' character traits help Farquhar's stand out all the more prominently, not despite their anonymous and interchangeable nature but because of it. - Theme: Confinement and Escape. Description: Peyton Farquhar, the protagonist of Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," experiences a kind of "round trip" from imprisonment to freedom and back to imprisonment. Farquhar is captured and condemned to death for attempting to sabotage a Union stockade, yet just before his execution appears to experience a miraculous escape and rushes to return to his family, Union soldiers firing at him in his wake. Just when he appears to have made it back to his wife, however, he's pulled back to the bridge and his own hanging; the escape, it seems, was nothing but a hallucination. Bierce's story provides a simple oscillation, starting with confinement, leading to escape, and snapping Farquhar back to confinement just as the hangman's noose pulls taut. The push and pull between those two states—a prisoner about to die and an escaped man running desperately for freedom—constitutes the primary dramatic tension in the story. Given that much of the story takes place within Farquhar's head, Bierce seems to be implying that the two conditions—the state of confinement or imprisonment, and that of escape—are largely emotional states of mind. Yet Bierce's story is additionally a testament to an innate, unquenchable human desire for freedom—which is especially ironic given that Farquhar is a slave-holding supporter of the Confederate cause. Bierce begins by stressing the details of Farquhar's dilemma as a means of emphasizing his feeling of confinement, and presumably allowing the reader to feel the inescapable nature of his fate; escape for the protagonist is futile, and all notions of freedom are hopeless and doomed to fail. The bridge itself is flanked by armed soldiers at attention. Bierce stresses that their goal is not "to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it." More soldiers line the banks of the river, ensuring not only that Farquhar cannot escape, but that rescue is all but impossible. He's surrounded by the enemy, who don't seem at all concerned about whether he's going anywhere. More directly, Farquhar's hands are "behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircle[s] his neck." This is the second sentence of the story, establishing his status as a bound prisoner immediately. Despite this absolute certainty, Farquhar still yearns to break free. He thinks about his wife and children in his final thoughts, and the idea of somehow freeing his hands and making a run for freedom only just enters his mind—"flashed" rather than "evolved" in Bierce's words—when the board is removed and he drops towards the water. So powerful is the need for freedom—so completely does it dominate his mind even in a moment of impossibility—that his mind constructs an actual hallucination allowing him to fulfill it. Strangely, confinement is reflected as a calm certainty, with the protagonist accepting the consequences of his actions despite his secret yearning. Escape, on the other hand, is portrayed as chaotic, fretful, and confusing. Farquhar accepts his condition—and his execution—as a consequence of his actions. "The arrangement commended itself to his judgement as simple and effective," Bierce writes, which is a very calm and measured assessment, considering that the person doing the assessing is 1. about to be killed and 2. still thinking of ways he might get out of it. Bierce also spends a great deal of time focusing on the soldiers holding Farquhar captive: their neatness and precision, the swiftness with which they follow their orders, and the detailed procedure of the hanging. Everything moves in an orderly, workmanlike manner—the soldiers simply do their job—which in turn infers a forgone conclusion in which nothing has been left to chance. Descriptions his escape, on the other hand, entail chaos, unpleasant surprises and danger from unexpected corners. It being immediately, as "with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark." Furthermore, Farquhar's escape is accompanied by a sense of doom: a feeling that no matter what he does, he's not going to survive. The end, when it comes, is foreshadowed by the strange details he experiences during his escape, which create a sense of fleeting freedom that can be yanked away at any time. It begins when the soldiers shoot at him as he flees the bridge, and the strange detail of a sharpshooter with gray eyes. Farquhar remembers reading somewhere that "that gray eyes were the keenest," and when the soldier misses it's inferred to be a minor miracle. That danger is compounded not only by the way the captain commands his troops to fire, but Farquhar's certainty that sooner or later, the gunshots will strike him. "'The officer,' he reasoned, 'will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!'" Even after he escapes the soldiers, the woods he travels through feel dark and foreboding. "By nightfall, he was fatigued, footsore, famished." The passage implies that he could easily get lost in the woods or die of exposure or starvation—and that the longer he remains there, the greater such dangers become. The thematic implications are supremely ironic, which in turn helps feed the story's famous twist ending. They seem to suggest, in a very dark way, that hope springs eternal even in the bleakest circumstances, and that human beings never give up—even when death is certain and freedom, if achieved, is terrifying and chaotic. Farquhar wants to be free so badly that he dreams up a scenario where he escapes, and in the process makes his final moments strange, horrific and ultimately frustrating. The fact that he is a slave owner, and as such a supporter of a system of a brutal system of hopeless confinement for untold numbers of black individuals, also lends his final experience of the terror of confinement an air of justice. - Theme: Life and Death. Description: In one sense, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is an examination of the line between life and death, and at times, how the latter can heighten and enhance the former. The bulk of the story takes place in the instant of Farquhar's death: a kind of waking dream in which he envisions a flight back to his home and family before death finally claims him. The famous "twist" ending—in which his escape from the bridge is shown to be an illusion—highlights the immediacy of life, and the way it contains myriad little details that people rarely notice until they are about to be taken away. The prospect of death makes the little details about life stand out in sharp contrast. Farquhar is aware of tiny aspects of his surroundings before the Union soldiers pull the noose tight: things that might not register during the mundane trivialities of life, but which take on increasing emphasis as the protagonist's death approaches. The first instance of this occurs as Farquhar watches a piece of driftwood floating on the current of the water below him: "How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!" Bierce's writing style is sparse and direct—the entire story is just a few short pages—and by focusing on such a seemingly trivial component of the stream, he stresses how aware Farquhar is of his surroundings just before the noose ends his life. Similar details occur a few sentences later. Bierce notes "the water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers," which Bierce connects to the driftwood not only in the plethora of details that his protagonist notices, but in their seeming randomness and inconsequential connection to the action. The most telling is the ticking of his pocket watch, which resembles "the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil" and reflects an acute awareness of the passage of time brought about by Farquhar's proximity to death. Those details are further described as a "distraction" from Farquhar's wife and children, who are not present, but whom he wishes to focus on in the last moments before his death. It's a subtle way of reminding the reader that his perceptions—the details described—are among the very last he will enjoy. They serve as a reminder of death intruding onto life and suggest that Farquhar is madly latching onto as much of the living world as possible before his certain demise. Once the rope snaps taut, signs of Farquhar's death become more directly intrusive. Bierce isn't coy about Farquhar's enhanced senses in the moments following his seeming liberation from the noose. He describes the protagonist's senses as "preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived." This is borne out by increasingly intense descriptions of his physical surroundings, including details that no normal person should be able to notice. The most obvious example is the grey eyes of the sharpshooter, noted as he made swims away from the bridge, struggling to breathe and escape his bonds. Such observation borders the supernatural in its accuracy and suggests that his awareness stems from his impending doom. Even more striking than his perceptions of the world around him, his awareness of his own body comes into the forefront. The first description after apparently escaping the noose concerns "the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation." The emphasis on physical sensations continues throughout his hallucinated flight, notable in the final paragraphs where injuries to his neck, a swollen tongue, and "congested" eyes become apparent. These are signs of his hanging: death intruding upon his body even as he believes himself to be free. Death, too, is examined as a part of the human condition in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Bierce uses his protagonist's surreal journey through the woods as a way of inferring that other planes of reality exist—that there are worlds beyond that of human beings and that death may be the gateway to them. Though the author doesn't speculate extensively on that front—death remains as mysterious as ever—his prose does invite serious contemplation as to what might happen after human beings pass on. The two conditions—life and death—are thus not distinct, but rather interweave with each other as the story progresses. This occurs both in mundane details—such as the prospect of the hanging and the soldiers' lethal weaponry—and in the increasingly strange sensations that Farquhar experiences in the instant that his life ends. - Theme: The Civil War. Description: The story takes place in the Deep South—Alabama—at some indeterminate point in the middle of the Civil War. Though it largely focuses on Farquhar's experience of his own death, that death comes about as a direct result of his participation in the Confederate cause. He's a local, for starters, and a slave owner as well. Bierce doesn't delve deeply into the moral implications of Farquhar's position but makes it clear that such a position automatically places him in the heart of the conflict, and that such a position is morally untenable. The resulting drama—Farquhar seemingly escaping his Union captors in an effort to return to his home—can be viewed as an embodiment of the South's ultimately futile struggle. The world they are attempting to defend—an antebellum world of plantations overseen by white men and worked by black slaves—is ending, and Farquhar's efforts to rejoin it are ultimately doomed. Farquhar is unquestionably a supporter of the South. His adversaries are Union soldiers charged with executing him, which frames the entire story around the Civil War and its causes. Farquhar is described as "ardently devoted to the Southern cause," and someone who actively regrets not being able to fight. His attempted act of sabotage comes about as a part of this regret, as well as the belief that "the opportunity for distinction" would come if he simply waited long enough. Even were he not so devoted to the Confederacy, Farquhar is a slave owner, which Bierce claims makes him a politician "like other slave owners." This marks a firm, if subtle, statement about the root causes of the war and the moral folly of Farquhar's actions: grounding them in the political clash the defined the war itself. Furthermore, Farquhar himself is a civilian, who is captured committing an act of insurrection against occupying Union forces. This reflects not only the way civilians often fought in the war as partisans and guerilla fighters (as Bierce puts it, "The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded"), but that Confederate civilians are morally complicit in their side's cause. Owl Creek Bridge itself is located near Farquhar's home, which itself is "is as yet outside their [Union] lines." This demonstrates how the war was fought on U.S. soil, which meant it engulfed homes and towns (particularly in the South) which contained noncombatants such as women and children. The Union troops also demonstrate superior firepower and a kind of mechanization of their weapons and behavior. This serves as a subtle reflection of the superior industrial power of the North, which played a key role in the Union's ultimate victory over the South. The descriptions of his Union antagonists carry militaristic qualities to them—the crisp bark of the officers' orders, their stances of attention, and the presence of the rifles and cannon—and the soldiers themselves are almost robotic in the way they carry out their duties. That echoes the steady, relentless means by which the Union armies advanced through the South. Similarly, the Union scout describes the Northern forces in the area as "repairing the railroads," which emphasizes their mechanistic and industrial capacities. In contrast, Farquhar's world entails woods, country roads, and his own estate, representing the largely agrarian economy of the secessionist South. When in the story's final moments "he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck" and blackness descends, this suggests the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy by the Union. The life he was trying to return to—of a wealthy and loving white family waiting for him on the porch of his plantation—is gone, never to return. That's not necessarily a bad thing in the story's view; Bierce doesn't directly condemn Farquhar's actions, though the reader can infer certain beliefs through the author's tone. Bierce fought in the Union army during the Civil War and was injured in combat, so it's no stretch to assume that he doesn't think much of his protagonist's politics. That lends the story a quiet sense of poetic justice: the belief that Farquhar ultimately deserves both his execution and the suffering he experiences in the moments before it is carried out. More importantly, it allows the story to reflect the realities of the war itself, both the way it was carried out and the stakes that were involved on both sides. - Theme: Perception and Reality. Description: In the moments before his death, Farquhar believes he is escaping from his Union captors—that the rope intended to hang him breaks—and that he takes a long and desperate journey home. But his journey is strange and surreal, reflecting both a series of hyper-intense observations about the world around him and details which suggest he might not even be on Earth anymore, but rather in some strange alternate dimension. Of course, that perception proves to be solely within the protagonist's mind. The last half of the story is an illusion, which eventually gives way to the ironic twist that Farquhar has, in fact, been hanged after all. This seems to suggest that humanity's experience of reality is a construct of the mind, and that people can't always trust what they see regardless of how real it feels. Reality differs from Farquhar's perceptions, and the reader ultimately can't rely on what Farquhar sees to reflect the truth. Yet despite the fact that he doesn't actually experience any of his "escape," this illusion still fills the totality of his experience in the moment before his own death. Though his experience is eventually shown to be an illusion, there's a subtle implication that such an illusion still holds value and the potential for insight. There is a firm dividing line at the point where Farquhar's perceptions no longer match the reality surrounding him. The details change in distinct ways and remain so until the story's celebrated twist. They begin with a heightened awareness of his surroundings—to the point of being superhuman. Bierce writes, "He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—he saw the very insects upon them." The earlier instance of Farquhar's watch booming loud foreshadows a similar experience now, during his imagined escape, as normal sounds and sensations take on a preternatural intensity. Yet he's able to parse and absorb all of the sounds he experiences, with no one sound drowning out any others. "The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara," Bierce writes, for instance. "Yet he heard the dull thunder of the volley" of the Union soldiers shooting at him. The distortion implies that what he perceives no longer matches the facts around him over and above the fact that the soldiers aren't actually shooting at him. At the same time, that heightened perception results from a slow process of awakening—starting when "he lost consciousness and was as one already dead" and slowly expanding from that zero point until the whole world is alive with new details and sensations. That eventually gives way to the notion that he might no longer be on Earth at all. He flees the soldiers into the forest, only to be taken aback by its density and lack of habitation: "He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation." This diverges form the familiar landscape he thought he knew, and the use of the word "revelation" suggests a subconscious realization that he's no longer experiencing the real world. The surrounding world becomes less and less like reality the further he goes, to the point where the trees "formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective," and the stars appear "in strange constellations." At this point, it's unclear whether Farquhar is still in this plane of reality, or if he has traveled somewhere else: somewhere that only the brink of death can reveal. Wherever it is, it feels foreboding and grim, with "singular noises, among which—once, twice, and again—he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue." The passage more closely resembles a horror story than a war story, further cementing the protagonist's warped perceptions and their ability to shape his experience. While what he perceives doesn't match his reality, it does suggest a strange insight—an experience that is his and his alone, separate from his executioners. As he travels on, his journey is marked by no signs of human habitation: "not so much as the barking of a dog." That further implies that his experiences in this realm are his alone and contain some unique value simply because no one else can ever share them. Despite that, however, he ultimately gains no real benefit from it. The overtures are sinister and foreboding, suggesting that he is in some manner of hell or purgatory for his sins. That feeling breaks when he appears to arrive home: giving him one last burst of anticipation and joy before death finally claims him. There's the implication of mercy there, or at least one last glimpse of the reality he has now left: a final glimpse of his wife before his senses go dark forever. That, in turn, raises intriguing questions about the nature of the universe, suggesting that there is much of it humanity doesn't see and that distorted or skewed perceptions can mask grim and often frightening truths. What one perceives might not match what is understood to be reality. But who is to say what reality is? In that brief moment between life and death, perhaps Farquhar gains a look at some new level of reality: some perception that people can't see during life but that he is afforded a glimpse to in the moment of death. He can't benefit from it—heightening the story's irony and inferring how terrible wisdom can be when it brings no profit to the wise—but the readers see it, and are left to meditate on the limits of their own perceptions, and how much larger the "reality" they think they understand might be. - Climax: Peyton Farquhar believes he has escaped execution and returned home, only to be snapped back to the point of his death just as the rope snaps taut - Summary: In northern Alabama sometime during the Civil War, a man stands on Owl Creek Bridge with his hands tied behind his back and a rope around his neck. He is surrounded by Union soldiers, both on the bridge itself and on the nearby bank, who are preparing to execute him. The man himself is about thirty-five, and bears the clothes and bearing of a gentleman rather than a military figure. Nevertheless, his execution is imminent. The soldiers continue their preparations, leaving the man standing on one end of a board stuck out over the bridge, and a Union sergeant standing on the other end. When the sergeant steps away, the man will fall towards the creek and the rope will break his neck. As his doom draws near, the man begins to experience a heightened awareness of reality: first spotting a small piece of driftwood moving down the stream, then mistaking the ticking of his watch for a loud, drawn-out tolling "like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil." He closes his eyes and fixes his thoughts on his family, then opens them and muses desperately on some means of getting free and getting back to them. As he does so, the sergeant steps off of the plank. In a flashback, the man's name is revealed to be Peyton Farquhar, a farmer and slave owner whose plantation lay close to Owl Creek Bridge. One evening, a man in a Confederate uniform rides up and reveals that a union stockade has been built at Owl Creek Bridge, which might be set on fire. It turns out that the soldier is a Union scout dressed in a Confederate uniform. The story implies that Farquhar attempts to sabotage the stockade and is captured, leading to his execution shortly thereafter. As the sergeant steps away, the rope pulls taut. In that instant, Farquhar seems to lose consciousness, only to come to his senses at the bottom of the creek, with the rope apparently snapped. He fights his way to the surface and frees himself from his bonds. As he does so, his senses slowly recover and soon become preternaturally keen, allowing him to notice little details about his surroundings well beyond normal sights and sounds. He swims away as the Union soldiers shoot after him, making it to shore and disappearing into the woods. The injuries inflicted in his escape continue to dog him as he makes his way through the forest towards his home. He finds no sign of human habitation in the woods and as the afternoon turns into evening, his surroundings take on a surreal quality. The constellations in the sky are unnatural and strange, and the path he walks seems too straight and wide for human hands to have made. He hears whispers in an unknown language from the woods. Then, suddenly, he finds himself at the gate of his own home, with his wife coming down the porch to greet him. He rushes up to her smiling face, only to feel a blow on his neck and experience a blinding white light that fades to black. His body swings from the noose at Owl Creek Bridge. He never escaped at all.

- Genre: Murder Mystery - Title: And Then There Were None - Point of view: Third person omniscient - Setting: Soldier Island (in other editions it is also called Indian Island), off the coast of England - Character: Justice Wargrave. Description: A recently retired Judge who quickly re-assumes this role on the island, holding impromptu "court cases" after nearly every murder. He is obsessed with justice, and also with death, as he reveals at the end of the novel through a letter placed in a bottle and put in the ocean. Since he was a child he has taken great pleasure from the idea of death, and even killed animals, but he was also pained by the idea of killing anyone who was innocent. When he realized that he was going to die he decided to finally commit the perfect murder – by killing people who had murdered themselves yet were beyond the reach of the law. - Character: Emily Brent. Description: A religious woman certain of her own righteousness, she is convinced also of everyone else's sinfulness. Long before coming to the island, Emily Brent fired and kicked out of her house a woman named Beatrice Taylor because Beatrics had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Beatrice, in despair, subsequently killed herself. Brent never consciously feels any remorse (though there are hints that subconsciously she may) and she therefore feels confident that she will not be killed even after the recording plays. - Character: Vera Claythorne. Description: A schoolteacher who is invited to Soldier Island as a secretary. She is very practical and careful, but she is also a romantic. She fell in love with a man named Hugo while she was employed as a nanny for a young boy, Cyril Hamilton. Cyril's birth took away Hugo's chance at an inheritance and Hugo told Vera at one point that he would marry her if he still had money. Vera therefore allowed Cyril to swim out into the ocean too far and drown. She was not convicted because she swam out after him as if she were trying to save him. Yet Hugo knew the truth, so he went away and never spoke to Vera again. Vera is plagued with this guilt for the rest of her life until, after surviving to the very end of Soldier Island, she hangs herself. - Character: Philip Lombard. Description: Lombard was hired by Mr. Isaac Morris to come to Soldier Island and watch out for any trouble. He is a very resourceful and creative man who used to be a soldier in Africa. While in Africa he left a group of natives to die in order to save his own life. He is very clever and is able to escape death until the very end of the novel, when he trusts Vera too much because she is a woman. - Character: Dr. Edward Armstrong. Description: A successful doctor who comes to Soldier Island because he is told that Ms. Owen is sick. He used to drink too much and once accidentally killed an old woman because he was drunk while operating on her. He is very preoccupied with maintaining his reputation, and hence his success. At the same time, he is a very gullible man. He trusts Wargrave and helps the judge fake his own death. Once the other surviving characters think that the judge is dead, Wargrave has free reign of the island. Wargrave eventually kills Armstrong by pushing him off a cliff. - Character: William Henry Blore. Description: An ex-police inspector who is tricked into coming to the island when he is told that he is supposed to protect Mrs. Owen's jewels from a thief. In his past Blore, in order to gain a promotion for himself, sent an innocent man named Landor to a penal colony, where he died. Blore is practical and careful, but he has very little imagination, which is possibly a reason why he was not able to get promoted on his own merit. In spite of his careful observance of the guests, he is always guessing the wrong person as the murderer and he is not careful enough to avoid his own death. - Character: Thomas Rogers. Description: The butler on Soldier Island, Mr. Rogers is a dedicated and professional servant. He always brings the drinks and food on time and is always polite and deferential. Yet he killed an old woman he used to work for, Jennifer Brady, by not administering her medicine so he could receive the money that Mrs. Brady had left to him and in his wife in her will. - Character: General John Gordon Macarthur. Description: A general in World War I, he is the oldest guest on the island and is suspected of intentionally sending a lieutenant, Arthur Richmond, to his death. Macarthur did this when he learned that Richmond was having an affair with his wife. Macarthur's guilty conscience has always left him with the feeling that his fellow veterans know about his dark past and he separated himself from his Army friends after the war ended. His wife also died soon after the war and he has been lonely and weary since then. Once he gets to Soldier Island, he realizes that he is tired of life and the effort that it takes to live with his secret, and is ready to die. - Character: Ethel Rogers. Description: Mr. Rogers's wife, Ethel cooks all the meals on the island and does the housekeeping. Vera notices from the very beginning that Ethel looks constantly frightened and this seems to relate to her sense of guilt. Ms. Rogers dies in her sleep from poison during the first night on the island. - Character: Isaac Morris. Description: Morris is never actually present in the novel but he is hired by Wargrave to purchase the island under the name of Mr. Owen, and find plausible ways to invite all the guests. Owen is a shady businessman who has been involved in the drug trade and convinced a daughter of one of Wargrave's friends to start taking drugs, after which she committed suicide. Wargrave is able to kill Morris with poison even though Morris never comes to Soldier Island, and Morris leaves no trace of Wargrave's presence in the business dealings that enabled the multiple murders on Soldier Island. - Theme: Justice. Description: Mystery novels, of which Agatha Christie is often considered the queen, generally present a complex and confusing cast of characters that, through the efforts of the detective/narrator/reader become organized into groups of good and bad, black and white. Generally, there are one or two criminals and lots of victims. And Then There Were None never works out this neatly. Agatha Christie presents justice as an ambiguous concept. Who deserves punishment and how much? The criminal of And Then There Were None, Justice Wargrave, is a justice fanatic. He believes that because the guests on Soldier's Island all committed crimes for which they were never punished, they now deserve to be emotionally tortured and eventually killed. Even if someone were to agree that the ten criminals deserve such punishment, Wargrave's conception of justice is complicated by the fact that, in the name of justice, he commits a much graver crime than any of the other characters in the novel. Agatha Christie demonstrates that since humans are inherently flawed, justice is too. The ten victims in And Then There Were None were able to get away with their crimes because of some flaw in the system: there wasn't enough proof, the crime happened far away in another country, the death was caused by some accidental carelessness that does not count as murder. Yet when they get to Soldier's Island they enter a sort of penal colony where justice all of a sudden becomes an extremely rigid concept. By presenting the arbiter of justice as a life-long death and legal obsessed maniac, Agatha Christie shows the danger in a simplistic view of justice. There is a reason that the system is flawed, that one is innocent before proven guilty. There is no perfect way to catch and punish every criminal, but breaking from the existing, flawed system is even more dangerous. At the end of the novel, when the house and island are strewn with dead bodies it is hard to believe that the best answer to murder is more murder. - Theme: Guilt. Description: And Then There Were None presents two kinds of guilt: personal and legal. The majority of the characters in the novel are people who have escaped the latter but are plagued by the former. Justice Wargrave understands the power of personal guilt as shown by the fact that he guesses Vera will kill herself when she is the last one left on the island. Yet he does not believe that a sense of personal guilt is enough. Wargrave cannot stand that these people have not been declared guilty by a court of law. Agatha Christie, on the other hand, shows that the self-inflicted punishment that comes from personal guilt is often even more painful than any sentence given by the law. For example, General Macarthur wishes death upon himself because he cannot handle his guilt-ridden any longer and Vera is constantly plagued by dreams and visions of the little boy she killed for the man she loved. Agatha Christie demonstrates that guilt is not only doled out by a jury, but rather, like justice, it is a complicated concept that involves human flaws and inconsistencies. Through Miss Emily Brent, the novel also presents a religious view of guilt. Brent's solid belief in God, and her belief that she is always in God's good graces, means that she is incapable of feeling guilty. Her understanding of guilt is similar to Wargrave's understanding of justice: Brent believes that she is not guilty because she killed a sinning woman, and Wargrave believes that he can cause ten murders if it is in the name of justice. Both of these characters show how guilt can be defined by one's own personal moral and legal system. The guests on Soldier's Island have been able to survive for so long with their own guilt because they come up with various definitions of right and wrong to pardon themselves. For example, Anthony Marston thinks that he ran over those children accidentally so it doesn't matter – everyone has their own way to cope with guilt. The central question at the end of the novel is "who is guilty?" Is Wargrave guilty because he killed ten people? Or was he only following his duty as a servant of the law? Did the guests of Soldier's Island deserve their fate, were they guilty enough to deserve death no matter what? These answers depend on the reader's highly subjective understanding of guilt. - Theme: Death. Description: Death is obviously a central part of And Then There Were None, but it is treated quite casually. There is no pomp or circumstance surrounding the death of any of the characters. They are laid out on their beds and that is it. This simplicity comes from the fact that the characters revert to a more primitive state when death becomes present in their everyday lives. When so many people are dying there is no time for mourning, and life just has to go on. In addition, their own murderous pasts have brought them to this proximity with death. The characters have all killed other people so they are unusually knowledgeable about death. The inevitability of death is highlighted on Soldier's Island. Many of the characters, such as Vera, Anthony Marston, Mr. Lombard and Mr. Blore, feel immortal. They believe that they will be the ones to survive because they have avoided danger at other times in their lives. Yet one of Wargrave's lessons is that no one can escape death. - Theme: Class. Description: Each character has a very specific, defined role in English society. For example, the Rogers come as servants, Vera as the secretary, and Anthony as the moneyed socialite. There is a doctor, a judge, a general, and a spinster, and each play out their roles exactly as they should – at least when they are first on the island. This IN this way, the novel establishes the rigidity of the English social order. And Then There Were None is set in 1930s England, a highly stratified society where one's social class could define one's life and relationships. The chaos and fear that comes to rule the island is the only thing that can break down these social and class barriers. Yet it is difficult for some of the characters to leave their expected roles, even when this puts them in danger. Mr. Rogers maintains his duties as servant even after his wife, along with some of the other guests, have been killed. He makes meals at the appropriate time, serves cocktail and even ventures out alone to chop wood for the guests – which leads to his death. Agatha Christie sets up this rigid structure and maintains it for a while to demonstrate how difficult it is to break down the barriers set by class. When it does finally happen the characters don't only lose their social graces, they also begin to revert to an inhuman, animalistic state. They start eating out of cans in the kitchen, and leaving the house to find safety in nature. Vera even observes that the guests who have survived start to look more like animals. When their main worry is survival there is no time to worry about what is proper. Yet Agatha Christie shows that it takes something of the magnitude of being trapped on an island with an insane murderer to interfere with the class order of British society. - Climax: Justice Wargrave's revelatory letter in a bottle, which appears in the second epilogue to the novel. - Summary: Riding on a train through England, Justice Wargrave begins thinking about where he is going: Soldier Island. He remembers a story of a millionaire who lived there, but has heard that the Island was recently bought by a man named Mr. Owen. The scene quickly changes to another woman on the train, Vera Claythorne who is similarly curious about this island. The narrative shifts among a variety of other characters, the mysterious Philip Lombard, the rigid spinster Miss Emily Brent, the retired General Macarthur, the successful Dr. Armstrong, the reckless Anthony Marston, and the lying Mr. Blore, who are all also headed to Soldier Island. They are taken by boat to the island by a local named Fred Narracott. At the island the host is not there but two servants, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, tell the guests that dinner is almost ready. The guests go up to their rooms and notice that there is a nursery rhyme hung in each, "Ten Little Soldiers." In each verse another Little Soldier dies in some strange way. After a pleasant dinner, the guests all gather in the parlor for drinks. All of a sudden a loud voice takes over the room, accusing each guest, one at a time, of murder. When the recording ends, Mrs. Rogers faints and is taken upstairs by her husband and the doctor. The voice has come from a gramophone hidden in the next room. Justice Wargrave, a retired judge, begins an impromptu court session – asking everyone to explain his or her accusation. Each guest has some sort of excuse. They realize that they have all been invited to the island under false pretenses by someone with the name U. N. Owen which, as Wargrave points out, spells out Unknown. Then, all of a sudden, Anthony Marston chokes, falls over, and dies. Dr. Armstrong checks Marston's drink and discovers that it has been poisoned! They take him up to his room and all decide that they will try to leave in the morning. In bed in her room Vera realizes that Marston's death mirrors the first line of the Ten Little Soldiers rhyme. The next morning Mr. Rogers tells everyone that Mrs. Rogers died in the middle of the night. He also says that two of the little soldier figurines that had been decorating the table had now disappeared. The guests now decide that there must be a "raving maniac" on the island. They all think that they should leave but a storm is coming and no boat will be able to get to or from the island. Blore and Lombard decide to search the island but find no one. They do discover that Lombard has a revolver. Mr. Rogers calls everyone in for lunch, but they realize that General Macarthur is not there. Dr. Armstrong goes to check on him and finds him dead – hit on the head with a life preserver. Wargrave holds another court-session and decides that although no one person stands out as the murderer, the killer must be one of the guests on the Island. The next morning they wake to find Rogers dead – struck on the back of head with an axe while chopping wood. Vera and Miss Brent prepare breakfast now that there are no surviving servants. After breakfast, Miss Brent feels weak so stays seated as the rest of the guests clear the table. When they come back they find Miss Brent dead. She has been poisoned with a syringe in the neck and the murderer even took the time to put a bee in the room (to match the verse in the Ten Little Soldiers rhyme). Wargrave suggests that they should lock up any dangerous items that they have brought, but when Lombard goes to get his revolver he realizes that it is missing. Next Wargrave dies, shot through the head and dressed up as a judge while a decoy of a drowning scene frightens Vera and distracts all the other guests. That night Lombard hears a noise from his room and wakes up everyone else only to realize that Dr. Armstrong is missing. They believe that Armstrong must be the murderer. They spend the morning outside the house where it feels open and safe. Finally Blore decides to get some food from the house, but on his way inside he is crushed by a bear shaped statue dropped from above and which had been sitting on Vera's mantelpiece. Lombard decides that they should find a high place on the Island and stay awake all night but when they get there they find Armstrong dead. Vera and Lombard are the only two remaining on the island. They both suspect the other but Vera manages to snatch Lombard's revolver and shoot him. She then feels a sudden calm and walks back to the house intending to eat something and sleep. Instead she thinks about the little boy she tricked into drowning in an attempt to free the man she loved to marry her (except that the man figured it out and left her immediately). She notices a noose hanging in her bedroom and a chair placed just under it, and hangs herself. The epilogue is set in Scotland Yard where Sir Thomas Legge and Inspector Maine are discussing the mystery murders on Soldier Island. They go through all the facts but cannot understand how everyone on the Island could be dead. The final chapter is a letter from Wargrave describing how he has always been obsessed with justice and death. As a small child he enjoyed killing animals, but he never wanted to harm anything innocent. This led him to a career in the law, but he always felt something lacking. After learning he was soon to die from a medical condition, he decided that for his final act in life he wanted to commit the perfect murder. But he also did not want to kill innocent people, so he collected a group of men and women who had committed crimes for which they had never been punished, and brought them to Soldier Island. Then he killed them one by one, saving the guiltiest for last. He hid his own involvement by getting the doctor to help fake his own death (tricking the doctor into thinking such a ruse would help out the "real" murderer), and then killing the doctor. After Vera hanged herself, Wargrave arranged the house just so, and then carefully killed himself.

- Genre: Short Story, Bildungsroman - Title: ‘And Women Must Weep’ - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Australia around the turn of the 20th century - Character: Dolly. Description: - Character: Auntie Cha. Description: - Character: Miss Biddons. Description: - Character: The Master of Ceremonies. Description: - Character: The Lady-Friend's Son. Description: - Character: The Gentleman. Description: - Character: The Young Boy. Description: - Theme: Growing Up. Description: - Theme: Social Pressures vs. Internal Desires. Description: - Theme: Women, Beauty Standards, and Patriarchy. Description: - Climax: Dolly locks herself in her room, takes off her dress, and cries. - Summary: Set in Australia around the turn of the 20th century, "'And Women Must Weep'" is about an adolescent girl's first ball. Dolly is thrilled to be attending her first grown-up event. As she prepares for the dance, which her Auntie Cha is bringing her to, Dolly delights in her beautiful dress and her own prettiness. She waits for Auntie Cha to finish getting ready, ignoring Miss Biddons's advice to sit down because she's too nervous for the ball and concerned that she might crush her dress. Finally, Dolly and Auntie Cha are ready to leave. Dolly's spirits are slightly dampened when Miss Biddons warns her not to forget her steps in the waltz and Auntie Cha scolds her for looking too serious. Dolly accidentally tears a ribbon off her dress while stepping out of the wagonette, and Auntie Cha chides her for clumsiness. Dismayed and self-conscious, Dolly enters the public hall and hides behind Auntie Cha, noticing that other women's dresses are even prettier than hers. Auntie Cha makes Dolly sit in the front row of seats and display her program to show she wants to dance. Dolly obeys, but no one asks her to dance. Through Auntie Cha's interventions, Dolly dances with the Master of Ceremonies and the son of her aunt's "lady-friend," but Dolly is embarrassed that she has only been invited to dance out of pity. She is also partnered with a rude gentleman who dances badly and worsens her humiliation. Afterward, Dolly sits out of the dancing and tries to look agreeable, as Auntie Cha reminds her to do. She smiles at young men in the hopes that they will choose her, but she is ignored. She grows upset at the unfairness of the ball and wishes she were an old woman or at home in bed. The rest of the evening goes poorly as well. Dolly's mouth is too dry to eat, and her only other dance partners are the lady-friend's son again and a young boy. Dolly and Auntie Cha leave early. On the way home, Auntie Cha stays silent, and Dolly tries not to cry. As soon as they arrive home, Dolly shuts herself alone in her room and throws her crushed dress on the floor. She overhears Auntie Cha declare to Miss Biddons that she "didn't take." Dolly feels horribly ashamed of her failure to attract any gentlemen at the ball, a failure that will follow her all her life. Yet she also feels like this failure is not her fault, because she tried her best to do everything right. She realizes she didn't even want to be chosen at the ball; she was only pretending. Dolly cannot hold her tears back anymore and cries.

- Genre: Science Fiction/Horror - Title: Annihilation - Point of view: First person from the biologist's point of view - Setting: Area X - Character: The Biologist. Description: The biologist is the narrator and protagonist of Annihilation. She is a solitary and analytical person, often preferring to study her environment rather than interact with other people. Growing up, she was something of a loner who loved observing the plant and animal life that sprung up in the swimming pool behind her house. This tendency to isolate herself eventually caused difficulties in her marriage to her husband—he was outgoing, whereas she was quiet, and he believed that she didn't open up to him. When the biologist's husband returns from the eleventh expedition to Area X with severe melancholy, memory loss, and terminal cancer, the biologist volunteers for the following expedition. She not only wants to find out more about Area X and what happened to her husband, but she is also drawn to the possibility of adventure and to Area X's isolation from other environments and people. In Area X, the biologist tries to be analytical and objective, but she quickly realizes that everyone's experiences are completely subjective. When she inhales spores in the Tower, she starts to change—becoming immune to the psychologist's hypnotic suggestions, seeing the Tower more clearly, and acquiring heightened senses. Over time, she also realizes that the spores have created a "brightness" inside her that is slowly taking over her whole body. The biologist is constantly searching for answers to the major mysteries of the novel: why the government is sending them on expeditions, how to interpret all of Area X's mysteries, and particularly what the Crawler (the creature in the Tower) is doing. However, she starts to recognize that even with all the information in the world (like the journals that she pores over from previous expeditions), she will never truly be able to solve all of Area X's mysteries. Instead, at the end of the book, she goes after her husband when she reads in his journal that he set out on a boat to try to recross the border. She recognizes that she does not want to go home, instead ultimately deciding to become a part of Area X. - Character: The Biologist's Husband. Description: The biologist's husband was a medic on the eleventh expedition. Prior to his leaving for the expedition, the biologist and her husband struggled in their relationship, because she was very reserved and he was very outgoing, and he often felt that she put up emotional walls against him. She disliked that he was going on the expedition, but she did not realize that it was likely that he was being hypnotized during his interviews to convince him to go to Area X. When he suddenly returned from Area X, she found that he was reserved and somber and had memory issues: he had no recollection of crossing the border, nor did he remember much of the expedition itself. The biologist then called the authorities and he spent the final six months of his life in an observation facility until he died of cancer. After his death, the biologist is determined to go to Area X, in part to discover what really happened to her husband there. In Area X, she finds her husband's journal, most of which is addressed to the biologist, to her surprise. She realizes while reading it that her husband in fact did not leave Area X and that he decided to try to take a boat up the coast. He also observed a doppelgänger of himself in the Area, whom the biologist suspects is the person who appeared in her home. She also realizes, reading his accounts, that he had a much deeper inner life than she suspected and wishes that she hadn't shut him out as much as she did. At the end, after reading his account, the biologist sets out to try to find out what happened to her husband rather than trying to return home. - Character: The Crawler. Description: The Crawler is the creature writing the words in the Tower as it slowly descends the stairs. For much of the book, the Crawler lurks ominously in the background, relentlessly writing words on the walls, but the biologist doesn't observe it directly. After encountering the Tower for the first time, the biologist sees the result of the encounter between the anthropologist and the Crawler: the anthropologist's face is burned, her jaw broken, and her legs melted. Later, testing the sample the anthropologist was able to collect from the Crawler, the biologist realizes that the Crawler's cells include those of human brains. At the end of the novel, the biologist finally encounters the Crawler herself, which emits a massive light and is difficult for the biologist to fully see. She believes that it reflects her own ideas of what the Crawler looks like back at her, including a sluglike monster ringed by satellites of odd creatures, or a figure within panes of glass, or a series of layers in an arch shape. The Crawler then probes the biologist's brain, making her experience agonizing pain, and the feelings of drowning and burning—though ultimately she is able to survive the Crawler's trials. When she encounters the Crawler a second time, it completely ignores her, but she is able to see it slightly more clearly, noting that it has the lighthouse keeper's face. - Character: The Psychologist. Description: The psychologist is the leader of the twelfth expedition. She takes part in interviewing and screening the other women, and the biologist instantly dislikes her, since she asks the biologist invasive questions in the interviews. After the biologist inhales the spores in the Tower, she becomes immune to the psychologist's hypnotic suggestions and realizes how much the psychologist has been lying to them about the nature of Area X. The evening after they discover the Tower, the psychologist coerces the anthropologist down into the Tower to take a sample of the Crawler, which kills the anthropologist and wounds the psychologist. The psychologist then abandons the biologist and surveyor to return to the lighthouse, where she has a vision of the biologist coming after her and attacking her. This leads the psychologist to jump off of the lighthouse, landing in the sand below and seriously injuring herself. When the biologist finds the psychologist, the psychologist doesn't reveal much about Area X's mysteries—only that it is slowly expanding. After the psychologist dies, the biologist discovers the different hypnotic suggestions that the psychologist implanted in each of the expedition's members—including one ("annihilation!") that will induce their suicides. - Character: The Surveyor. Description: The surveyor is one of the other women on the twelfth expedition. She comes from a military background and is inherently mistrustful of the others. The second time the surveyor and the biologist descend into the Tower, the surveyor becomes concerned that the biologist is seeing and hearing things that the surveyor cannot. After finding the anthropologist's body in the Tower, the biologist reveals that the psychologist is hypnotizing them and likely caused the anthropologist's death—and yet, the surveyor continues to mistrust the biologist, worried that the biologist is the one who's experiencing hallucinations, when in fact the biologist believes that the spores have made her see reality. This illustrates the complicated nature of subjectivity and objectivity, because it's difficult to establish who—if either of them—is seeing the truth. Ultimately, the women part ways and the biologist travels to the lighthouse; when the biologist returns a day after she said she would, the surveyor shoots and injures her. The biologist fires back, killing the surveyor. - Character: The Anthropologist. Description: The anthropologist is one of the members of the twelfth expedition into Area X. The anthropologist was formerly an architect, and the biologist reveals that she doesn't think the anthropologist has the same kind of mental toughness as the other members of the expedition. The evening after first exploring the Tower, the psychologist hypnotizes the anthropologist to get her to return to the tower to take a sample of the Crawler, but the creature ends up killing her. Later, the surveyor believes that she sees the anthropologist and tries to kill her again. - Character: The Lighthouse Keeper. Description: The biologist finds a picture in the lighthouse of an older man, whom she assumes was the lighthouse keeper before the Event that created the border around Area X. At the end of the book, when the biologist encounters the Crawler for the second time, she realizes that the Crawler has the face of the lighthouse keeper. - Theme: The Sublime vs. The Mundane. Description: In Annihilation, four women on a government expedition explore a mysterious wilderness preserve called Area X. The narrator—an unnamed biologist—is inexplicably drawn to the different landmarks and environments in Area X, but the more observations the biologist makes, the less she seems to understand. By book's end, she recognizes how incomprehensible yet beautiful Area X is, contrasting it with the mundane nature of her life back home. This notion of a world both painfully beautiful and completely inexplicable connects to the philosophical concept of "the sublime"—something that is so incomprehensible that it inspires a mix of awe and fear. The biologist's journey through Area X conjures these feelings of the sublime, suggesting that some mysteries are too great or beautiful to truly comprehend, and that sometimes the only way to experience mystery is to appreciate it without attempting to understand it. As the biologist explores Area X, she feels a constant sense of curiosity, fear, and awe. For instance, when the expedition first arrives at Area X, the group hears a "low, powerful moaning at dusk" and cannot find its source. The biologist writes in her journal that "the effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either." The beauty and fear that the moaning conjures are so strange that the biologist cannot understand or communicate what she's experiencing in words. The biologist experiences this mysterious combination of horror and beauty a second time when the group discovers what she calls a "Tower"—a spiral staircase descending into the earth. The more the biologist thinks about the Tower, the more she is drawn to it; she writes, "I could not tell which part I craved and which I feared," and she connects this feeling to "a sudden leap off a cliff into the unknown." In this way, she seems to both fear the unknown and desire it for its beauty, which is an essential characteristic of the sublime. Then, after inhaling spores in the Tower, the biologist begins to perceive the Tower as alive and breathing, like the gullet of an enormous beast. As she descends into the Tower once more, she finds an "ongoing horror show of such beauty and biodiversity that [she] could not fully take it all in." The more she learns about Area X, the less she is able to "take it all in"—or, the more unknowable it becomes. This contradiction indicates that the sublime is embedded in the very nature of Area X, and the biologist must be satisfied with the impossibility of finding answers to its mysteries. The biologist contrasts the incomprehensible phenomena of Area X with the "mundane" occurrences that she associates with life outside of Area X. When entering the Tower the second time, for example, the biologist observes strange words written in vegetation and what look like tracks from the creature that is writing the words (which she names "the Crawler"). Looking at her own boot print beside the complex track patterns, she writes that it is "So mundane in comparison. So boring." The implication is that her boot print—whose existence she can easily understand and explain—has less value than the mysteries of Area X. Then, after she has observed even more of Area X's mysteries, she thinks about when her husband returned from his own expedition to Area X. That night, she "could distinctly recall wiping the spaghetti and chicken scraps from a plate and wondering with a kind of bewilderment how such a mundane act could coexist with the mystery of his reappearance." This contrast again illustrates just how different and sublime Area X is in comparison with the dull, uncomplicated tasks of the world beyond it. By book's end, the biologist accepts that she cannot understand Area X's mysteries—and she even seems invigorated by living alongside them. Returning to the Tower at the end of the book, the biologist finally observes the Crawler. And yet she still cannot fully see the creature; its existence overwhelms her perception, and she has an almost out-of-body experience. She thinks, "This moment, which I might have been waiting for my entire life all unknowing—this moment of an encounter with the most beautiful, the most terrible thing I might ever experience—was beyond me." In framing the pinnacle of her life as an encounter with something mysterious and incomprehensible, the biologist suggests that it is the nature of life itself to live alongside unsolvable mysteries and to appreciate them without understanding them. When she resurfaces after this encounter, she writes in her final journal entry, "Observing all of this has quelled the last ashes of the burning compulsion I had to know everything… anything…" This conclusion sums up the book's complicated perspective on Area X: not only that there are some things too beautiful and terrible to understand, but also that life is not about solving mysteries—it's about appreciating them. - Theme: Nature, Power, and Persistence. Description: Annihilation's narrator—an unnamed biologist—describes the mysterious Area X as a "pristine wilderness." By contrast, the world where humans live (outside Area X's border) has been spoiled. But the biologist's work and life experiences have taught her about nature's ability to reclaim human environments, such as an abandoned swimming pool or an empty lot. It seems that nature is actually more powerful than humanity—and Area X is constantly expanding beyond its borders, which seems like an ominous sign for humankind. By the end of the novel, the biologist is the only one on her team to survive Area X. She does so not by separating herself from it, but by allowing herself to be integrated into the environment, leaving the base camp to live alone in the wild. In this way, the book subverts the idea that humans can control the nature around them and suggests that nature is far more powerful and persistent than human beings are. Before visiting Area X, the biologist observes how natural environments are able to reclaim areas that have been decimated by human activity, demonstrating nature's persistence. When she was growing up, the biologist's house had a swimming pool in the backyard that her parents didn't take care of. Within months of them moving in, the pool became its own ecosystem, filled with animal and plant life. This fascinated the biologist and inspired her to study nature—she loved seeing how nature could find a way to flourish even in the most sterile environments. Later in her life, the biologist also obsessed over an empty lot near the house she shared with her husband. From a tire track, a puddle formed that quickly began to teem with new life. She called it her patch of "urban wilderness," an oxymoron suggesting that no matter the environment, nature can reclaim its territory when given the opportunity. But the biologist understands that nature doesn't only overtake human environments—it also overtakes humans themselves. Early in her career, she seemed to "lose [her]self" in studying tidal pools in remote locations. She relates this to Area X, saying that she experiences the same thing there. She writes, "That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality." "Colonize" is a word often used to refer to people establishing control over land or other people, and by using it to describe what the tidal pools and Area X are doing instead, she reinforces nature's persistence and power over humans. From the outset, the biologist recognizes that Area X is more powerful than she and her team are. On their very first day at base camp, the biologist inhales spores that start to influence her brain and body, enhancing her senses and making her immune to hypnotic suggestion. Later, the psychologist also becomes infected by Area X, causing her to glow and grow fuzzy vegetation on her body. This establishes how the nature in Area X has its own power to change human beings, not the other way around. Area X also seems to be actively trying to encroach on human-settled territory, as its border is expanding outward. And Area X seems not to intend to coexist with humanity, since its environment has lots of defenses against human incursion (violent creatures, a dangerous and mysterious boundary, etc.)  In this way, the book suggests that Area X will slowly take over human life. Ultimately, the biologist posits that this may actually be good for the world: she writes, "I can no longer say with conviction that [Area X's expansion] is a bad thing. Not when looking at the pristine nature of Area X and then the world beyond, which we have altered so much." She acknowledges that humans have the power to change the world, but Area X has shown that nature has an even greater power to change it back. Knowing this, the biologist comes to believe that the only way to survive Area X is not to defeat it, but to become part of it. Many previous expeditions relied on the lighthouse (an emblem of human civilization) for safety, but this was an "illusion"—human civilization could not keep anyone safe, as shown by the scene of chaos and bloodshed inside the lighthouse. From this, the biologist learns that in order to survive Area X, "You had to fade into the landscape." In other words, to survive Area X, she has to become part of it. Over the biologist's time in Area X, the spores continue to grow and take over the rest of her body, which she calls a "brightness" spreading inside her. This infection heightens her senses and even allows her to endure two gunshots. By joining with nature and allowing herself to be overcome by the spores, she not only loses some of her humanity, but she also gains power and is able to survive injuries she would not otherwise have been able to survive because of nature's power. The biologist's final decision further illustrates this point. She chooses not to return home but instead to remain in the wild, becoming a part of the landscape rather than viewing herself as separate from it. Because she is the only person from her expedition to survive Area X, she confirms that only those who submit to nature are able to survive it, reinforcing humans' lack of control in comparison to nature's power. - Theme: Self-Reliance, Mistrust, Secrecy, and Isolation. Description: Annihilation's protagonist—an unnamed biologist—has several crucial relationships in the book: with the other team members on her expedition (the psychologist, surveyor, and anthropologist) and with her husband. Yet the book also depicts how the biologist remains emotionally isolated and self-reliant, which ultimately ends up benefitting her. The other members of her team and the Southern Reach (the government agency that sent her) ultimately prove untrustworthy, having kept a great deal of secrets from her, and so her mistrust often ends up saving her life. And while the biologist has some regrets about how her own isolation and secrecy dissolved her and her husband's marriage, she finds greater liberation in the solitude she gains in Area X. In this way, the book suggests that human beings are fundamentally alone, even when part of teams, and that it's helpful to be self-reliant and mistrustful even when it destroys relationships. The mistrust that the biologist feels toward the other members of her expedition ultimately ends up saving her life even as it destroys the expedition, illustrating how self-reliance can be helpful. The biologist acknowledges from the book's outset that she is naturally "attuned to solitude" and isn't very emotionally forthcoming. Even while training for the expedition to Area X, this mindset creates conflict on the team: when the psychologist hypnotizes the biologist while interviewing her about her life, the biologist reveals little, distrusting and disliking the psychologist—a feeling that's quickly returned. This demonstrates how the biologist's emotional walls create immediate divides within her relationships. Yet this mistrust ends up proving helpful when the biologist ingests spores in Area X and keeps this fact to herself, not revealing that the spores make her immune to the hypnotism. Soon after, the biologist realizes that the psychologist has been hypnotizing them not just to keep them calm, but also to make them go along with her plans. Keeping these secrets makes her feel "estranged from the expedition," but this estrangement is actually helpful because it allows her to understand that the psychologist and the Southern Reach know a lot more about Area X than she knows—and this clarity that helps protect her from further manipulation. Later, the psychologist's hypnotism only ends up causing the anthropologist's death, and the biologist realizes that the psychologist even has a command that can induce suicide in the other women. The biologist is able to avoid a similar fate because of her self-reliance and her mistrust, showing how these traits—while they have driven a wedge between the team members—have protected her from death. The biologist's self-reliance similarly saves her from the surveyor, who chooses to spend the night alone while the biologist investigates the lighthouse. When the biologist returns, the surveyor tries to shoot the biologist because she believes the biologist has become completely inhuman, and because—as the biologist later speculates—the solitude at camp had driven her to have a mental breakdown. This shoot-out ends with the biologist returning fire and killing the surveyor. In this way, the biologist's isolation and self-reliance have helped her—not only to survive the mental tricks of Area X, but also to instinctively protect herself from the surveyor's violence, even at the cost of decimating her relationships and the expedition. The biologist's consideration of her relationship with her husband shows a more tragic side of this dynamic. She recognizes how not opening up to him essentially ruined their marriage, even as it helped her find the freedom she craved in solitude. Prior to her husband leaving for the 11th expedition to Area X, their relationship was struggling because she was "distant" from him and "guarded." For example, she spent many nights observing the environment in an empty lot. This was innocuous and perhaps understandable given her passion for nature, but she nonetheless refused to tell her husband where she was going, which unsettled him. In this way, the biologist's isolation and self-reliance bred mistrust in her husband, creating conflict in their marriage. The biologist also discusses how her husband was often unhappy with how disengaged she was when they would go out to bars with his friends. However, she insists that even though her distance disappointed him, she was "happy in her little bubble of silence." Thus, solitude brought her joy—even if it meant being emotionally distant in a way that hurt her marriage. This distance between them was part of the reason that her husband wanted to go on the 11th expedition—she had "pushed him away." But going on the expedition leads to even more distance between them and, ultimately, his death, showing how destructive that emotional distance ended up being. The biologist eventually comes to regret her secrecy and emotional distance from her husband once she finds his expedition journal, seeing that he had a "deep inner life" that she didn't understand. She recognizes that she "could have met him partway and retained [her] sovereignty." In this passage, she recognizes how her fundamental tendency towards being secretive and alone destroyed their marriage, even suggesting that she may have regretted it. In the book's final pages, the biologist chooses to search for her husband, believing that he may still be alive somewhere in Area X. This ambiguous ending suggests two ideas: on the one hand, it hints at a newfound desire to connect with him and try to be more open. But on the other hand, she seems to suspect that she will, in fact, never find her husband. In this way, her sense of purpose and joy may actually come from knowing that she's finally alone and autonomous, able to explore the world on her own terms. - Theme: Objectivity vs. Subjectivity. Description: When the biologist first arrives in Area X, she prizes objectivity. As scientists, she and the other members of the team rely on facts: they collect samples and measurements, which are meant to help them classify Area X's characteristics. At the same time, the biologist realizes that Area X is skewing their perceptions of the world around them, and the team suddenly disagrees about basic realities: is the passageway that leads to Area X a tunnel or a tower? Is the tunnel alive or not? That a group of scientists cannot agree on foundational facts makes the very project of interpreting reality "objectively" seem impossible. As the biologist observes, "nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective"—including herself.  When the expedition first arrives at Area X, the group's fixation on facts and figures runs into trouble. Early on, the biologist writes of a "feeling I often had when out in the wilderness: that things were not quite what they seemed, and I had to fight against the sensation because it could overwhelm my scientific objectivity." She wants to observe things factually, but she knows on some level that Area X is distorting how she observes the world around her. This tension between fact and perception becomes more apparent when the team first encounters a mysterious tunnel with a staircase spiraling down into the ground. Initially, the psychologist tries to emphasize that they need to have "faith in [their] measurements," citing some facts about the height and diameter of the structure. But the biologist suspects that the psychologist is simply trying to "reassure herself" in the face of the tunnel's strangeness—in fact, the data she collects can't explain anything important about the tunnel at all. The team quickly realizes that they cannot even agree on basic facts about what the tunnel is, which seriously casts doubt on their ability to see their environment objectively. While the other three members think of the structure as a "tunnel," the biologist emphasizes over and over that she can only see it as a "Tower." In hindsight, the biologist marks this as "the first irrational thought [she] had once [they] had reached [their] destination." The biologist recognizes that the environment itself is causing changes in her perception, preventing her from seeing anything objectively. Over time, the biologist's perception becomes even more obviously affected by her environment. On the group's first descent into the Tower, the biologist inhales spores from the walls. When she and the surveyor return a day later, the tower suddenly seems to be living and breathing—something that the surveyor, who did not inhale spores, cannot perceive. The surveyor comments, "You saw something that wasn't there," while the biologist thinks in response, "You can't see what is there." It's not clear who—if either of them—is seeing "reality." Moreover, the fact that the biologist doesn't press her case suggests that she's giving up on the idea of shared facts or objective reality altogether and accepting the fact that everyone will perceive their environment somewhat differently. The fact that the biologist's perception is affected specifically by inhaling the spores makes a subtler point about perception, too: that one can never objectively perceive something of which they are a part. The spores are a physical indication that the biologist is slowly becoming part of her environment, and the more integrated into her environment she becomes, the more her perception changes. "Will I melt into this landscape […]?" she wonders. "Will I be aware that anything is wrong or out of place?" With this, the biologist acknowledges that becoming a part of Area X alters her perception of even basic things about it, like what is "wrong" or "out of place." But since a person is always a part of their environment, their perception is always somewhat clouded by their subjective experiences and judgments. This is also related to the biologist's unreliability as a narrator. The biologist reveals partway through her account that she has not been "fully honest" with the reader, explaining that her husband was on the 11th expedition to Area X, and that his journey heavily influenced her own decision to go. She writes, "I know this information might not be hard for anyone to find out, but I have hoped that in reading this account, you might find me a credible, objective witness." Withholding this information, then, was an attempt to prevent the reader from thinking that she was biased—but the mere fact that she chooses to reveal information about herself sparingly suggests that she is constantly manipulating her narrative, and that it isn't truly objective. She later writes, "It may be clear by now that I am not always good at telling people things they feel they have a right to know […]. My reason for this is, again, the hope that any reader's initial opinion in judging my objectivity might not be influenced by these details." This suggests that "objectivity" is a matter of style rather than truth. To be seen as "objective," one has to appear to be a neutral and rational party—but one can never be neutral about their own perception, and the experience that the biologist is describing is highly irrational. So, in this light, it would be impossible to present it "objectively"—she can only relay her subjective perceptions.  In the book's final pages, the biologist admits that when recalling details about the environments she has experienced, she "remake[s] them in [her] mind with every new thought, every remembered detail, and each time they are slightly different." In this way, the book confirms that being immersed in something—whether it is an environment or simply memories of an environment—makes that experience inherently subjective. - Climax: The biologist decides to remain in Area X - Summary: Annihilation is framed as a journalistic account of the 12th expedition into an uninhabited area known as "Area X." The journal's author and narrator, an unnamed biologist, is part of this expedition alongside three other women: a psychologist, an anthropologist, and a surveyor. Area X is a mysterious place. Accounts from previous expeditions have hinted at strange ecological events that occurred there, and the members of many expeditions have not returned at all, experienced hallucinations, or killed each other. The biologist eventually reveals that her husband was a part of the 11th expedition. When he suddenly returned to their home a year after leaving for the expedition, he had no memory of crossing the border out of Area X and little memory of his time in Area X. He died of cancer six months later. The biologist then volunteered for the 12th expedition because she was drawn to its mystery and was curious about what may have happened to her husband. She underwent months of grueling training, set up by the Southern Reach (the government agency responsible for Area X), learning as much as she could about the Area. The psychologist also hypnotized the biologist and the other members so that they could remain calm while crossing the border into Area X. After entering the Area, it took the group four days of hiking to reach base camp. On their first day at base camp, the expedition discovers a structure with a staircase spiraling underneath the ground. This is concerning to them, because the structure isn't on any of their maps. Inside the staircase (which the biologist calls a "Tower" while the others call it a "tunnel"), they find eerie writing along the wall made from bioluminescent plant material, as well as slime and what look like tracks on the ground. While the biologist is examining the writing, she inhales spores from the plant material. Back at base camp, the biologist realizes that the psychologist is hypnotizing the group to control them; the biologist can see it now, because the spores have made her immune to hypnosis. Influenced by the psychologist, the group decides to return to the Tower the next day to explore its lower levels. The next morning, the anthropologist is missing, and the psychologist—who seems visibly shaken—explains that the anthropologist was frightened by what they found in the Tower and decided to leave the mission and return to the border. The biologist senses the psychologist is lying, but they have no choice but to go along with her story. Back at the Tower, the biologist and surveyor descend once more while the psychologist stands watch at the top. This time, the biologist notices that the Tower seems to be breathing and has a heartbeat, as though it is alive. The surveyor doesn't notice these things, however, and the biologist realizes that the spores have made her more aware of what is really happening in Area X. A few levels down, they discover the anthropologist's body: her face is burned, her jaw is broken, and her legs are half-melted. Next to her is a sample inside a vial, which the biologist collects. She and the surveyor also find another set of boot prints going back up. The biologist posits that the psychologist hypnotized the anthropologist to try to collect a sample from whatever is doing the writing (which she calls the "Crawler"), and the Crawler killed her. The surveyor isn't sure whether she should believe the biologist, but when they return, they pull out their weapons in case they have to confront the psychologist. Surprisingly, the psychologist is gone, and back at base camp, she has taken half of their supplies and most of their weapons. That evening, the biologist notices a light coming from the nearby lighthouse and assumes that it is the psychologist. The biologist also feels a "brightness" spreading through her from the spores, heightening her senses and making her glow faintly. The next day, the biologist sets out for the lighthouse while the surveyor stays behind. There, the biologist discovers hundreds of journals from past expeditions—far more than could have been written by only 12 expeditions—including her husband's. Reading some of the journals, she realizes that most of what she and the other expeditions have been told about Area X is a lie, and she wonders why they keep sending expeditions there. In the journals, she reads of "unspeakable acts" committed by prior expeditions. She also finds a photograph of a man who she assumes to be the lighthouse keeper from before Area X was uninhabited. As the biologist leaves, she notices the psychologist at the base of the lighthouse, seriously injured and likely soon to die. When the biologist approaches, the psychologist screams "annihilation!" at the biologist over and over. After calming down, the psychologist explains that she had leapt from the lighthouse because she was being chased by what she thought was the biologist. The psychologist confirms the biologist's theories about the anthropologist's death and explains that Area X is expanding. After the psychologist dies, the biologist finds a scrap of paper on the psychologist and learns that "annihilation" is a hypnotic suggestion meant to induce suicide. When the biologist returns to base camp, the surveyor ambushes and shoots her, injuring her. The biologist returns the gunfire, killing the surveyor. The biologist realizes that her "brightness" is helping her heal as it continues to spread throughout her body. Back at camp, the biologist analyzes some of the samples she has taken from plants, animals, and the Tower and realizes that they all have human cells in them. The biologist then reads her husband's journal. He was on an expedition with seven other men, and they discovered the journals in the lighthouse early in their expedition. The team then argued over what to do, knowing that they had been lied to. He and his expedition's surveyor decided to investigate the northern border, but they traveled for a week with no sign of the border. They then returned to the lighthouse, only to find that their anthropologist and psychologist had killed each other and the linguist killed the biologist before descending into the Tower. Returning to the Tower, the biologist's husband and his team's surveyor observed doppelgängers of all the men (including themselves) except the psychologist entering the Tower. Seeing this, they decided to abandon their mission. The surveyor tried to return to the border where they crossed it, but the biologist's husband was worried that returning that way would be a trap; instead, he decided to repair an abandoned boat and cross back by following the coastline. After reading her husband's account, the biologist returns to the Tower to find the Crawler. She encounters it, but her brain is unable to process what it looks like and she feels as though she is drowning and that her brain is being probed and burned. But she survives the encounter and continues to descend. Eventually, she comes in sight of a blurry gateway, like the one at the border when they crossed it. But the gateway makes her feel physically ill and unable to continue, so she decides to ascend the way she came. She passes the Crawler, this time without experiencing the pain and hallucinations, and when she looks back at it, she sees the face of the lighthouse keeper within the Crawler. When the biologist emerges from the tower, she decides she will stay in Area X and seek out a sign of where her husband may have gone. She will not return home, leaving her journal and his journal in the lighthouse.

- Genre: Novel - Title: Another Country - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: 1960s in Greenwich Village, New York; Harlem, New York; and France - Character: Rufus Scott. Description: - Character: Vivaldo. Description: - Character: Ida Scott. Description: - Character: Leona. Description: - Character: Richard. Description: - Character: Cass. Description: - Character: Eric. Description: - Character: Steve Ellis. Description: - Character: Yves. Description: - Theme: Race in America. Description: - Theme: Love and Sexuality. Description: - Theme: High Art vs. Low Art. Description: - Theme: Alienation and New York City. Description: - Climax: Richard confronts Cass about her affair with Eric. During their conversation, Cass learns Ida is having an affair with Steve Ellis. - Summary: Rufus Scott is a Black jazz musician living in Harlem who spends his days wandering the streets of New York. He has made a mess of his life following a catastrophic relationship with a white, Southern woman named Leona. Rufus and Leona met at a jazz show and quickly fell in love. However, their relationship quickly soured after Rufus sexually, physically, and emotionally abused Leona. In particular, Rufus became mad whenever he did not feel Leona properly understood Black suffering in the United States. Eventually, Rufus went too far with his abuse, and it drove Leona insane. The police found her wandering the streets and had her shipped to an asylum in the South, where she lives out the rest of her life. Rufus now fears that his caustic relationship with Leona ruined his friendships with Vivaldo and Cass, the only people outside of his family who care for him. Not knowing what else to do, he has been roaming the streets and performing sex work for money. On a particularly grim day, Rufus decides he cannot stand his life anymore and, out of desperation, he goes to see Vivaldo. Vivaldo tries to comfort him as best he can and buys him some food. Later that day, Rufus and Vivaldo go out to a bar together where they see Cass and her husband, Richard. Cass tries to comfort Rufus, while Vivaldo meets up with an old girlfriend, Jane. After Cass leaves, Rufus slips out of the bar, feeling hopeless about life. He makes his way to the George Washington Bridge and jumps off it, killing himself. Vivaldo and Cass attend Rufus's funeral; they are the only white people in attendance. Following the funeral, Vivaldo grows close to Rufus's sister, Ida, and the two of them start a romantic relationship. One day, they attend a party at Richard and Cass's house to celebrate the release of Richard's new novel. There, Ida meets Steve Ellis, a television producer who promises he can make her a star. Vivaldo does not like Ellis and is jealous of the attention he pays to Ida. His jealousy leads to a fight between himself and Ida—the first fight of their relationship. Not long after the party, Cass receives word that Eric, a friend who has been living abroad in France, plans to return to New York to star in a Broadway show. Eric is Rufus's former lover who left New York after enduring abuse from Rufus. Eric has been living with his new boyfriend, Yves, who he plans to bring to New York after he gets settled. When Eric arrives in New York, he grows close to Cass and Vivaldo. Eventually, he starts an affair with Cass, who has grown apart from Richard following the success of his novel. Eric and Cass display their affair quite openly, confident that Richard will not discover it. Their brazenness shocks Ida and Vivaldo, though they keep it a secret from Richard. Additionally, Ida and Vivaldo have troubles of their own. They fight regularly, often over issues of race and jealousy. Ida tends to blame Vivaldo for the sins of all white people and claims he does not understand the struggle of Black people in America. Meanwhile, Vivaldo is jealous of Ida and her new relationship with Ellis. Vivaldo does not respect Ellis and hates that Ida is going to see him on a regular basis in the hopes of becoming a star. One night, Cass and Ida go to a bar with Ellis while, separately, Eric and Vivaldo spend time together. Ida dances with Ellis at the bar, leading to raised eyebrows from everyone around them except Cass, who believes their relationship is innocent. Cass leaves the bar and goes home where she finds Richard waiting for her. Richard confronts her about her affair, though he mistakenly assumes she is having sex with Vivaldo, not Eric. Cass refuses to give in at first and says she has been spending her time with Ida. Richard calls her bluff, saying he knows she is lying because he knows Ida is having an affair with Ellis. At this point, Cass gives up and tells him she is sleeping with Eric, sending Richard into a rage. Meanwhile, Vivaldo and Eric get drunk together and go back to Eric's apartment. After some conversation about the state of their lives and relationships, they crawl into bed together. In the morning, Vivaldo and Eric have sex together, making them both feel ecstatic. However, Eric quickly gets pulled away when he receives a phone call from Cass explaining that Richard has discovered the affair. He agrees to go and meet her so they can do damage control. Vivaldo returns home, where he finds Ida. Together, the two of them have a conversation about their relationship, which ends with Ida revealing that she is having an affair with Ellis. She says she had hoped to take advantage of Ellis, but, in the end, he took advantage of her. Vivaldo and Ida end their relationship amicably and, for the first time in a long time, Vivaldo makes progress on the novel he is working on. Ultimately, Cass decides to take some time apart from Richard, though she thinks they may be able to patch their relationship up eventually. Meanwhile, Eric decides that, although his affairs have been fun, Yves is the person he wants to be with. Not long after, Yves flies to New York. Eric meets him at the airport, eager to start a new chapter in his life.

- Genre: Novella, Parable - Title: Anthem - Point of view: First-person narration by Equality 7-2521 - Setting: Unspecified collectivist dystopia, likely in the near future - Character: Equality 7-2521. Description: The strong, intelligent, and creative protagonist of Anthem. Despite his exceptional talents and interest in science, Equality 7-2521's collectivist society forces him to work as a Street Sweeper and encourages him to feel ashamed of his individualism and self-motivation. Equality 7-2521 indulges his creativity by spending years working clandestinely to invent a light bulb, but when he triumphantly presents this invention to the World Council of Scholars, they call him a selfish heretic. This incident prompts him to flee his City, and over time, Equality 7-2521 learns to defy societal proscriptions against egocentrism and value his own happiness above all else. At the book's conclusion, he renames himself Prometheus, makes a home deep in the Uncharted Forest with his beloved, The Golden One, and plans to start a new civilization of egotists. - Character: The Golden One. Description: A former farm worker whose infatuation with Equality 7-2521 prompts her to follow him into exile. "The Golden One" is the name she allows him to call her instead of her given name, Liberty 5-3000. Like Equality 7-2521, she is arrogant and self-centered, and she respects her mate because he lacks the weakness she sees in her peers. She settles in the forest with Equality 7-2521 and seems willing to function as his subordinate, both by letting him rename her "Gaea" and by telling him "Thy will be done." - Character: The Transgressor of the Unspeakable Word. Description: When Equality 7-2521 was ten years old, he watched the Transgressor being burned at the stake for speaking the Unspeakable Word: the anti-collectivist word "I." Equality 7-2521 remembers this man's saintly courage and composure, and recognizes him as a hero once he, too, discovers the power of the word "I." - Character: International 4-8818. Description: The closest thing Equality 7-2521 has to a friend in the City, International 4-8818 is a humorous, ambitious artist who was forced to abandon his passion when he was assigned to work as a Street Sweeper. International 4-8818 is individualistic enough to cover up Equality 7-2521's discovery of the tunnel and help him sneak away from nightly entertainment, and Equality 7-2521 plans to recruit him to live in his egocentric colony in the forest. - Character: The World Council of Scholars. Description: Led by Collective 0-0009, the World Council of Scholars is the group in charge of all scholarly affairs in Equality 7-2521's collectivist society. The group and its members are meant to illustrate what Rand perceived as the weak, spineless, and inefficient nature of collectivism. When Equality 7-2521 presents his light bulb to the Council, they condemn him as an arrogant, selfish sinner for trying to better mankind by acting alone. Because the light bulb was not invented collectively, they conclude that it must be evil endeavor to destroy it and punish Equality 7-2521; however, they are thwarted when Equality 7-2521 escapes with his invention. - Theme: Individualism. Description: Without a doubt, individualism is the core theme of Anthem. The entire text is essentially a parable designed to illustrate the paramount importance of Ayn Rand's idea of individual will. The plot chronicles Equality 7-2521's evolution from a brainwashed, faceless drone in a dismal authoritarian state; to a self-sufficient, creative, and powerful man living outside of the system that oppressed him. The key catalyst of Equality 7-2521's liberation is his self-reliance. Even though his society discourages it, Equality 7-2521 gradually begins to act more and more in his own self-interest, instead of bowing to the arbitrary demands imposed upon him. At first, pursuing his passion for scientific discovery registers to Equality 7-2521 as an "evil" act, but he learns to feel unashamed of his strength, intelligence, and creativity and slowly begins to develop as an individual.Throughout the novel, Equality 7-2521 refers to himself using the first-person plural, "we," highlighting the way that his collectivist society has eliminated the deep-rooted concept of selfhood. As Equality 7-2521 and his individualistic lover, the Golden One, progress through the awakenings of their individual egos, they begin to grasp the concept of the "I," and feel "torn, torn for some word we could not find." Finally, Equality 7-2521's triumph over collectivist oppression is his realization and embrace of the word "I." The last chapter of the book is dedicated to praising individualism, delivered in the first person. In this chapter, Equality 7-2521 states Rand's central message: "My happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose." While Equality 7-2521's anti-individualist society had unhealthily and unnaturally quashed his impulses to assert himself, he has finally found true empowerment in the strength of his own ego. "Ego," to both Rand and her protagonist, represents "the word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory." Equality 7-2521's empowering evolution into an individualist illustrates that no matter what oppressive, depersonalizing conditions are imposed on mankind, the strength of the individual ego will always prevail one way or another. - Theme: Collectivism. Description: Naturally, the flipside of Rand's passionate advocacy of individualism is her vehement condemnation of collectivism, which is a broad term for any sociopolitical ideology that bases itself on the belief that all humans must depend on one another. In the foreword to Anthem, Rand writes that "the greatest guilt today is that of people who accept collectivism by moral default; the people who seek protection from the necessity of taking a stand, by refusing to admit to themselves the nature of that which they are accepting; the people who support plans specifically designed to achieve serfdom, but hide behind the empty assertion that they are lovers of freedom, with no concrete meaning attached to the word; the people who believe that the content of ideas need not be examined, that principles need not be defined, and that facts can be eliminated by keeping one's eyes shut."To demonstrate this point, the society that Equality 7-2521 is born into is a sinister caricature of collectivist ideals. Noble goals, like equality and fairness, are distorted into justifying ludicrously oppressive living conditions. Presumably to contribute to a collectivist ethos, no member of society can have a conventional name, and everyone is instead assigned a numbered platitude like "Freedom" or "Equality"—an indication of the words' lack of "concrete meaning" that Rand criticizes in her foreword. Before going to bed, men chant, "we are nothing. Mankind is all." In the name of fairness, citizens are arbitrarily assigned to jobs unrelated to their skill sets, rather than being allowed to pursue their passions. Equality 7-2521, who is intelligent and vigorous, has ambitions of being allowed to work as a Scholar. His hopes are dashed, however, when he is assigned the insulting job of Street Sweeper. Most egregiously of all, the leaders of this society dread the breakthrough invention that Equality 7-2521 devises, and try to destroy it. They claim that Equality 7-2521's light bulb is "a great evil" because it might lighten men's toil, and "men have no cause to exist save in toiling for other men." Over time, it is also revealed that this collectivist society actually represents a dramatic regression from a more advanced and prosperous age of individualism that preceded it. Through these and other details, Rand posits that collectivism wastes individual ability and works to the detriment of mankind. - Theme: Love. Description: The collectivist culture Equality 7-2521 is born into appears designed to eliminate meaningful interpersonal relationships. People are afraid even to speak their minds to one another, "for all must agree with all, and they cannot know if their thoughts are the thoughts of all." Deep personal connections are eliminated in the name of equality and impartiality; even the intimate act of sex is reduced to a shamefully impersonal once-a-year trip to the "Palace of Mating." The profound love that Equality 7-2521 finds and shares with the Golden One is a large motivator of his decision to escape from society, and her choice to follow in search of him.Thus, Rand asserts that the relationships that develop under collectivism are shallow and unfulfilling, and that truly dignifying relationships require the assertion of the individual ego. Rand criticizes collectivists for turning concepts like freedom and equality into meaningless bromides; she also seems to argue that collectivism diminishes love in much the same way. Upon realizing the power of his own ego, Equality 7-2521 proclaims, "I am neither foe nor friend to my brothers, but such as each of them shall deserve of me. And to earn my love, my brothers must do more than to have been born. I do not grant my love without reason, nor to any chance passer-by who may wish to claim it. I honor men with my love. But honor is a thing to be earned." In this way, Rand's individualistic ideal allows for powerful interpersonal connections, rather than the demeaning one-size-fits-all approach that collectivist society imposes. - Theme: Power. Description: In several senses, power is what allows Equality 7-2521 to assert himself as a unique individual over the stultifying conditions imposed on him by society. The most literal way in which power sets the protagonist apart is through his commanding physique. Unlike his brethren, who are weak and pitiful in appearance, Equality 7-2521 is tall and muscular. On first viewing his reflection, Equality 7-2521 remembers that "We sat still and we held our breath. For our face and our body were beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers, for we felt no pity when looking upon it. Our body was not like the bodies of our brothers, for our limbs were straight and thin and hard and strong." Equality 7-2521 is also mentally powerful, and his intellect is underutilized by the job of Sweet Sweeper that he is arbitrarily assigned.Moreover, Equality 7-2521 uses this mental power to harness another sort of power. Through secret study, Equality 7-2521 gains an understanding of electricity and assembles a functional light bulb, which he presents to the World Council of Scholars. "Let us all work together, and harness this power, and make it ease the toil of men," he triumphantly proclaims. The Scholars, however, lack Equality 7-2521's willingness to embrace this power, and instead fear the new invention. Equality 7-2521's most empowering characteristic, then—even greater than his powers themselves—is that he readily takes advantage of his powers, even when his society forbids doing so. The most despicable characters in Anthem are not necessarily the weakest characters, but rather those who, like the Council, work in the name of false ideals to prevent the strong from exercising their individual power. Thus, Rand illustrates that it is of paramount importance for individuals to understand and maximize their own powers and abilities, and use these abilities for their own betterment. - Climax: Equality 7-2521's empowering discovery of the word "I." - Summary: By candlelight, a 21-year-old Street Sweeper named Equality 7-2521 writes in his journal as he sits alone in a disused railway tunnel. Thinking for one's self has been outlawed in his collectivist society, and he always refers to himself using the pronoun "we." Equality 7-2521 is tall, strong, and intellectually curious—all qualities that set him apart from his peers, and thus he considers these qualities a "curse." He spent his childhood education hoping to be assigned to work at the Home of the Scholars. However, he is assigned the insulting job of Street Sweeper. One day, while sweeping streets, Equality 7-2521 finds an entrance to a tunnel left over from the Unmentionable Times. From this day forward, Equality 7-2521 sneaks away from the mandatory entertainment each night in order to spend time alone in the tunnel. There, he reads stolen manuscripts and uses stolen tools to conduct experiments. Equality 7-2521 is enamored of a girl named Liberty 5-3000 who works in the Home of the Peasants. Whenever he sweeps near her field, they discreetly indicate their affection for one another. Equality 7-2521 gives Liberty 5-300 the name, "the Golden One." One day, Equality 7-2521 tells the Golden One of his special attraction to her. In the days following this encounter, Equality 7-2521's joyfulness distinguishes him from his miserable peers. One night, Equality 7-2521 recalls a childhood memory of watching a Transgressor of the Unspoken Word being publicly burned at the stake. He remembers the sinner's courage and poise, reminiscent of a proud saint. Working in his tunnel, Equality 7-2521 discovers that metal conducts electricity. He believes that men harnessed this power in the Unmentionable Times. Some time later, Equality 7-2521 reencounters the Golden One. He drinks water from her cupped hands, and they are both struck by the powerful emotions they feel afterwards. Equality 7-2521 uses his new knowledge to create a light bulb. He sees its usefulness for mankind and decides he will present it to the World Council of Scholars when they meet in his City. Caught up in his success, Equality 7-2521 forgets to return to the City Theatre on time. He is tortured, but refuses to disclose where he has spent time alone. Equality 7-2521 is then imprisoned, but escapes the day before the World Council of Scholars is due to meet. He prepares his invention to present to the Council, confident that they will appreciate his accomplishment even if it arose out of sinfulness. However, Equality 7-2521's presentation before the World Council of Scholars does not got well. The Scholars fear his invention and resent that Equality 7-2521 acted alone. They vow to punish him and destroy his invention for violating the principles of collectivism. Equality 7-2521 curses the Scholars and escapes through a window, cradling his invention in his arms. He runs to the Uncharted Forest, and after a day, he is charmed by his newfound solitary life. The next day, Equality 7-2521 discovers that the Golden One has followed him into the forest after hearing of his escape from the City. She promises her devotion to him and the two walk together for days. Equality 7-2521 ponders how this solitude could possibly be a corrupting force. Equality 7-2521 and the Golden One find a house in the mountains, abandoned since the Unmentionable Times. Inside, they find artifacts like mirrors and manuscripts. That night, Equality 7-2521 stays up reading the texts and discovers the unspeakable word: "I." Now writing in first-person, he concludes that his own happiness is the only purpose of his life. From his readings, Equality 7-2521 chooses a new name for himself: Prometheus, after the Greek mythological figure who stole fire from the Gods to give to humans. He gives the Golden One the name Gaea. In time, Gaea becomes pregnant, and Prometheus explains that he will begin a new society of egotists, recruiting new members from his former City. The worship of the word "we," he realizes, is the reason that the accomplishments of the Unmentionable Times were undone by the collectivists. He recognizes the heroic struggle of people like the Transgressor of the Unspeakable Word and vows to continue their mission.

- Genre: Short Fiction - Title: Araby - Point of view: First-person - Setting: Dublin, Ireland - Character: The narrator. Description: The protagonist of the story, a young, imaginative boy who lives with his aunt and uncle. The narrator attends a Catholic school (as does essentially every other school age child in Ireland), and is surrounded more generally by the Catholic Irish world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he thinks about and sees the world in religious terms and imagery. When the narrator develops a powerful crush on Mangan's sister, the older sister of his friend Mangan, he begins to lose interest in his former activities, such as playing with his friends or his schoolwork. The narrator experiences his crush in religious terms, stating his love for her to himself as a kind of prayer, and at the same time his love for her seems to offer an escape from an Irish world that feels drab and oppressive to the narrator. When Mangan's sister expresses interest in the Araby bazaar, that too comes to represent an exotic escape to the narrator, and he seeks to buy a gift at the bazaar to win her favor. Ultimately, though, the narrator's experience at the bazaar reveal to him the falseness of his fantasies and an epiphany about his own vanity, and so his religious sense, romantic ideas, and budding sexuality all become tied up in an anguishing recognition of the disappointments of one's own self, of growing up, and of the world. It is also worth noting that the narrator of the story is actually a grown man, reflecting back on his childhood. For all intensive purposes the narrator and the protagonist are both the same character, although the reader never really knows how the protagonist is feeling at the time when the story takes place, only how the adult-version of the protagonist remembers thinking or feeling. - Character: The narrator's uncle. Description: The narrator's uncle is an authoritative figure who seems to incite a bit of fear in the narrator and his friends, as they routinely hide from him when they see him coming home for dinner. The text implies that he might have a drinking problem and seems to owe money to Mrs. Mercer, the pawnbroker's wife. The narrator's uncle lets the narrator down on the night of the Araby market, by returning home late and drunk and attempting to avoid giving the narrator a coin to spend at the bazaar before finally relenting. - Character: The narrator's aunt. Description: The aunt is the narrator's mother figure. She seems to be a very religious Catholic, worrying that the Araby bazaar is a Freemason event. She speaks using religious terms, warning the narrator that he may not be able to make it to the market on "this night of our Lord." Ultimately the narrator's aunt convinces his uncle to let him go to the bazaar, suggesting that she is perhaps more sympathetic to the narrator. - Character: Mangan's Sister. Description: The older sister of the narrator's friend, Mangan. The narrator has a powerful crush on her. She routinely interrupts the boys playing in the street when she comes outside to call her brother in for tea. She belongs to a convent and takes interest in the Araby bazaar, which is what sparks the narrator's interest in it. There is no indication that she is aware of the narrator's infatuation with her. - Character: The priest. Description: The former tenant of the narrator's house, who died in the drawing room. He is mentioned because some of his belongings still remain at the house, including three books that the narrator takes interest in: The Abbot (a romance novel by Sir Walter Scott), The Devout Communicant (a work of Catholic devotional literature), and The Memoirs of Vidocq (a detective's memoir). These are significant because they are odd selections for a priest's home library, and they imply that the priest indulged in religious as well as non-religious literature. It is in the room where the priest died that the narrator admits that he thinks he loves Mangan's sister in a prayer-like way. The priest mostly serves as a point of moral comparison – all of these objects imply that the priest had a life outside of the church, that he rode a bicycle (but perhaps only in secret, as the bicycle pump is hiding under a bush), and read crime and romance novels. This calls into question the reliability of the Catholic Church and implies that perhaps "priest" is just a job that ends at the end of the workday like any other. - Character: Mrs. Mercer. Description: The pawnbroker's widow who waits for the narrator's uncle to come home on the night of the Araby market, presumably to ask for the money he owes her. She is described as an "old, garrulous woman" who collects used postage stamps to sell to collectors to earn money, usually for a religious cause. - Character: Young female shopkeeper. Description: A young woman who is flirting with two men as the narrator approaches her stall at the Araby bazaar. The narrator notices that she and the men she talks to all have English accents. The woman approaches the narrator to ask him if he is planning to buy anything, but he notes that she does not sound "encouraging" and seems to speak to him only because it is her job. She brings the narrator to the realization that he is not, in fact, going to buy anything. Further, her English accent seems to communicate to the narrator that the Araby market is not, as he had fantasized, some exotic escape from his drab life in Ireland at all. And her flirting with the Englishmen seems to make him see that the silliness and vanity of his own attempt to impress Mangan's sister with a gift. - Theme: Coming of Age. Description: One of the central issues in James Joyce's "Araby" is growing up. The narrator, who is a grown man who uses mature language to describe his youthful experience, reflects back on his experience with the Araby market, providing small insights from an adult perspective. The fact that the story is told from an adult perspective indicates that the story is about growing up: the narrator is reflecting back on a formative time during his childhood.The protagonist's development is reflected in his relationships with his friends. As the protagonist becomes consumed by his infatuation with Mangan's sister, he loses interest in playing with his friends as well as in school. Suddenly, the things that used to matter to him now seem less important, and he even begins to feel superior to his friends, deeming his everyday life, which now seems to stand in between him and his crush, "ugly monotonous child's play." He also begins to spend less time with his friends and to observe them from an outsider's perspective. On the night of the Araby market, he watches them from the front window: "Their cries reached me weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the cool glass, I looked over at the dark house where she lived." The glass both literally and metaphorically separates the narrator from his friends as they play in the street.The narrator's coming of age also becomes apparent through changes in his interactions with authority figures, in this case his aunt, uncle, and teacher. He begins to develop a more defiant personality, and grows annoyed when his aunt and uncle do not take his requests seriously. The night of the Araby market the narrator refuses to smile at his uncle's jokes in an act of subtle rebellion. He also notices that his uncle is drunk when he comes home that night, suggesting that he is no longer entirely an innocent, and can understand aspects of the adult world. His changing relationship with his teacher also shows that he is no longer afraid of disappointing figures of authority. He observes his master becoming stern with him, and yet he still is not able to take his studies seriously. The protagonist becomes slightly more rebellious as the story progresses, which shows that he is learning to think independently of the adults around him, a key factor in his coming of age.In a typical coming of age story, the protagonist experiences pivotal events that lead him or her toward adulthood. These events are usually trying (such as experiencing war, loss, love, rape, or economic hardship) but lead to a satisfying realization or epiphany. In Araby, Joyce shows that the protagonist is growing up through his discovery of his sexuality, his sudden distance from his friends, and his increasingly rebellious attitude, however the protagonist's new knowledge and maturity bring him discontent instead of fulfillment. At the end of the story, the protagonist is left with nothing: he fails to buy something to impress Mangan's sister and he is now alienated from his friends and has lost interest in his studies. Though he was hoping to escape from his mundane life, he realizes that escape might be more difficult than. The protagonist's gained knowledge and experience, then, offer not satisfaction but instead a loss of innocence. And in this loss of innocence, the narrator becomes aware both of his previous naïveté and his religious condition as a flawed "creature." Through the narrator's experience, the story suggests more broadly that coming-of-age, while inevitable for every person, is not so much something to be looked forward to but rather a kind of tragedy: that the knowledge gained is of a dark and difficult sort, and not necessarily worth the innocence lost. - Theme: Religion and Catholicism. Description: The narrator of "Araby" is surrounded by religion. He attends a Roman Catholic school and all of the people around him, just like he himself, are steeped in the Catholic religion that held sway in Ireland at the time when the story was set. Joyce does not clearly indicate how strongly the narrator believes in his faith, but Catholicism plays a large role in his upbringing and he often explains things through Catholic ideas and imagery.Most obviously, the narrator over and over again thinks about and describes his crush, Mangan's sister, in religious terms. At one point he compares her to a "chalice" that he is protecting from a "throng of foes," a reference that seems to compare her to the Holy Grail. At other times, he literally seems to worship her: "Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand." That the narrator doesn't even understand his prayers to Mangan's sister seems to imply that he is not idolizing Mangan's sister on purpose. Instead, it seems as if his Catholic upbringing has defined the form of how he understands anything for which he feels strong emotion. Up until this point, being a child, the narrator has only ever experienced familial love and love for God (or at least an attempt to love God, one founded in the religious language he is surrounded by), which he does not know how to differentiate from romantic love. And so he thinks of romantic love in religious terms.At the same time, the sort of idolizing of Mangan's sister that the narrator engages in would have been seen as deeply irreligious by serious Catholics. The idolization of anything or anyone above God was considered a kind of blasphemy. When looked at in this light, it might be argued that the story exposes or at least questions the narrator's relationship with religion. The protagonist's infatuation with and distraction by Mangan's sister might suggest that he is not strongly devoted to his faith. After all, while thinking of her he begins to see his studies as childish, suggesting that he is not fully invested in his religious education. However the protagonist's regret at the end of the story could suggest a return to his religious roots. The narrator's realization that he is a "creature driven … by vanity" is stated in religious terms, and indicates that out of individualist desire (love or infatuation) he has strayed from his true duty. The choice of the word "creature" could have religious connotations as well, in the sense of the creations of God being described as his "creatures."At the same time, it is also possible to interpret the text as criticizing Catholicism and religion, as implying that the narrator's religious background may have set him up to be unsatisfied, because nothing can meet divine standards. Or, conversely, that, just as the narrator's "worship" of Mangan's sister is shown to be impossible because nothing can match his imaginative ideals, the story is implying that the same applies to religion in general – that worshipping anything is unreasonable and bound to end in disappointment. More broadly, the story seems to indicate that whatever the particular nature of the narrator's epiphany, he has come to recognize that what he thought was simple – including his Catholic religion – is in fact complicated and difficult to live with, promising not just salvation but also guilt and anguish. - Theme: Escapism and the Exotic. Description: In the text both Mangan's sister and the Araby market offer an escape from the ordinary, from the dull, brown picture of Dublin that the narrator otherwise describes as the world he lives in. The narrator makes his boredom with everyday life very clear when he refers to his former boyhood antics as the "career of our play," making even play seem like a kind of work. Similarly, his descriptions of school paint a picture of busywork, with a "master" most concerned about whether his pupils might be "beginning to idle."Mangan's sister offers a mental escape from this world. He thinks of her "even in places most hostile to romance," and daydreams about her rather than doing his work in school. The Araby market seems to offer the narrator a similar kind of escape—yet the market offers an escape he not only can daydream about, but one he can actually go to. In the narrator's sheltered world, the word "Araby" alone indicates something foreign to him, as it refers to an Eastern "Arabian" world that is so distant from the narrow, cloistered world of Ireland that he is used to (the story is set well before globalization would have made the rest of the world seem accessible to people living in Ireland; rather the narrator's world is one in which people who live in Ireland are unlikely to travel very far away from their home, much less ever leave the country). The narrator constantly refers to Araby as "eastern" and clearly relishes in the exotic connotation of the "magical name."However, when the narrator actually reaches the market, he is disappointed by the reality of what he finds: "porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets" and people talking in English accents. He realizes that the Araby market is not truly exotic, not truly an escape, but rather little more than a thin veneer of exoticism lamely pasted over his own regular world. And in this realization about the Araby market, he also seems to see that his own sense of his "exotic" love for Mangan's sister was similarly just a mask, a fake "escape" rather than a real journey to a new and distant place. He also realizes that his sense that he could truly escape to these "exotic" places – both the market and love of Mangan's sister – was vanity, a mistaken belief in his own specialness, his own uniqueness. And, further, the fact that the Araby market exists at all, and that young men and women flirt within it to pass the time, suggests that even his desire for an escape from the everyday is itself common and everyday. - Theme: Love and Sexuality. Description: One of the central issues of "Araby" is the narrator's developing crush on Mangan's sister and the discovery of his sexuality. Joyce shows the protagonist's evolution by first describing his sheltered upbringing, and then using physical descriptions of Mangan's sister to highlight the protagonist's budding sexuality. The protagonist lives on a "blind" street, a dead end that is secluded and not frequented by outsiders. Additionally, he attends an all-boys school, which suggests that he does not know many girls. That he immediately falls for his friend's somewhat older sister and thinks of his infatuation as a kind of worldliness only solidifies the sense of his lack of experience with girls. The protagonist's growing sexuality is further captured in his detailed descriptions of Mangan's sister's physical form: "Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side." Joyce here manages to capture the way that the narrator is both seeing Mangan's sister in a physical way, and yet also how this way of seeing her is so new to him as to be almost innocent. He is not thinking of sex; he may not even know what sex is. But he is aware of and appreciative of her physicality in a way that is essentially idealistic.However, although clearly the protagonist is infatuated with Mangan's sister, Joyce gives little evidence that it is "love." The narrator thinks of Mangan's sister only in in a physical way, includes no details about her personality, and basically shares no dialogue with her. The narrator's relationship with Mangan's sister is just a crush from afar, and that the narrator thinks of it as a love akin to religion only makes him seem more naïve. Ultimately, as he tries and fails to buy a meaningful gift for Mangan's sister while overhearing the girl at the stall flirt with two young men, the narrator comes to the realization that he was motivated not by love but by vanity. That vanity seems to operate in two ways: First, in seeing the flirting of the girl with the boys at the stall, he sees that his sense of his own uniqueness in his feelings for Mangan's sister was incorrect, and that to see himself as being unique because of his "love" for her was therefore vanity. Second, he sees that his desire to please Mangan's sister came from his desire for her approval –not because he loved or cared about her as an individual. In the narrator's epiphany about his love, one can also argue that Joyce is making a broader point: that what most people see as "love" in fact usually springs from vanity or the innate desire for the approval of others. Grandiose acts of love in life and literature, such as the narrator's attempted gift-buying at the Araby bazaar, are often portrayed as selfless but, like the narrator's actions, may in fact be motivated by selfish motives. - Climax: The narrator tries to impress his crush but fails and is confronted with the realization of his own vanity and the disappointment inherent in growing up - Summary: In Dublin, Ireland, around the beginning of the 20th century, the narrator lives on a quiet, blind street with several brown houses and the Christian Brother's school, which the narrator attends. The narrator, who is never named, is a young boy living with his aunt and uncle, likes looking through the belongings left behind by the former tenant of his house, a priest who died in the back drawing-room. The narrator describes winter nights playing in the dark street with his friends until their bodies "glowed." Eventually Mangan's sister would come out to get Mangan, the narrator's friend, signaling the end of their playtime. It is during these brief interactions that the narrator begins to notice her physical appearance and develop a crush. The narrator becomes infatuated with Mangan's sister and thinks about her all the time – even at the dirty, loud, Dublin market he fantasizes about her as an escape from his harsh reality. He imagines carrying her like a "chalice safely through a throng of foes." The narrator does not try to talk to her, instead preferring to relish in his daydreams. One day, though, Mangan's sister speaks with the narrator. She asks if he is planning to go to the Araby bazaar, an Eastern-themed market put on by the church. She explains that she cannot attend because her convent is having a retreat and the narrator jumps at the opportunity to impress her, promising to bring her back something if he is able to go. The narrator begins to fantasize not only about Mangan's sister, but also about the exotic Araby market as well. Meanwhile the narrator begins to lose focus in school, and though he can feel his master growing stern with him, he cannot seem to focus on his studies. Saturday morning the narrator reminds his uncle of his desire to attend the bazaar, but when he comes home for dinner that night his uncle still has not returned. Finally, around 9 pm his uncle returns home. He can tell from the way his uncle moves around that he has ben drinking. The narrator waits for his uncle to get halfway through his dinner before he asks for money to go to the bazaar. His uncle has forgotten, and tries to dismiss the request but his aunt encourages her husband to let the narrator go. His uncle apologizes, gives the narrator some money, and begins to recite The Arab's Farewell to his Steed. The narrator leaves his house holding a florin (a coin) and takes a train to the bazaar, arriving just ten minutes before 10 pm, when the market closes. Inside, the bazaar is quiet, and the narrator enters timidly. He passes a stall called Café Chantant and begins to examine flowered tea sets and porcelain vases in a neighboring stall. He observes the young female shopkeeper flirting with two men, all of them speaking with English accents. The woman asks him if he wishes to buy anything, but he can tell that she does so only out of a sense of duty. He responds "No, thank you." The woman returns to her conversation but continues to glance over at the narrator. The market begins to close and as the narrator stands in the dark, he realizes he has foolishly allowed himself to be motivated by vanity. This epiphany fills him with "anguish and anger."

- Genre: Novel - Title: As I Lay Dying - Point of view: The novel unfolds in fifty-nine sections, told from fifteen different narrators. The Bundren family members are the most common narrators, though Faulkner includes the points of view of people like Peabody the doctor, Tull the neighbor, Armstid the nearby farmer, to offer perspective on the Bundrens' actions. Darl and Vardaman are the most prominent narrators, while characters like Jewel and Addie each only narrate one section. - Setting: - Character: Darl Bundren. Description: Darl Bundren is the second son of Anse and Addie Bundren. Darl narrates the greatest number of sections in the novel and is often considered to be its surrogate author figure. Not only is Darl the character who best expresses himself using language, but he also appears to have powers of clairvoyance – specifically, he can describe Addie's death scene from afar and he somehow, inexplicably, knows about Dewey Dell's pregnancy. Darl detaches himself from the rest of the family because of his strange wisdom, and is the only character to express explicit contempt for the Bundrens' journey. Darl is eventually claimed to be insane by the Bundrens, after he burns down Gillepsie's barn in an attempt to put a stop to the journey to Jefferson. Whether or not he is insane is never entirely clear. - Character: Jewel. Description: Jewel is the bastard son of Addie and Whitfield, the local minister. Jewel is the novel's most evasive character, as he appears consistently in other narrators' chapters but only narrates one chapter himself. Jewel is often described by Darl as looking "wooden," a description that captures his stubborn sense of independence and drive, separate from the rest of the Bundren clan. - Character: Cash Bundren. Description: Cash Bundren is the oldest son of Anse and Addie. Cash's most notable quality is his capacity for self-sacrifice. After enduring the pain of a broken leg in a cement cast, Cash characteristically says, "It never bothered me much." Furthermore, Cash ceaselessly spends the days preceding Addie's death making her coffin, demonstrating his pragmatic attention to detail and his very particular way of expressing affection. - Character: Dewey Dell Bundren. Description: Dewey Dell is the second-to-youngest Bundren child, and the only daughter of Anse and Addie. Dewey Dell does not narrate many sections throughout the novel, though she is arguably one of the most tragic characters in the book: she is impregnated by the farmhand Lafe, who then leaves her with nothing more than ten dollars for an abortion. Later, she is cheated by a drug store clerk into having sex with him and then is given what she is sure (correctly) is fake medicine. Just pages later, Anse takes her abortion money to buy his teeth, leaving Dewy Dell with next to nothing at the end of the novel. - Character: Vardaman Bundren. Description: Vardaman, at six years old, is the youngest Bundren child. He narrates a great number of sections in the novel, engaging in similar existential questions to his brother Darl throughout his narrations. Famously, Vardaman remarks, "My mother is a fish," relating the death of the fish he caught for dinner to the death of his mother. - Character: Anse Bundren. Description: Anse Bundren is the husband of Addie and the father of the Bundren children. Described by Darl as a man who "tells people that if he sweats he will die," Anse is one of the most selfish and unsympathetic characters in the novel. He explains the journey to Jefferson as a promise to Addie, but ends up replacing her at the novel's end, introducing his children to a new "Mrs. Bundren." - Character: Addie Bundren. Description: Addie is the wife of Anse and the mother of Darl, Jewel, Cash, Dewey Dell and Vardaman. She had an affair with the minister Whitfield, which produced Jewel. Although her death catalyzes the novel's action, she hardly appears as a character in the novel and only narrates one section. Addie's most salient characteristics are her coldness toward Anse, dislike of having children, and her disdain for words (and her appreciation for action), perhaps explaining why she favored her action-focused son Jewel rather than the language-oriented Darl. - Character: Lafe. Description: Lafe works as a farmer on the Bundrens' plot, and is the father of Dewey Dell's unborn child. He never appears in the novel physically, but is mentioned incessantly by Dewey Dell. Lafe gives Dewey Dell ten dollars, which he claims will get her an abortion, in an apparent effort to cut himself off from her. - Character: Whitfield. Description: Whitfield is the local minister with whom Addie has an affair, and is the father of Jewel. He plans to confess to Anse about the affair before Addie's death, but upon finding out that she has already died without telling anyone, he decides not to, perceiving her death as a gift from God. - Character: Snopes. Description: Snopes is the local farmer from whom Anse gets a new team of mules midway through the novel. Anse trades Snopes some of Cash's savings, some of his own money that he has been saving for a set of new teeth, and finally Jewel's horse – all to get himself a new team of mules, rather than simply borrowing Armstid's team of mules, Armstid he generously offered. - Theme: Self-Interest Versus Heroic Duty. Description: At the most basic level, As I Lay Dying is a novel about the Bundrens and their family quest to fulfill the wish of their deceased wife and mother Addie Bundren to be buried beside her family members in Jefferson, Mississippi. The Bundrens successfully lug Addie's foul-smelling corpse countless miles in the Mississippi heat, and even battle flood and fire along the way. Seen in this way, their journey appears heroic, recalling motifs of traditional "quest" literature – such as Odysseus' journey home to Ithaca in The Odyssey. While heroism is prized by all as a value unto itself in a Classical work like The Odyssey, Faulkner's novel explores and calls into question the meaning of heroic action.Almost all of the Bundren family members have secret, self-interested desires for wanting to go to Jefferson, indicating that the stated goal of familial duty to Addie isn't the goal of their journey at all. Anse Bundren may rationalize the journey to others by declaring that Addie's "mind is set on it," but his real reason is that he wants to buy a new set of false teeth in town and to pick up a new wife, a replacement for Addie. The potentially pregnant and abortion-seeking Dewey Dell anticipates going to Jefferson's pharmacy. Vardaman dreams of a train set in the Jefferson toy-store window. Even the saintly Cash discusses his desire to purchase a gramophone in town.Yet still, the Bundrens fulfill Addie's desire to be buried in Jefferson under the guise of heroic and familial duty, ultimately rendering the very idea of heroism pointless or self-defeating. This pointlessness is shown most overtly by Darl in his apparently "heroic" gesture of burning Gillepsie's barn down to stop what he perceives as the family's ridiculous journey, an act that is countered by Jewel in his competing heroic act of saving Addie's coffin from the fire. As I Lay Dying calls into question the value of heroism by showing how the Bundrens' "heroic" journey is actually committed in service of the family's competing self-interests, suggesting that all such heroic actions are evident as heroic only from the outside. - Theme: Mortality and the Nature of Existence. Description: As I Lay Dying is not only about mortality insofar as it concerns Addie Bundren's death. More deeply, the novel explores the theme of mortality by showing each of Addie's family members, loved ones, and other acquaintances offer unique responses to her death, attempting to make sense of the nature of existence. In doing so, these characters realize deeper and more universal things about existence and the transience of human experience. Reflecting on his mother's death, the cynical Darl remarks, "It takes two people to make you, one people to die. That's how the world is going to end." The guilt-ridden Dewey Dell more sentimentally reflects on the fact that she was distracted by personal issues during the time in which her mother died: "I heard that my mother is dead. I wish I had time to let her die. I wish I had time to wish I had." Vardaman's initial reaction to his mother's death is to drill holes in her coffin so she can breathe. As a six-year-old, not yet fully aware of what death means, Vardaman is initially in denial: he thinks that because Addie's physical body still exists, she must still exist and therefore need air in order to keep existing. These questions – relating to the meaning of life and death – appear most important to Darl and Vardaman. Both characters are less concerned with the pragmatic aspects of life and are focused more on these philosophical questions. This is the case for Vardaman because he is only six. By contrast, Darl is the novel's most cerebral character—in some ways he is the most sane member of the family, seeing their quest for the idiotic and destructive undertaking that it is. At the same time, he seems unstable, and may or may not be insane. - Theme: Family, Birth, and Death. Description: Just as As I Lay Dying calls into question traditional ideas about the meaning of heroism, the novel also complicates the idea of family. In the beginning of the novel, it appears perhaps that the Bundren famly is a united front, together facing the tragic death of their beloved wife and mother. However, as the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that what is driving the Bundren journey to deliver Addie to Jefferson is not pure dedication to the wishes of Addie, but to a sense of familial obligation. Furthermore, this sense of familial obligation is inextricably tied up with rivalries among siblings, competing self-interests, and out-and-out deceptive dynamics between family members. The novel's interest in destabilizing the romantic notion of family is most palpable in the Addie section, in which the Bundrens' "beloved mother" explains both her own feelings of resentment toward her family and her infidelity. Addie reveals that her favorite son is the product of an affair, and it is for this reason that he is her favorite – he is only part-Bundren. The novel does not stop with complicating the idea of family in general, but also works to complicate even the origin of family – birth –which is traditionally depicted as a moment of pure joy and creation. Addie admits that the birth of her first son, Cash, felt like an intrusion of her solitude, and each of her other children seemed the product of some sin (an affair) or obligation (making up for said affair). Addie's lack of excitement about childbirth is then echoed by Dewey Dell, who focuses on the fact that while birth may be the product of the same action shared between men and women, only women are stuck with the obligation. In this way, the novel connects the idea of birth to the idea of death – the birth of a baby is the death of a woman's independent life. Finally, the last sentence of the novel, when Anse invites his children to "Meet Mrs. Bundren," functions as a strange post-script to the novel. At the end of the novel, Anse reveals that the trip to Jefferson was not about fulfilling Addie's desire, but perhaps about his own desire to replace her. This shocking final scene suggests that family is just a bunch of roles – and that the roles are more important than the actual people who fill them. - Theme: Religion and Faith. Description: The theme of religion and faith appears in As I Lay Dying in various contexts – from plot points and the thing characters do and say, to the way Biblical imagery and motifs are invoked in order to compare events in the novel to religious events. Given that the novel calls into question the traditional ideals of heroism and familial duty, these comparisons often make ironic the religious theme in question. For instance, Darl defends his attempt to burn down Gillepsie's barn (and Addie's coffin) as a religiously motivated decision to cremate Addie's body according to the will of God, yet he really just wants to put the journey to a stop. When thinking about Cora Tull, Addie directly reflects on her neighbor's blind faith in God, dismissing the naivety of Cora's religious practices: "I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless…sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words."Cash is perhaps the novel's most Christ-like figure: a carpenter, Cash also embodies the virtues of kindness and charity, and positions himself as a martyr in the context of the family. Yet his stoicism reaches a ridiculous degree when he never once complains about the fact that his broken leg is treated with a cast made of sand and cement. The absurdity of Cash's stoicism calls into question why he chooses to embody Christian virtues so whole-heartedly, given that his selflessness does not lead to a sacrifice that is dedicated to a substantive end. While Christ gets resurrected, Cash is not redeemed in any way. His dedication to bringing Addie to Jefferson concludes with the revelation that the family delivered their wife and mother to Jefferson so that they could replace her, not so they could dutifully carry out her wish. In this way, Cash's sacrifice can be seen as a sacrifice to an untrue idea, a promise that is betrayed. The religious motifs throughout As I Lay Dying primarily emphasize the disparity between a character's action that is apparently motivated by faith and the more cynical truth, or misunderstanding, underlying the action in question. - Theme: Language versus Action. Description: Faulkner's interest in the disconnect between language and action is clear from the way the novel is told in and of itself: there is a disconnect between the action of the novel – the Bundren's journey to Jefferson – and the way such action unfolds – through individual narrations of the characters involved in and around the journey. As I Lay Dying does not tell an objective tale, but is a series of subjective experiences, showing in the very way the novel is told that there is an inherent disconnect between language, how it can tell a story, and action, the story itself. Almost every character in the novel possesses a different and unique perspective toward the question of language versus action. Most clear, however, is the dichotomy between Darl and Jewel, especially when seen in context of their relationship to Addie Bundren. Out of all the characters in the book, Darl has the greatest gift for using language, made clear by the fact that his chapters are the most poetic. Darl also happens to be the most rejected son of Addie Bundren. Jewel, by contrast, is Addie's favorite son, and can be seen as a man of action rather than words. For instance, Jewel saves Addie's coffin from the river and also saves Cash's precious box of tools. When Darl sets fire to Gillepsie's barn, Jewel saves Gillepsie's animals and then saves Addie's coffin. In Addie's single chapter, narrated posthumously, she expresses her disgust and distrust for words, explaining why she favored Jewel, her only non-Bundren child and, unlike Darl, her child that prized action over language. Words are "just words," in Addie's conception. - Climax: - Summary: The novel begins with Addie Bundren, wife to Anse Bundren and mother of their children, on her deathbed. The rest of the family waits around for Addie's impending death and vaguely discuss their eventual plans to cart their mother's corpse forty or so miles to the town of Jefferson, where she has requested to be buried alongside her family. The oldest son, a level-headed carpenter named Cash Bundren, spends the days preceding Addie's death outside her window, dutifully constructing a coffin. This gesture upsets Jewel, who thinks the rest of his family is vindictively rushing Addie to her death. Despite initial reservations from Anse, who believes Addie is going to die any minute, Darl and Jewel leave home to run an errand for their neighbor Vernon Tull. Anse's fear comes true, and Addie dies just after the two leave. After Addie's death, Anse orders his children to make preparations – Cash to finish the coffin and Dewey Dell to prepare the fish that the six-year-old Vardaman caught earlier that day. Vardaman cannot help but confuse his mother and the fish, as he understands that the fish is no longer alive, and hence explains Addie's death through comparison. Yet Vardaman still does not have a full grasp of the material realities of death, and worries that his mother won't be able to breathe nailed into her coffin. In the night Vardaman drills holes in Addie's coffin in an attempt to provide her with air. Inadvertently in the process, Vardaman bores holes in the face of Addie's corpse. As the family members mourn and make preparations for their journey to Jefferson, Dewey Dell finds herself distracted by her potential need for an abortion, as she fears her recent intercourse with a farmer named Lafe got her pregnant.Darl and Jewel return after the funeral service has already been held. Darl notices buzzards over the Bundrens' home. With Darl and Jewel back home, the family begins to make preparations to leave for Jefferson. Anse repeatedly explains to himself, to the family, and to others, that they are traveling so far to fulfill Addie's wish, though he also excitedly thinks about the fact that he will be able to buy a new pair of false teeth in town. As they prepare to leave, Cash obsesses over the fact that the coffin he so carefully built is unbalanced on the wagon, but the other family members ignore his meticulous request to balance it. Instead, Jewel charges in and carries the coffin onto the wagon by himself. Afterward, Jewel saddles up on his beloved horse and insists that he will follow the Bundrens as they ride in the wagon. Darl is angered by Jewel's decision, and thinks to himself about how Jewel secretively worked each night to buy himself the horse, and how Addie supported it, making the other children do Jewel's chores for him as he worked.The Bundrens set off on their journey and stay with a local farmer named Samson and his family. Samson tells the Bundrens that the bridge that they plan to use to get over the river has been submerged from recent rains, and that they should re-route their journey. The Bundrens attempt to cross the river at a ford, but as they try to cross a log comes down the river on the current and knocks the coffin off the wagon, breaks Cash's leg, drowns the Bundrens' team of mules, and throws Cash's prized collection of tools into the water. Jewel, with help from the Bundrens' on-looking neighbor Vernon Tull, retrieves the coffin from the flood and dives down into the river to rescue Cash's box of tools. The narrative is interrupted most overtly in the fortieth section, narrated by Addie – either at an earlier point in time or from her position as a corpse. In this section, Addie muses on her mistrust of language, her lack of passion for Anse, her wariness and sense of regret over having had children, and her extramarital affair with the local minister Whitfield. Meanwhile, back on the journey, Cash faints from the pain of his newly broken leg but does not make a peep. Jewel brings Cash a horse-physician to set Cash's leg in splints, claiming that horses and humans are quite alike. Cash's stoicism becomes almost absurd, as the family continues to ride for days in their decrepit wagon in the heat, marked by the stench of Addie's corpse. The family decides to spend the night at the home of another local farmer named Armstid. There, Anse rides off on Jewel's horse to purchase a new team of mules; Anse ends up giving a mortgage on some farm machinery, some of Cash's savings, some of his own savings (for new teeth) – and finally, Jewel's horse. Jewel is shocked but permits his father's actions nonetheless. The Bundrens eventually reach the town of Mottson, where Jewel immediately gets in an altercation with a local resident about the putrid odor coming from the wagon. Darl calms everyone down and the family continues on its way. In town, Dewey Dell goes to the pharmacy to buy an abortion drug, but Moseley, the town pharmacist, tells her to get a marriage license instead. Before leaving Mottson, Darl mixes cement to create a cast for Cash's leg, though the cast only ends up making things worse. The Bundrens are challenged by the Mottson town marshal, who complains about the stench of Addie's corpse and advises Cash to see a doctor. That night, the family reaches yet another local farm owned by a farmer called Gillepsie. After telling Vardaman that Addie has spoken to them of her desire to flee from human sight, Darl burns down Gillepsie's barn in order to burn Addie's coffin and put an end to the Bundrens' farcically hellish quest to bring her to Jefferson. Vardaman sees Darl's actions but Dewey Dell advises him to keep it a secret. As the barn is furiously ablaze, Jewel rushes in to rescue Gillepsie's cattle and other animals – and most importantly, to retrieve Addie's coffin from the fire. Finally, the Bundren family reaches Jefferson. Anse goes into a house to borrow two spades with which to bury Addie. The family is later confronted by Gillepsie, who knows somehow that Darl was responsible for burning down his barn. In order to avoid being sued, the Bundrens claim Darl to be insane, and ship him off to an institution in Jefferson. Dewey Dell tries her hand once again at getting an abortion drug, but the pharmacy clerk forces her to have sex with him and gives her some medicine that she is sure is fake. The family prepares to leave Jefferson, though Anse keeps claiming to be busy with various things, delaying them. Finally, on the last pages of the novel, Anse, now smiling with his new false teeth, introduces his children to the new "Mrs. Bundren," the woman who lent him the spades just days before.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: Ashes - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Australia - Character: Chris. Description: Chris, the story's protagonist, is a 35-year-old man whose father recently died. He and his mother are on their way to a lake to scatter his father's ashes, and as they drive, Chris reflects on his fraught relationship with his parents. Chris is gay, and although he's had at least one relationship with a man named Scott, he never came out to his parents because they made him feel ashamed of his sexuality and gender expression when he was a child. This childhood trauma has turned Chris into a secretive adult who doesn't speak his mind about anything, no matter how much he wants to or how angry something makes him. This is particularly evident in his terse exchanges with his mother, who's critical of the fact that Chris is unmarried and childless. Indeed, Chris is so closed-off that he reveals little about himself, even to the reader. Most of the story consists of Chris's inner monologue, and although the story is full of hints that Chris is devastated about his father's death, his grief is mixed up with lingering trauma and resentment over his parents' disapproval. On the drive to the lake, then, Chris can't help but dwell on his unhappy memories and his pessimistic imaginings of the future. However, Chris begins to question this outlook once they arrive at the lake, and he scatters his father's ashes into the water. He begins to feel more empathetic toward his mother, and as he thinks about his memories of camping with his father, he realizes that he didn't try very hard to connect with his father, either. The story ends with Chris humoring his mother in a simple way and extending compassion to her for perhaps the first time, implying that their relationship may improve going forward. In this way, Chris's development over the course of the story is a testament to how acknowledging both sides of a situation, rather than staying mired in one's own preconceptions, can help people improve their relationships and better cope with trauma and grief. - Character: Chris's Mother. Description: Chris's mother recently lost her husband (Chris's father), Alan, and is still grieving. From early on in the story, it's clear that Chris and his mother have a strained relationship. His mother seems to care a great deal about keeping up appearances: most of her conversations with revolve around gossiping about her friends' children and grandchildren, and she seems ashamed of the fact that Chris is unmarried and childless at 35. Chris is gay, and when he was a child, his parents seemed embarrassed by him whenever they had guests over. They could tell that he was somehow different—but the story never reveals whether his mother knows for sure that he's gay. As a result of this secrecy and lack of communication, she and Chris aren't close. In the story's present, the two of them are on their way to a lake to scatter Alan's ashes, and Chris's mother rambles about the past while Chris remains silent and privately resentful. Chris's mother has started to rework history as a way of coping with her grief: she speaks as though her marriage was perfect and Chris's relationship with his father was healthy. This offends Chris, as it minimizes the pain that his parents' disapproval has caused him throughout his life. However, the story suggests that Chris's mother does this to try to come to grips with her past mistakes. It may be easier for her to mourn her late husband if her memories of him are happy—and, possibly, she can feel better about the harm she's caused Chris if she pretends that the past was rosier than it was. All of this, though, simply pushes Chris away, and the two never talk much about their differing views of Chris's father. However, after Chris and his mother perform the cathartic ritual of scattering Alan's ashes on the lake, the story ends on the hopeful note that they'll be able to be more open with each other going forward. - Character: Chris's Father/Alan. Description: Chris's late father, Alan, died not long before the story's action begins. In life, Alan was—according to Chris and Chris's mother—wry, secretive, and exacting. This caused issues with both his wife and son: Chris's mother felt that her husband trapped her in a boring life, and Chris found it extremely hard to connect with his overbearing father. Much of Chris and his father's struggle to connect stemmed from the fact that Alan never accepted Chris's sexuality. When Chris was young, his father tried twice to take Chris on father-son camping and fishing trips to the lake—the same lake where, in the story's present, Chris and his mother are going to scatter his ashes. Alan couldn't understand what was "wrong" with his son, since Chris showed no interest in camping or fishing—activities that Chris's father presumably associated with masculinity. But while his father's lifelong habit of simply refusing to address Chris's sexuality was difficult for Chris, it was particularly hurtful when Chris's father's last words to his son were a warning that being too open about being gay would kill his mother. Chris recognizes that this wasn't entirely true—having a gay son, he believes, killed his father rather than his mother. After Alan's death, both Chris and his mother struggle to process their memories of him. Chris's mother copes by embellishing her memories to make her husband into a bumbling man with good intentions—but Chris is simply angry. However, as he scatters his father's ashes at the lake, he begins to realize that his father wasn't all bad. Alan may have made mistakes, but Chris acknowledges that he also failed to make an effort to connect with his father when he had the chance. - Character: Scott. Description: Scott is Chris's ex-partner; he never appears in person in the story. He broke up with Chris about three years before the story's action begins, at least in part because Chris was delaying introducing Scott to his parents. Chris remembers Scott as being the kind of person who always knew what to do and how to comfort someone going through a rough time. So, as Chris muddles through the weeks following his father's death, he often wishes that Scott were around to comfort him and help make sense of it all. Scott's insights were also important to Chris as he tried to come to terms with his parents' disapproval of his sexuality. Scott insisted that having parents who don't understand isn't uncommon, and that it would be better for Chris if he didn't hold it against his parents and tried to move on instead. - Theme: Communication and Misunderstanding. Description: "Ashes" follows 35-year-old Chris as he accompanies his mother to scatter his recently deceased father's ashes on a lake—the same lake where Chris camped with his father as a child. On the way there, Chris is annoyed by his mother's attempts to sugarcoat and idealize both her marriage and Chris's relationship with his father. In contrast to his mother, he reflects on times throughout his life when his parents failed to support or celebrate him for who he is. This difference in perception, the story suggests, is due to the fact that Chris and his parents have never been able to communicate with each other truthfully. This is why, for instance, Chris and his mother see the past so differently—and both of them remain stuck in their perceptions of the past, rather than actually trying to talk about and solve their problems. With this, "Ashes" shows that a lack of open, honest communication can create misunderstanding and resentment that erodes relationships over time. Throughout Chris's life, his family's interactions have been defined by staying silent and holding back, even when they have important things to say. For instance, Chris (who's gay) recalls that his parents never broached the question of Chris's sexuality with him, even though they suspected he was gay since he was a young child. Instead, he could only understand that "there was something deeply dissatisfying about him, something that baffled his father and pinned a strained, mortified smile on his mother's face." He notes that "Neither of them [...] had any idea how to name what the thing was." By refusing to raise the subject, Chris's parents inadvertently taught him that his sexuality is something to be ashamed of and something to stay quiet about. But by mirroring his parents' tendency to brush issues under the rug, Chris ends up creating more strain on his relationship with his parents. For instance, at the end of his final camping trip with his father, his father good-naturedly asked Chris if he agreed that the lake was a beautiful place to camp. Rather than take this easy opening and opportunity to connect with his father, Chris just shrugged—and at the time, he took pleasure in making his dad feel bad. But decades later, in the present, he regrets his silence: answering his father's question may have been a way to spark a closer relationship and build up some level of trust. Insisting on silence, "Ashes" shows, means that people (even family members) never really get to know each other. Further, "Ashes" shows that that without communication, people become stuck in their preconceptions and struggle to reevaluate their views in light of new information. The clearest example of this is Chris's secrecy about his sexuality. Importantly, the story never reveals just how much Chris's mother knows about her son's sexuality. Chris's father knew his son was gay and was disapproving and unsupportive the one time they spoke about it, but Chris's mother seems to only have acted embarrassed of Chris when he was a child. Now that Chris is an adult, she openly hopes that he'll marry a woman and father children. Chris finds this grating and offensive, yet he chooses not to set his mother straight about his sexuality and tempering her expectations. And while he seems to imply that he expects her to react poorly if he were to tell her the truth, all of his mother's worst offenses are committed in Chris's imagination, not in real life. For instance, Chris believes that before long, his mother is going to try to convince him to stay the night in his childhood room by noting that he doesn't have a wife and kids to get home to. In this way, the lack of communication between Chris and his mother makes him stuck in his perception of her, just as he believes she's stuck in her disapproval of him. Furthermore, Chris's father's dying words to his son were a warning that Chris's mother would die if Chris "threw" his sexuality in her face. Yet Chris admits that this final warning reflects his father's homophobia, not his mother's. When considered alongside Chris's imaginings of his mother's rudeness, both Chris and his father seem to be set in their preconceptions about Chris's mother. A lack of openness, this shows, only reinforces people's misguided perceptions of one another and stunts relationships from developing further. The only way to remedy the situation, "Ashes" suggests, is to take small steps toward communicating openly, while also being mindful of the ways a lifetime of silence has molded the family. Indeed, the story ends on a hopeful note when, after finally accepting his role in keeping his father at a distance, Chris takes active steps to close that distance with his mother. His internal monologue shifts—no longer does he think about his mother rambling on about untrue things. Instead, he agrees without scorn or sarcasm to do what he can to help his mother purchase tokens of thanks for her friends on their way back from scattering this father's ashes, and he even tenderly brushes some ash off of her jacket without interrupting her chatter. With this, "Ashes" shows that it's possible to improve difficult, unhealthy relationships if a person is willing to give others the benefit of the doubt, recognize one's own responsibility for the poor relationship, and treat others with kindness and compassion. - Theme: Grief and Memory. Description: As Chris drives his mother to a lake where they plan to scatter his later father, Alan's, ashes, he endures her constant chatter about her marriage to Alan, as well as Alan and Chris's relationship. The rosy way she portrays these memories, Chris thinks, is revisionist to the point of being offensive. He recognizes, though, that this is a product of his mother's grief: in order to come to terms with her husband's death, his mother is rewriting the story of their lives in a way that makes her feel better. As Chris comes to realize why his mother is doing this, he also recognizes that as annoying and untrue as his mother's stories are, they may serve a purpose. Misremembering his father like this is comforting in the midst of grief—but the story also suggests that acknowledging the truth of their family history, as painful as that might be, may also be a way for Chris and his mother to move on from his father's death. At first, Chris is offended by his mother's exaggerated (or downright untrue) stories about his father, as they gloss over the pain that Chris's parents caused over the years. Chris is gay, but he never came out to his parents because they made him feel ashamed of his sexuality and lack of stereotypically masculine traits as a child. For instance, when 12-year-old Chris was uninterested in going fishing or having man-to-man conversations during a camping trip, his father said, "I don't know what's bloody wrong with you." For Chris, then, his mother's desire to gloss over this painful history is hurtful. She doesn't seem to know the full extent of Chris's father's thinly-veiled homophobia—but whether intentional or not, the way she sugarcoats the past (talking about how much his father enjoyed the father-son fishing trips, for instance) makes Chris feel like she's minimizing his difficult childhood. Chris's anger shows that his mother is hurting him by reworking the family's history in this way, whether she means to or not. Her inability or unwillingness to acknowledge the way she and her husband judged and mistreated Chris in the past alienates her son and strains their relationship even more. However, Chris's mother likely isn't trying to be offensive through these retellings. Rather, reimagining the past is a way for her to grieve and reframe her memories of her husband to make them more palatable. For instance, when Chris's mother focuses on how much the fishing trips meant to Chris's father, she can more easily gloss over the fact that she and her husband did real harm to their son by shaming him for who he is. This suggests that, on some level, Chris's mother understands how difficult Chris's childhood was and perhaps even regrets her own complicity in making it so difficult. Again, while this doesn't excuse Chris's parents' thinly-veiled homophobia, it opens up the possibility that Chris's mother wants to improve her relationship with him. Similarly, Chris's mother has begun to talk very differently about her marriage since her husband's death, versus how she spoke about it when he was still alive. Before Chris's father died, his mother resented her husband and reacted dramatically every time he did something wrong. Their marriage, at least from Chris's perspective, didn't seem happy. But now, Chris's mother talks about her late husband as being merely "bumbling" and full of good intentions. By reworking her relationship to her husband through these stories, Chris's mother seems to be trying to cast their marriage in a better light. This, presumably, makes it easier for her to grieve when she can essentially focus on her husband's positive aspects—invented though they may be—and feel more at peace with the past and with his death. But "Ashes" suggests that these attempts to reframe history can only go so far. It's important, the story suggests, that Chris and his mother also acknowledge the pain they experienced in the past. Chris's tone undergoes a major shift when, to his surprise, his mother brings up the fact that his father disapproved of her smoking habit—to the point that she eventually quit to appease him. This seems to be the only entirely truthful thing she says about her deceased husband's behavior over the course of the story. And at its heart, it's an admission that she and her husband didn't have a perfect relationship—just as Chris and his father's relationship was similarly imperfect. Indeed, Chris privately acknowledges that his strained relationship with his father wasn't one-sided—he could have been kinder to his father, as well. Even though Chris resents his parents for shaming him throughout his childhood, this nevertheless speaks to the idea that nobody in the family behaved perfectly. In this way, Chris's mother's rosy memories seem to open Chris up to acknowledging his father's good-hearted efforts and his own flaws, just as Chris's refusal to sugarcoat the past seems to subtly prompt his mother to remember the imperfect aspects of the past. Just after this, Chris's mother shows emotion for the first time that day, openly weeping and repeating "Goodbye, Alan" as Chris scatters his father's ashes on the lake. Honestly coming to terms with the past—which involves considering both the positive and the negative aspects of their lives—is what allows Chris's mother to grieve in an authentic and cathartic way. Acknowledging past mistakes and lingering pain, then, is just as important in the grieving process as remembering the good times. Grieving and remembering a deceased loved one, the story shows, doesn't just mean rewriting history or sticking only to unhappy, regretful memories. Rather, grief is complex—and, within the world of "Ashes," Chris and his mother handle it by calling on a combination of the two. The story ends with a rare moment of tenderness between Chris and his mother: he asks her if she's okay and tenderly brushes ash off of her lapel. The gesture is simple but nonetheless significant for the estranged mother and son. The story thus implies that by being understanding of how the other person is handling their grief, Chris and his mother will be able to cope with their loss and even improve their relationship going forward. - Theme: Sexuality, Gender, and Parental Expectations. Description: The central conflict of "Ashes" is that between Chris, a 35-year-old gay man, and his parents. His mother and his late father wanted their son to look, act, and live his life in a stereotypically masculine way. But throughout his childhood, they treated Chris as if something was wrong with him—he felt "an obscure sense that he'd failed some test," even though his parents never fully articulated their disapproval of his gender expression and sexuality. This feeling continues into adulthood, as Chris's mother regularly laments that Chris is unmarried and childless. The root of all of this, Chris reveals, is his parents' thinly-veiled disapproval: he's never felt comfortable expressing his sexuality and his true self around them. Thus, Chris struggles to reconcile what he somewhat secretly wants for his life with what his parents want for his life. And while navigating parental expectations is something that many people struggle with, the story implies that for LGBT or gender-nonconforming people like Chris, this process can be particularly difficult. Chris's narration shows that although he's a 35-year-old adult in the story's present, this doesn't mean his mother treats him like an adult. Instead, Chris's mother constantly infantilizes him. She's begun inviting him for dinner more frequently—and after dinner, she insists that he stay the night in his childhood bedroom, using the same tone of voice that she used whenever he misbehaved as a child. Her behavior implies that she doesn't accept that her son is an independent adult with a life and a home of his own, which Chris finds stifling and insulting. Furthermore, as Chris drives his late father's car in the story's present, the cruise control beeps at him whenever he exceeds the posted speed limit, which startles him and makes him feel strangely guilty. Chris describes this as feeling like his father is nudging him in the ribs from beyond the grave. His father still seems to be urging compliance in his son, even after his death. Taken together, these instances make it clear that Chris is struggling to establish himself as an independent adult in his parents' eyes—and to a degree, in his own mind too. As the story progresses, Chris reveals that one of the reasons his parents behave the way they do is because, due in part to his sexuality, Chris isn't willing or able to fulfill his parents' expectations for his life. To Chris's mother, adulthood is tantamount to getting married and having children. She often talks to Chris about her friends' grandchildren, or their children's wedding plans. These comments are hints that she disapproves of Chris's lifestyle—she's subtly guilting him for not giving her grandchildren and blaming him for not stepping into the role of what she considers to be the proper adult. However, Chris's mother's fixation on grandchildren implies that, in her mind, a person must marry someone of the opposite sex and have biological children. From this, it's clear that the expectations parents place on their children can be especially difficult to navigate when those children have a sexual orientation or gender identity that doesn't line up with societal norms. Indeed, the story implies that this pressure to be heterosexual is even to blame for Chris's breakup with a man named Scott. Chris shares that he'd been "waiting for the right moment" to introduce Scott to his parents, suggesting that Chris isn't opposed on principle to finding a romantic partner and being open about that relationship with his parents. But he continually put off telling them—and his defensiveness in retrospect that "It wasn't as if he was ashamed of [Scott], God no" suggests that, on some level, Chris was ashamed to introduce Scott to his parents. Chris knew that his parents expected him to one day bring home a woman, and he likely feared that bringing a man home—even if a male partner didn't necessarily rule out marriage or children—would disappoint or upset them. And in this way, even well-intentioned expectations can put undue pressure on people (particularly those in the LGBT community)—which can, in turn, prevent them from being themselves and finding genuine happiness.  "Ashes" implies that for LGBT people, parental pressure to hit specific milestones in life is uniquely damaging, both to the person in question and to the parent-child relationship more broadly. For instance, the story never reveals whether Chris even wants to get married and start a family—in fact, readers never find out much about Chris's likes and dislikes, or what he wants out of his life more broadly. Put another way, Chris's parents' expectations for their son are so great that Chris never feels like he even has the option to be who he really is around them, which contributes to his anger at them and keeps them from connecting on a deeper level. With this, the story suggests that it's essential that parents take care when talking about their hopes for their children's future, especially if their child is LGBT. Framing one's hopes as expectations that must be met at any cost creates a heavy burden for a child to bear—and, as Chris's story demonstrates, this can be isolating and demeaning for the adult child in question. - Climax: As Chris scatters his late father's ashes in the lake, he realizes that he could've made more of an effort in their relationship. - Summary: Chris and his mother are having morning tea in a café; Chris is already exhausted from being around her, and it's only 10:30 a.m. He reminds himself that he just has to stay on the good side of surliness—and given the occasion, his mother should forgive him if he slips up. She's dressed up in heels, even though Chris warned her they'll have to do some walking today. He knows, though, that the blisters she'll get will give her something to complain about to her friends, whom Chris privately refers to as "the Book Club Women." Chris's mother has pictures of the Book Club Women's grandchildren up on her fridge, and he believes that she talks about them specifically to torment him. Whenever the conversation about his mother's friends' children and grandchildren fizzles out, Chris and his mother look out to the leaf-covered yard, where Chris's father's yard tools still sit. Ever since his father died, Chris feels as though reminders like this are everywhere, waiting for him like mousetraps or landmines. Today, he and his mother are taking his father's car, which still smells like his father's characteristic scent. Earlier this morning, Chris tried to tuck the box that contains his father's ashes in the backseat, but Chris's mother insisted that the box go at her feet. Chris snidely thought that this made sense, but he kept his response to himself. Back in the present, Chris's mother gets sidetracked with shopping at a store near the café. When they'd gotten to the café, his mother had been worried about leaving the box in the car in case of theft—but she didn't want to bring it inside with them, either. Chris's mother can barely touch the box. When she and Chris went to pick it up from the crematorium, she made Chris fill out all the paperwork and ask for a bag. Outside, his mother had gotten upset that they had to ask for a bag at all. She didn't cry, though—she simply unlocked her antique cabinet so Chris could put the box there with the good dishes. In that moment, Chris wished he was with Scott. As Chris's mother browses a craft store's display, Chris recalls how his father used to joke that his mother could shop anywhere. He knows that his mother will want a souvenir, and sure enough, she returns with a silver picture frame. Chris is sure that he'll remember the turn for the lake when he sees it, even though it's been 25 years since he's been there. As he drives, the car's cruise-control check beeps at him whenever he exceeds the speed limit, which startles him and makes him feel guilty. As Chris puts a CD into the player, he realizes that he would've last smelled his father's scent two Christmases ago, when he gave his parents this CD. He wouldn't have smelled it at the hospital more recently; there, everything smelled like cleaning supplies. As Chris's mother chats away in the passenger seat, Chris knows that he'll need to change the subject soon. She begins talking about her choice to scatter the ashes at the lake, which she thinks will be meaningful. Chris can barely contain his anger as his mother notes how meaningful their many fishing trips to the lake were to his father. In reality, Chris and his father only went twice, and both trips were disasters. By the end of each trip, Chris felt like he'd failed a test; on the way home after the last trip, Chris's father had even said, "I don't know what's bloody wrong with you." At that point, he was aware that there was something about him his parents found embarrassing, but he didn't realize what it was until college. When he'd told Scott about the fishing trips, Scott laughed—he insisted that Chris isn't the only gay man with parents who didn't understand. Scott eventually left when Chris waited too long to introduce him to his parents. Chris thinks of the last time he saw his father in the hospital. The morphine seemed to lower his father's inhibitions, and he'd told Chris that his mother is proud of him. But then, he insisted that Chris's mother would die if Chris were to throw his sexuality at her. Chris realizes, though, that the truth of his sexuality killed his father, not his mother. Ever since the funeral, Chris's mother has been rewriting history to make the past seem happier—and less truthful. When Chris's father was alive, his mother always spoke poorly of him; these days, she talks about how kind he was. Presently, she laments that Chris never took photos on the father-son fishing trips. Chris fumes. He thinks that in reality, he and his mother are going on a pathetic excursion to someplace with invented symbolism. As Chris takes the turnoff for the lake, he thinks about his mother's dinner invitations, which have been increasing in frequency. She always asks him to stay the night, and Chris knows that if he keeps refusing, she'll start noting that Chris doesn't have a wife and kids to return home to. Chris and his mother arrive at the campsite and begin walking out to the lake. Chris remembers being here with his father. He feels sick at the possibility of having to say another farewell—the eulogy was bad enough. But fortunately, Chris's mother insists they should scatter the ashes without saying anything. She frets that she should've kept some ashes for herself, so Chris suggests that they put some in the camera bag and jokes about what his father would say to that. His mother says that at least it's not a matchbox, given how much Chris's father hated her smoking until she gave it up. Out on the jetty, Chris pulls out the box. He remembers sitting out on a boat with his father: his father had smiled hopefully as he noted their slim chances of catching anything. Chris stands, takes a picture of his mother, and asks her to pick up the box. She hesitates, and Chris suddenly wishes that he'd complimented her outfit this morning. Her expression makes Chris choke up. Finally, Chris opens the box to reveal the ashes. His mother panics and says, "You." Chris knows he has to scatter the ashes, no matter his thoughts or desires. Chris picks up ashes and scatters them in the water. As he does so, he remembers washing saucepans with his father and putting out their campfire with lake water. The smell of wet ash was the same then as it is now. Chris remembers his father looking around and asking him to agree that the lake is beautiful. Chris had merely shrugged—and now, he can't understand why. Now, his mother whispers, "Goodbye, Alan" over and over as Chris dumps handfuls of ash into the water. When the box is empty, they stand on the jetty. Chris's mother cries, and Chris wonders why he didn't answer his father years ago. Back at the car, his mother asks if they could return to the gift shop so she can purchase frames for the Book Club Women. Chris agrees that they can make it in time before the shop closes, and that it'd be a nice gesture. He gently brushes some ash off his mother's lapel.

- Genre: Short Story, Literary Fiction, Frame Narrative - Title: At Hiruharama - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: The rural area of Hiruharama, New Zealand - Character: Tanner. Description: Tanner is the story's protagonist. He is an orphan in England who is sent to Auckland, New Zealand to be an apprentice, but the wealthy family he works for treats him more like a servant. He meets Kitty, who is in a similar situation, and they begin a romance. After they marry, they move to a homestead of their own in the more rural area of Hiruharama. Throughout the story, Tanner is depicted as calm, resourceful, and hardworking, and he insists on seeing the best in people. For example, when the doctor calls the Tanners' neighbor Brinkman "a crank," Tanner says that Brinkman is a dreamer, showing that where some people might find a reason to be annoyed, Tanner finds a way to be charmed. In the story, Tanner makes one significant, almost dire mistake: he puts his second child (an unexpected twin) in the garbage, thinking the baby is just his wife's afterbirth. The doctor, though, finds the child. That mistake, which could have become a tragedy, instead becomes a principle that guides the Tanners through their lives: namely, that they shouldn't throw anything away, or, in other words, that they should look for the value in what at first might be overlooked, neglected, or discarded. - Character: Kitty. Description: Similar to Tanner, Kitty comes to New Zealand from England to find a better life. She was promised the role of a governess (a private tutor for a family's children) in a well-off family, but when she arrives, she finds that she is treated more as a servant. After meeting Tanner, the two plan a life together. Three years after they first meet, they marry and then move to their homestead in Hiruharama. Two years later, Kitty gets pregnant. At the end of the story, she gives birth to twins, and one of the children—the daughter Tanner discards thinking she is afterbirth—goes on to be a lawyer. Like Tanner, Kitty also looks for the best in others, though she is not afraid to push others to reach their potential. When she first meets Tanner, for example, she gleans that he cannot read. Instead of questioning his worthiness as a suitor based on his social station or opting to find someone of a higher social standing, Mr. Tanner speculates that Kitty insisted that Tanner learn to read before they married. - Character: Brinkman. Description: Brinkman is the Tanners' nearest neighbor, who lives about 10 miles from them. He eats dinner with the Tanners every six months or so; otherwise, they rarely see him. Tanner says that Brinkman often complains about being lonely and not having a wife, which inspires the doctor to call him "a crank." Tanner, showing his generosity, says he considers Brinkman more of a dreamer. In the story, Brinkman serves mostly as comic relief. He shows up for the biyearly dinner tradition while Kitty is in labor (it's never fully made clear whether or not Tanner and Kitty care about this dinner tradition themselves). Instead of asking how he can help, or leaving to come back another day, as one might expect him to do, Brinkman instead sits down, begins to smoke, and waits for dinner to be served. Instead of getting annoyed or asking him to leave, as might seem reasonable in the situation, the Tanners instead treat Brinkman as a kind of odd member of the family, content to let him sit on the porch while a grand drama in their lives plays out. - Character: Mr. Tanner. Description: Mr. Tanner is the grandson of Tanner and Kitty, whose story he tells to an unknown and unseen character. Mr. Tanner's family has just recently decided to leave New Zealand, and his main purpose in telling the story is to explain how they ended up with a lawyer in the family. Mr. Tanner interrupts his own story occasionally—including when he speculates on how Tanner learned to read—though, for the most part, he sticks to the narrative of his grandparents. - Character: The Doctor. Description: The doctor lives in the town of Awanui, which Tanner calculates is about two and a half hours from his own homestead. The doctor ostensibly oversees Kitty's prenatal care, her labor, and the birth, though he tells Tanner that Kitty shouldn't come to see him before labor and that by the time he shows up for a birth, he is often "not needed." He has a somewhat brusque demeanor and doesn't seem to want to go out of the way to help Tanner and Kitty. When he arrives for Kitty's birth, though, he brings his sister-in-law, who was or is a nurse, and he is the one who finds the second child, saving the Tanners from tragedy. - Character: Parrish. Description: Parrish has one of the last homesteads on the outskirts of Awanui. He keeps Blue Chequer racing pigeons, two of which Tanner borrows so that he can use them to send for the doctor when Kitty goes into labor. Parrish is willing enough to lend Tanner the pigeons, but when he does, he tells Tanner that he can only help him because the Tanners' house is on the pigeons' pre-existing route. "If you'd have lived over the other way I couldn't have helped you," Parrish says to Tanner, showing that he is willing to help only insofar as it doesn't cause him (or his pigeons) significant inconvenience. - Theme: Value and Perception. Description: "At Hiruharama" explores the often-overlooked value of neglected or abandoned people, places, and objects. The story contends that value is determined not so much by intrinsic qualities but by perception. This idea is exemplified most explicitly during the story's climax. After Tanner helps his wife, Kitty, deliver their child, the doctor arrives and discovers a second child in what Tanner mistook for afterbirth. What Tanner perceived as garbage turned out to be, on closer inspection, a human child (who goes on to become a lawyer). This notion of finding value in what might otherwise be overlooked is underlined by the tinplate the Tanners hang in their kitchen, which reads, "Throw Nothing Away," meaning that something of importance can often be found in the things people take for granted or fail to fully consider. Similarly, when the Tanners are looking for a place to move, they find a plot of land that has been abandoned by its past tenants, even though it contains a "standpipe giving constant clear water from an underground well"—something that the story suggests is quite priceless, despite the fact that nobody else seems to recognize its worth. The Tanners then proceed to turn that abandoned plot into a thriving homestead. Even Tanner himself is described as abandoned, an orphan who aims to become an apprentice with a wealthy family but is instead treated as a servant. When he meets his future wife, Kitty, she soon gleans that he can't read. Instead of rejecting him based on his social standing or perceived shortcomings, though, Kitty sees a deeper, intangible value in him and encourages him to learn to read, thus illustrating the story's implication that it's often beneficial to refrain from writing people (or things) off before considering their potential. - Theme: Community. Description: In "At Hiruharama," community is often presented as flawed and comically imperfect, but those imperfections don't invalidate its worth or mean that it doesn't have value. Though the Tanners' home is miles away from their closest neighbors, the story portrays them as still belonging to a community, as a number of people help them in small but significant ways. Their distant neighbor, Parrish, lends them racing pigeons so they can notify the doctor when Kitty has gone into labor. And the doctor, for his part, not only travels to attend to Kitty, but also brings along his sister-in-law, a nurse. Even Tanner's sister, who lives far away in England, sends a book about childbirth that, though barely applicable and quite late to arrive, is nonetheless appreciated. Finally, there is Brinkman, the Tanners' closest neighbor, whom the doctor describes as a "crank," Tanner describes as a "dreamer," and who comes off as self-centered at the very least, as he hangs around the Tanners' house expecting dinner while Kitty gives birth. Even his presence doesn't seem entirely unwelcome, though, and his foibles are seen, by Tanner at least, as more comic or sympathetic than off-putting. These people—who find each other knit in the fabric of each other's lives by mere happenstance—might be highly flawed, but they still show up for the Tanners when they're needed most (except, perhaps, for Brinkman, whose presence is mostly for comedic effect). In fact, the community as a whole, is ultimately responsible for discovering and saving the life of the Tanners' second child. Although the story depicts the idea of community in far from idealistic or utopian terms, then, it nevertheless suggests that even seemingly random (or even flawed) people can come together to provide indispensable communal support. - Theme: Upward Mobility and Colonialism. Description: "At Hiruharama" tells a multi-generational story of upward mobility, extolling the virtues of resourcefulness, enterprise, hard work, and having a positive outlook. The story begins with Mr. Tanner excited to explain how he ended up with a lawyer in the family—a clear sign that he's proud of what his family has accomplished after starting out with so little. As he tells the story of his grandparents, Tanner and Kitty, he details how they both came to New Zealand with nothing and gradually worked their way to a point where it was possible for one of their daughters to become a lawyer. This story seems to posit that the family's upward mobility results primarily from the Tanners' own hard work, enterprise, and resilience, as evidenced by their willingness to cultivate an abandoned homestead, raising hundreds of chickens and a few pigs on land that the owner before them apparently found untenable. By emphasizing the family's humble beginnings, the story effectively celebrates the Tanners' ascent to financial stability. In fact, their trajectory aligns with the popular narrative surrounding British colonialism at the time. An England-based conglomerate called The New Zealand Company tried to attract wealthy British people to settle in New Zealand with the promise of cheap labor from less-well-off British immigrants—a class to which Kitty and Tanner initially belonged. What made laboring for rich Britons attractive to people like Kitty and Tanner was the promise that they would eventually be able to acquire some land of their own. In other words, Kitty and Tanner specifically come to New Zealand in the hopes of attaining upward mobility, and they ultimately succeed in lifting their family out of poverty. At the same time, though, while "At Hiruharama" celebrates this opportunistic, enterprising spirit, it doesn't engage with the more troublesome aspects of colonialism, ultimately stopping short of acknowledging that this kind of resourcefulness was really only possible at the time for white colonizers like Kitty and Tanner, not the native Māori people who were in New Zealand long before the British. - Climax: After Tanner helps Kitty through labor, the doctor arrives and finds a second child in the afterbirth, which Tanner had thrown away. - Summary: Mr. Tanner and his family are leaving New Zealand, and so he tries to explain (to an unseen character) how they ended up with a lawyer in the family who will take care of the legal necessities that accompany the process. To explain this, though, Mr. Tanner says that he will first have to tell the story of his grandfather, Tanner. In the flashback, Tanner is an orphan in Stamford, England who is sent to apprentice for a wealthy family in Auckland, New Zealand. When he arrives, he finds out he is treated more like a servant than an apprentice. He soon meets Kitty, who has also come from England and is in a similar situation: she thought she would be a governess (a kind of private tutor) for a wealthy family but is instead also treated as a servant. Tanner and Kitty hit it off, and they decide to get married in three years, which will give Tanner time to save up money. After Kitty and Tanner marry, they move to a more remote part of New Zealand called Hiruharama. Two years later, Kitty tells Tanner that she is pregnant. Tanner goes to see the closest doctor, who lives miles away in the town of Awanui. The doctor says that Tanner will have to send for him when Kitty goes into labor, but since Awanui is so far away, the baby will probably be born before he arrives. On his way out of Awanui, Tanner borrows racing pigeons from Parrish, who has the last homestead on the road out of town. Tanner plans to use the pigeons to send for the doctor when Kitty goes into labor. A few months later, when Kitty goes into labor, Tanner releases the pigeons and calculates that it will take the doctor over three hours to arrive. At six o'clock, Kitty and Tanner hear someone coming down the road but not from Awanui. The person turns out to be their closest neighbor from the other direction, Brinkman, who has shown up for the half-yearly dinner they share, which has become an informal kind of tradition. Brinkman enters, and Tanner tells him that Kitty is in labor. "Then she won't be cooking dinner this evening, then?" Brinkman responds. He then sits down and begins to smoke, hoping that the Tanners will still serve dinner at some point. The doctor then arrives along with his wife's widowed sister, who is or used to be a nurse. Tanner has already delivered the baby and greets the doctor and his sister-in-law "covered in blood, something like a butcher." Tanner tells the doctor that everything went smoothly and that he already threw away the afterbirth in the garbage. The doctor goes to inspect. When he comes back, he announces that what Tanner had thrown out wasn't afterbirth at all; it was "a second daughter, smaller, but a twin." This daughter, Mr. Tanner tells his conversation partner, eventually became a lawyer in Wellington and "did very well." Meanwhile, back at Mr. Tanner's grandparents' homestead, Brinkman continues to sit and smoke, hoping that he might one day get married and, moreover, that the Tanners will eventually serve him dinner—after all, he figures, they'll have to eat at some point.

- Genre: Short story - Title: At the ’Cadian Ball - Point of view: Third person - Setting: Late-19th century Louisiana - Character: Calixta. Description: Calixta is a young, unmarried woman who is part of an Acadian community in Louisiana. She is the love interest of Bobinôt, an Acadian farmer, and also briefly enjoys the attention of Alcée Laballière, a Creole planter. Calixta is very attractive. Indeed, Bobinôt describes her as having "the bluest, the drowsiest, most tantalizing" eyes and a "voice like a rich contralto song, with cadences in it that must have been taught by Satan." Calixta is also a somewhat scandalous figure in Acadian society, though she is generally accepted. Her lack of verbal restraint renders her rather distasteful to the older, more conservative members of the community such as Madame Suzonne. However, society generally excuses her impropriety, attributing it to her Spanish blood. For most of the story, Calixta does not reciprocate Bobinôt's feelings, viewing him as more of a fallback. Readers can see this during her rendezvous with Alcée on the gallery. When Alcée asks Calixta if she will marry Bobinôt, Calixta responds with "I don't say no, me." Initially, Calixta seems much more interested in Alcée: during their rendezvous, her "senses were reeling; and they well nigh left her when she felt Alcée's lips brush her ear like the touch of a rose." However, after Alcée abandons her on the gallery for Clarisse, Calixta becomes disillusioned enough with Alcée to accept Bobinôt's proposal later in the night. Calixta presumably matures from the abandonment, and realizes that unlike Alcée, Bobinôt would never abandon her and would offer her his undivided attention, making him a more suitable partner for marriage. - Character: Alcée Laballière. Description: Alcée Laballière is a young, rich, and handsome Creole planter. He loves Clarisse, his mother Madame Laballière's goddaughter, and is attracted to Calixta, a young Acadian woman from town. Towards the beginning of the story, readers learn that Alcée lost his crops in a cyclone, just days after being rejected by Clarisse. The cyclone was more a blow to his pride than his finances, as Alcée is from an established family: "the Laballières were rich […] there were resources our East, and more again in the city." Still, an upset Alcée, "in a mood for ugly things," decides to go to the ball to relieve frustrations. Alcée's good looks and social standing, as well as his recent misfortune, make him the center of attention at the ball among both men and women: the men "could not help but admire his 'nerve' after such a misfortune befalling him" and the young women walked past him, looking into his eyes with their own that were "big, dark, soft, as those of the young heifers standing out in the cool prairie grass." At the ball, Alcée fixes his intentions on Calixta, and appears to be intent on seducing her and perhaps involving her in, what would be considered a scandalous love affair in the late-19th century. His plan is derailed after Clarisse shows up to the ball and asks him to come home. Through his eager assent to Clarisse's request and abandonment of Calixta, readers can gather that while Alcée is attracted to Calixta, he is in love with Clarisse. At the end of the story, Clarisse reciprocates his affections and Alcée, overjoyed, forgets about the cyclone and Calixta: "The one, only, great reality in the world was Clarisse standing before him, telling him that she loved him." - Character: Bobinôt. Description: Bobinôt is an Acadian farmer who is desperately in love with Calixta. Certain descriptions in the story indicate that he appears to be rather coarse and awkward: he is "dull-looking and clumsy," and at the ball, Calixta compares him to "Ma'ame Tina's cow in the bog." However, Bobinôt is good-natured. He takes Calixta's insult in stride and even laughs along with the others at his expense. Bobinôt did not initially intend to go to the ball. However, after hearing that Alcée was to be in attendance, he changes his mind and decides to go to protect Calixta, as "a drink or two could put the devil in [Alcée's] head […] a gleam from Calixta's eyes, a flash of her ankle, a twirl of her skirts could do the same." Bobinôt is the character who endures the least change in the story in terms of romantic interest: he loves Calixta from beginning to end. Fortunately for Bobinôt, Calixta reluctantly accepts his advances at the end of the story, and he is elated. - Character: Clarisse. Description: Clarisse is a beautiful, young Creole woman—"dainty as a lily; hardy as a sunflower; slim, tall, graceful, like one of the reeds that grew in the marsh." She is the goddaughter of Madame Laballière and the love interest of Alcée. Clarisse serves as a foil to Calixta: while the latter is an unrestrained "little Spanish vixen," Clarisse is a tall and refined lady. Clarisse initially rejects Alcée's advances not from lack of romantic feeling, but from a sense of propriety. Alcée's "hot, blistering love-words" are simply too much for a lady to bear. Clarisse has a strong sense of decorum that readers can see through her disapproval for Alcée's going to the ball: "The 'Cadian ball […] Humph! Par exemple! Nice conduc' for a Laballière." Clarisse considers those attending the ball to be of a lower social station. Alcée's presence at the ball drives Clarisse to accept his advances at the end of the story, out of fear that he might redirect his interest to Calixta. - Theme: Love vs. Attraction. Description: In "At the 'Cadian Ball," Kate Chopin draws a clear distinction between love and attraction. In the story, attraction generally takes the form of flirtation while love takes the form of devotion. Bobinôt's feelings and behavior towards Calixta exemplify love; although she pays no attention to him throughout most of the story, Bobinôt remains smitten and delights in any recognition Calixta shows him. On the other hand, Alcée Laballiére shows how this kind of love differs from simple attraction. Alcée is attracted to Calixta, as seen by their flirtatious interaction on the gallery bench. However, Alcée loves Clarisse: as soon as she shows up at the ball and asks Alcée to come home, he complies and no longer thinks of Calixta. Through these two men and their behavior at the ball, Chopin demonstrates that attraction is merely a superficial, momentary feeling, while love requires fidelity, responsibility, and practical gestures of devotion.   Chopin dedicates the introduction of "At the 'Cadian Ball" to Bobinôt's love for Calixta, and this love remains unchanging throughout the story. Towards the beginning of the story, readers learn that Bobinôt did not initially intend to go to the ball. Nevertheless, he decides to go after hearing that Alcée will be in attendance: "A drink or two could put the devil in [Alcée's] head [...] a gleam from Calixta's eyes, a flash of her ankle, a twirl of her skirts could do the same." Through Bobinôt's ultimate decision to attend the ball, he demonstrates that he feels a sense of responsibility when it comes to Calixta—he feels the need to protect her from flirtatious people like Alcée, even if attending will be unpleasant for Bobinôt himself. At the ball, Calixta makes a cruel jest at the expense of Bobinôt: "Hé, Bobinôt! Mais w'at 's the matta? W'at you standin' planté là like ole Ma'ame Tina's cow in the bog, you?" Calixta's taunt generates "a clamor of laughter at his expense." However, instead of feeling anger or humiliation, Bobinôt joins in the laughter "good-naturedly," feeling that "it was better to receive even such notice as that from Calixta than none at all." Furthermore, despite this taunt, Bobinôt remains on guard for Calixta. When she disappears with Alcée to the gallery, Bobinôt goes to look for her, "peering uneasily and searchingly into the darkness." Through this, readers can see Bobinôt's unwavering sense of responsibility when it comes to his beloved. After the ball, Bobinôt walks Calixta home despite her continued rudeness to him. When she accepts his feelings with a flippant "well, if you want [to marry me], yet, I don't care, me," Bobinôt's face shines with "the glow of a sudden and overwhelming happiness." She refuses his request for a kiss, but he is perfectly satisfied. Despite Calixta's impertinence, Bobinôt remains steadfast in his devotion and is willing to marry her. In this way, Bobinôt exemplifies unwavering love in the story.  Similar to Bobinôt, Alcée Laballière also demonstrates himself capable of being a steadfast lover, in his case to Clarisse. However, he also shows exemplifies a different kind of romantic relationship: flirtation based purely on attraction. Readers can see Alcée's capacity for superficial flirtation from his interactions with Calixta at the ball. Devastated by the cyclone that destroyed his crops, Alcée goes to the ball most likely hoping to find simple distraction. Calixta, the belle of the ball, catches his eye and the two soon have a tryst on the balcony. The narrator notes that "they were acting like fools," playing a game with Calixta's jewelry as a front for physical affection. Alcée is also very smooth with his words: when a servant informs him about the arrival of a visitor, Alcée responds, "I wouldn't go out to the road to see the Angel Gabriel." However, when Clarisse comes to fetch him, he immediately leaves "without a word, without a glance back at [Calixta]." Indeed, the narrator relates that "he had forgotten he was leaving her there." Alcée makes no lasting gestures of devotion to Calixta—he merely uses sweet words and playful flirtation. Alcée's verbal dexterity when it comes to Calixta forms a striking contrast with his verbal clumsiness around Clarisse. The narrator describes his initial confession of love to Clarisse as " a volley of hot, blistering love-words into her face." Through Alcée's varying verbal capacities, the story suggests that the true indicator of love does not come from words, but rather from caring gestures like the ones Bobinôt makes toward Calixta. Indeed, when it comes to love, Alcée turns out to be a man of devotion. On their way home from the ball, Clarisse confesses her love to Alcée so that "he thought the face of the Universe was changed—like Bobinôt." Here, the story draws a parallel between Alcée's feelings towards Clarisse and Bobinôt's passionate devotion to Calixta, reiterating that Alcée's feelings for Clarisse can be none other than love. Indeed, Clarisse's confession leads him to forget not only Calixta, but also the cyclone that felt life-changing mere hours ago. Alcée views Clarisse as "the one, the only great reality in the world," implying that only she is worthy of his utmost devotion. The fact that he leaves the ball with her without a second thought underscores the idea that genuine love shows itself largely through actions, not words or empty flirtations. Through the characters of Bobinôt and Alcée and the varying affections they feel for their romantic interests, Chopin demonstrates the difference between attraction and love. Attraction is a superficial, momentary, and forgettable moment of intimacy; Calixta and Alcée may talk and laugh "as lovers do," but that doesn't mean they really love each other. On the other hand, the story argues, love is a profound and lasting feeling that goes beyond words; it shows up in caring gestures and proven dedication over time. - Theme: Decorum, Impropriety, and Feminism. Description: Chopin wrote "At the 'Cadian Ball" in 1892, during the end of the Victorian era, in which people placed high value on decorum and good manners. Individuals (especially women) of at least modest standing were generally expected to be mild-mannered and polite. Calixta is neither of these qualities; though a lady, she is unrestrained and sometimes rather rude. However, despite her impropriety, Calixta is popular and, for the most part, well-liked. Chopin is known for being a forerunner of 20th-century feminist writers in America; her works often deal with sensitive and daring women who defy social standards. Calixta is one such figure: she is an outspoken woman who refuses to adhere to the rules of society imposed by men and, still, she is accepted. Through Calixta, the story makes the feminist argument that a woman can succeed in her society without conforming to standards set by others. Calixta exhibits "poor" behavior throughout the story. By contemporary standards, her behavior is nothing very notable, but the story makes it clear that by late 19th-century standards, her behavior is distasteful. The first demonstration of Calixta's impropriety takes the form of Bobinôt recalling an anecdote about the previous year's Assumption mass. Calixta and her friend Fronie got into a fight "about a lover," and Calixta "swore roundly in fine 'Cadian French and with true Spanish spirit, and slapped Fronie's face." During the late-19th century, society considered it rude for even men to swear in front of women. Thus, Calixta's verbal effrontery is quite shocking. Moreover, she physically attacks Fronie in public, again defying her society's ideas of how she should behave. At the ball, Calixta insults Bobinôt's dancing with an unflattering comparison: "Hé, Bobinôt! Mais w'at 's the matta? W'at you standin' planté là like ole Ma'ame Tina's cow in the bog, you?" By contemporary standards, this statement may only seem mildly inappropriate. However, through the character of Madame Suzonne, readers learn that such a statement, when coming from a lady, ought to result in punishment for its speaker. After Calixta's insult, Madame Suzonne "whispered to her neighbor that if Ozéina were to conduct herself in a like manner, she should immediately be taken out to the mule cart and driven home." From Madame Suzonne's reaction, readers can gather that Calixta's behavior is unacceptable by her society's standards. Furthermore, by late-19th century standards, Calixta's behavior with Alcée on the gallery is quite improper. This impropriety contrasts sharply with Clarisse's more restrained behavior. After Alcée declares his love to Clarisse, she disdainfully exclaims "Monsieur!" ("Mister!")  and "Par exemple!" ("For example!"), while "looking him full in the eyes, without a quiver" with "the chill of her calm, clear eyes." From Clarisse, readers can see that an unmarried woman's response to a man's advances ought to be reserved. However, Calixta freely enjoys Alcee's attention when he flirts with her at the ball. Again, Calixta's lack of restraint renders her quite the opposite of the ideal late-19th century woman. Despite her improper behavior, Calixta is generally accepted by the people around her, showing that a woman can do well in the world without conforming to the rules and standards that society has set for her. Indeed, though Calixta lacks the characteristics of an ideal woman (and doesn't dress as nicely as the other ladies at the ball), many men find her attractive. Bobinôt, of course, is smitten, but what's more, "all the men agreed she was at her best [at the ball]." After all, she is full of "such animation! and abandon! such flashes of wit!" Through the men's admiration for Calixta, it becomes clear that she is liked and sought-after despite her nonconformity. It's worth noting that "the women did not always approve of Calixta." Still, she is generally welcomed by the younger generation of women. For one thing, "she and Fronie had quite forgotten the battle on the church steps and were friends again." Furthermore, when Clarisse comes to fetch Alcée, she greets Calixta quite cordially: "Ah, c'est vous, Calixta? Comment ça va, mon enfant?" (Is that you, Calixta? How are things going, my dear?). Through Calixta's interactions with Fronie and Clarisse, the narrator shows readers that Calixta is not only accepted by men who find her attractive, but also by the younger women at the ball. The contrast between these young women and the older women who disapprove of Calixta also hints that there's something modern about Calixta's behavior; it's as if her more liberated way of being a woman is a glimpse of how Chopin expects the world to be in the future. The story also mentions that the characters in "At the 'Cadian Ball" excuse Calixta's improper behavior because of her foreign blood, as seen through statements like "c'est Espagnol, ça" ("it's the Spanish in her") and "bon chien tient de race" ("blood will tell"). Statements like these show that the characters in the story perceive feminine decorum to be the product of culture, rather than a universal standard that all women must meet. This perspective suggests that standards of femininity are always changing along with the evolution of culture, so perhaps a woman who doesn't follow those standards is simply defying culture rather than failing morally. "At the 'Cadian Ball" uses the character of Calixta to show that a woman need not conform to societal standards if she wants to be accepted. Decorum and impropriety, in terms of feminine standards, are merely cultural and could change over time. Though Calixta is the story's primary example of this feminist message, Clarisse also embodies it in her own way, by running after Alcée and straightforwardly confessing her love to him. Through Clarisse, Chopin extends the story's argument to subtly suggest that society is changing to accommodate bolder behavior by all women—not just exceptions like Calixta. - Theme: Naturalism. Description: Literary naturalism refers to a sort of extreme realism, where natural forces predetermine characters' decisions. "At the 'Cadian Ball" demonstrates this naturalism in the deterministic way that Chopin portrays the events of the story. Throughout the story, many events occur in a cause-and-effect sequence, and characters don't really seem make their own decisions—it is as if nature guides them. Chopin's decision to employ naturalism in "At the 'Cadian Ball" may be seen as an attempt to counter certain aspects of Victorian literature that were prominent earlier in the 19th century. Many Victorian writers created characters who transcend their circumstances through either a good heart or a providential change in fate. By contrast, Chopin creates characters who are heavily impacted by their surroundings and circumstances, suggesting that people can't simply choose what happens to them; rather, the story argues that broad external forces like nature and society play crucial roles in determining an individual's fate. In the first part of the story, Bobinôt is a prime example of a character whose fate is determined by natural forces. Bobinôt does not seem to relish the fact that he loves Calixta. Indeed, it seems that if it were his choice, he would sooner love another woman: "Why could he not love Ozéina, who would marry him to-morrow; or Fronie, or one of a dozen others, rather than that little Spanish vixen?" The narrator implies that Bobinôt could easily win the hand of another woman. However, nature has determined that he should be overwhelmingly attracted to Calixta, with her "voice like a rich contralto song, with cadences in it that must have been taught by Satan." Calixta has bewitched Bobinôt (perhaps even by supernatural means, as the reference to Satan suggests), and he is not free to love anyone except her. Despite his love for Calixta, Bobinôt had originally decided not to go to the ball.  Nevertheless, while shopping at Friedheimer's store, "he heard someone say that Alcée Laballière would be there." After hearing this, Bobinôt decides to go to the ball out of a sense of responsibility for Calixta and a desire to protect her from Alcée, who could get "the devil in his head" after some drinks. Here, Bobinôt ends up doing something totally different than what he intended and feels that he has no choice about it—his environment seems to have decided his fate. Alcée Laballière is probably the most overt example of a naturalistic character in "At the 'Cadian Ball"—in a very literal sense, nature changes his fate. At the beginning of Alcée's narrative, readers learn that "that was the year that [he] put nine hundred acres in rice," but then "the cyclone came [and] cut into the rice like fine steel." For a farmer, such a disaster could be nothing short of devastating; Alcée lost his crops and, consequently, his income. This loss, combined with Clarisse's rejection, leads Alcée to go to the ball in order to relieve stress, and the story notes: "what he did not show outwardly was that he was in the mood for ugly things to-night." In other words, Alcée is looking to seduce a woman to alleviate his frustrations with Clarisse and the cyclone—both forces beyond his control. The excitement of the ball leads Alcée to flirt intimately with Calixta on the gallery. However, his flirtation appears to be more the result of instinct—of nature—rather than rational decision-making; the two are "acting like fools." When Clarisse comes to fetch him, Alcée immediately changes: "For an instant confusion reigned in Alcée's thoughts, as with one who awakes suddenly from a dream." It is as if Clarisse, one force of nature, has derailed Calixta, another force of nature. Alcée is simply caught in the middle of everything, powerless against these forces.    On the surface, it may seem like Calixta is not a naturalistic character; she defies societal conventions and seems outwardly in charge of her own fate. However, the latter half of "At the 'Cadian Ball" reveals that even Calixta is, in the end, the product of her circumstances. Calixta is drawn to Alcée under the magic of the ball, in the same way that Alcée is drawn to her. For Calixta, the handsome Alcée is also a force of nature: "Calixta's senses were reeling; and they well-nigh left her when she felt Alcée's lips brush against her ear like the touch of a rose." The narrator compares Alcée's charm to that of a rose, underscoring this moment's connection to nature in its instinctual irresistibility. It is important to note that Calixta most likely has no intention of engaging in an enduring attachment with Alcée. Indeed, when Alcée asks her if she plans on marrying Bobinôt, she responds, "I don't say no, me." Calixta's noncommittal attraction to Alcée is comparable to a sort of animal instinct, something beyond her rational control. Calixta's eventual acceptance of Bobinôt most likely arises as a result of the events of the ball. It is clear that she feels rejected when Alcée leaves her for Clarisse. When Alcée turns back to say goodnight and shake hands, "she [pretends] not to see it." This rejection spurs her to accept the advances of a man who has eyes for no one but herself: Bobinôt. It is interesting to note that after rejecting Alcée's offer for a handshake, Calixta, after accepting Bobinôt, "[holds] out her hand in the business-like manner of a man who clinches a bargain with a hand-clasp." Circumstances have caused Calixta to accept a man she was previously unsure of, and she does so in the least romantic, most matter-of-fact way possible. "At the 'Cadian Ball" depicts characters in a naturalistic manner: Bobinôt, Alcée, and Calixta are not in control of their fates, even as they shape each other's. In this way, the lives of these characters resemble the lives of real people: the story reminds readers that circumstances are often beyond humans' control, and Chopin suggests that fiction should reflect this reality. - Climax: Clarisse arrives at the 'Cadian ball. - Summary: "At the 'Cadian Ball" follows the lives of two young men, Bobinôt and Alcée, and two young women, Calixta and Clarisse, in Louisiana during the late 19th century. Bobinôt is an Acadian farmer who is desperately in love with an unruly but beautiful young woman in his community, Calixta. As his affections are unreciprocated, he decides to refrain from attending the upcoming ball, though he knows Calixta will be there. However, after hearing that Alcée, a handsome young Creole planter, will be attending the ball, Bobinôt becomes worried that Alcée will seduce Calixta and decides to go as well. The story then shifts to Alcée, who lives on a plantation with his mother, Madame Laballière, and her beautiful goddaughter, Clarisse. Alcée confessed his love to Clarisse a few days prior to the story's present in an outburst of passion, and a scandalized Clarisse rejected him. Right after the rejection, a cyclone destroys the 900 acres of rice crops that Alcée planted. These two unfortunate events lead a despairing Alcée to attend the ball, in hopes of relieving his frustrations. Alcée leaves his plantation for the ball around midnight, with the help of his black manservant, Bruce. Clarisse incidentally witnesses Alcée's departure and calls out to Bruce from the gallery to ask where Alcée went. After asking many times, she finally learns from a reluctant Bruce that Alcée went to the ball. Scandalized and disturbed, she returns to the house. At the ball, Alcée's presence causes quite the stir: men admire him for showing his face after losing his crops to the cyclone and women admire him for his good looks, charm and wealth. Eventually, Alcée and Calixta escape to the gallery for a rendezvous, and flirtation ensues. Bobinôt tries to find Calixta but fails. Alcée witnesses this and asks Calixta if she will marry Bobinôt and she replies with a noncommittal answer. The two continue to flirt on the gallery and Calixta continues to fall for Alcée's charms until a servant interrupts and informs Alcée of a visitor. Alcée brusquely dismisses the servant and continues to flirt with Calixta. Then, Clarisse appears, startling Alcée, and asks him to come home while refusing to tell him what is wrong. He readily complies and heads home with Clarisse, forgetting Calixta and leaving her on the balcony. Bobinôt finds a dejected Calixta on the gallery and offers to walk her home, a proposal she accepts with indifference. On their way home, she halfheartedly tells Bobinôt that she is willing to marry him, and Bobinôt is elated. The story then switches to Alcée and Clarisse. Alcée has not stopped asking Clarisse what is wrong. When they temporarily make a stop, she replies that she was afraid he might go to Assumption, where he would be with Calixta. After some prompting from Alcée, she finally admits that she loves him. Alcée, thrilled, forgets all about Calixta and the cyclone, and the two continue home together. In the distance, they hear shots ringing out, signaling the end of the ball.

- Genre: Historical fiction - Title: Atonement - Point of view: Limited 3rd person - Setting: England and France; before, during, and after World War II - Character: Briony Tallis. Description: Briony is the novel's protagonist. At the novel's outset, she is a precocious girl with a gift for writing. However she is also a petulant child, both naïve and certain of her understanding, and her selfish stubbornness leads her to misinterpret a romantic encounter between her sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner. This jealous misconception leads her to wrongly implicate Robbie in the rape of her cousin, Lola Quincey, a crime for which Robbie serves three years in prison. Later in the book, Briony becomes a nurse and works to make up for the wrongs she has committed against Robbie. Towards the end of the novel, it is revealed that she has written the story o of the novel in an attempt to atone for the damages she has caused and rectify the falsehoods she spread. She narrates the book's conclusion as an elderly woman who has been diagnosed with encroaching terminal dementia. - Character: Robbie Turner. Description: The bright, attractive, and ambitious son of Grace Turner, who is the Tallis family's charlady. Robbie is studying at Cambridge to be a doctor, and his education is funded by the Tallises, who treat him like a son. He is also passionately in love with Cecilia Tallis. However, he is wrongly imprisoned when Briony misidentifies him as the man who raped Lola. After three years in prison, he enlists to fight in World War II in exchange for a reduced sentence. Later in the novel, Briony finds him at Cecilia's apartment and attempts to make amends, though he is clearly still furious with Briony. Though still later in the novel it is revealed that Briony invented this encounter as a kind of atonement, to give him a life with Cecilia even though he was in fact killed in combat. - Character: Cecilia Tallis. Description: Briony's free-spirited sister. Early in the novel she realizes, somewhat to her surprise, that she is in love with Robbie Turner. When Briony's incrimination of Robbie alienates him from the Tallis family, Cecilia cuts off her own ties to her family and promises to wait for Robbie. She becomes a nurse, which likely inspires her younger sister to do the same. Briony and Cecilia have a limited re-connection during the war, as Briony tries unsuccessfully to legally take back her false testimony against Robbie. However, at the very end of the novel, Briony explains that Cecilia was in fact killed during a bombing raid on London, shortly after Robbie was killed in combat. - Character: Lola Quincey. Description: Briony's blasé cousin, two years her senior. She is raped by Paul Marshall, and is so shaken by the assault that she accepts Briony's assertion that Robbie Turner was the culprit even though it seems clear that she knows that Paul was her assailant. Lola later marries Paul, despite the fact that she raped her, in what is implied is a kind of agreement to both hide their complicity in Robbie's false indictment and because marriage to Paul will make her wealthy. She becomes a well-known London socialite. - Character: Paul Marshall. Description: A somewhat dull friend of Leon's who is heir to a chocolate-making fortune. His family company manufactures Amo bars. When he visits the Tallis family at the beginning of the book, the family initially imagines that he might be a good match for Cecilia. She is uninterested in him, however, and he notices Lola's good looks even though she is fifteen years old. Paul rapes Lola but lets the blame fall upon Robbie. Later, he marries Lola—which, it is implied, is a kind of deal that gains Lola's allegiance despite his rape of her by making her wealthy and allowing them both to hide their role's in Robbie's false indictment. He eventually becomes a philanthropist and fixture of London high society. - Character: Emily Tallis. Description: Briony and Cecilia's mother, and the wife of Jack Tallis. She is a relatively hands-free parent, in part because she suffers from debilitating migraines. She is something of a snob, and less enthusiastic than her husband about the Tallis family's efforts to fund Robbie's education. She also resents her sister—Lola's mother—who she sees as always stealing attention. - Character: Jack Tallis. Description: Briony and Cecilia's father, and the husband of Emily Tallis. Mr. Tallis is an absent parent because his work as a high-ranking government bureaucrat consumes most of his time, particularly during the tensions leading up to World War II. Mr. Tallis appears to be a kind, principled man—he funds Robbie Turner's education and supports his mother, Grace, who works as a housecleaner at the Tallis estate—but he abruptly ends his aid to Robbie when the boy is falsely blamed for raping Lola. - Character: Pierrot and Jackson Quincey. Description: Pierrot and Jackson are Lola's twin younger brothers. At the book's beginning, they appear as rowdy and capricious preadolescent boys, and the drama that takes place passes over their heads. Pierrot returns at the end of the book, when he leads his grandchildren in a performance of Briony's play, The Tales of Arabella, to honor Briony's birthday. - Theme: Perspective. Description: The most essential theme of Atonement is the way an individual's perspective inevitably shapes his or her reality. At various points throughout the novel, McEwan filters the narrative through a particular character's point of view. By juxtaposing the distinct, and frequently conflicting, ways his characters understand the world, the author illustrates that each individual's reality is as much a product of their own biases, assumptions, and limited knowledge as it is a reflection of an objective, external truth.The most powerful and consequential example of perspective influencing reality is Briony's inaccurate incrimination of Robbie. A long chain of self-centered reasoning leads the young girl to believe that Robbie is responsible for raping Lola. First, her resentment at being excluded from Robbie and Cecilia's mutual love predisposes her to view Robbie negatively. Later on, her childish imagination leads her to fabricate a sinister backstory to explain why she saw Robbie and Cecilia cavorting semi-clothed in the fountain together. These biases in turn drive her to surreptitiously read the lewd letter Robbie accidentally sends to Cecilia and conclude that the young man is a depraved maniac. Together, these hasty conclusions and unnoticed biases make Briony convince herself that she saw Robbie assault Lola, and attest this misconception to the police. At this point, Briony's flawed perspective combines with the incomplete perspectives and biases held by authority figures like the police and Mrs. Tallis, and this is all it takes to fabricate a reality in which Robbie is guilty—even though that reality has no basis in actual fact.However, even though Briony's biased reality certainly causes the furthest-reaching repercussions, McEwan shows that no character is capable of seeing the world in a truly objective, balanced way. For example, despite being so deeply harmed by others' hasty judgments, Robbie and Cecilia themselves (snobbishly) assume that the servant Danny Hardman was Lola's true rapist, even though the facts indicate otherwise. Through this and other shifts in perspective, McEwan illustrates the crucial, yet capricious, role that narrative plays in our individual understandings of truth. - Theme: Guilt. Description: As the book's title suggests, guilt is a primary theme of Atonement. After she realizes the damage that her callous testimony has wrought, Briony spends a lifetime burdened by her guilt and attempting to atone for her misdeeds. Instead of going to college, she becomes a nurse, perhaps sensing a duty to help soldiers like Robbie. She worries endlessly about whether Robbie will be harmed in the line of duty, understanding that any injuries he suffers will be in some way her fault. Moreover, she is haunted by the pain she has caused her sister by slandering her beloved and forcing the two lovers apart. What's more, as the book's conclusion reveals, Briony has written the entire novel in an attempt to exonerate Robbie and atone for her lies.Since McEwan casts guilt as such a powerful and universal human sentiment, it is worth noting that Robbie's wartime experience often forces him to forego feelings of guilt in the interest of self-preservation. In this way, the author shows that Robbie has been somewhat dehumanized as a consequence of Briony's childish misconduct. Because Robbie's own fate has been determined largely by factors outside of his control, a portion of his capacity for guilt seems to have been transferred to the person who precipitated his misfortune: Briony. Similarly, Lola actually ends up marrying her rapist, Paul Marshall, and the implication is that in doing so these two characters are both able to hide or escape their guilt in allowing Robbie to be falsely accused, and that Paul is able to further hide his own rape of Lola in exchange for making Lola, the daughter of a divorcee, wealthy by marrying her. - Theme: Class. Description: The tension that drives the book's early plot is the scandalous love affair between the wealthy, well-bred Cecilia Tallis and the low-class Robbie Turner, the son of one of her family's servants. Although Robbie has been largely incorporated into the Tallis family, both by growing up alongside the Tallis children and by enjoying a stellar education sponsored by the family, he is nevertheless an outsider. Robbie's future depends on the charity of the Tallises. His outsider status undeniably contributes to the swift and uncompromising isolation he experiences after Briony accuses him of raping Lola.McEwan emphasizes that an individual's social status has little correlation with his or her moral and intellectual worth. The chocolate heir Paul Marshall's high social status likely allows him to escape suspicion for the crime he committed, and he never acknowledges his misdeed, and in fact even "buys" his way out of trouble by marrying, and thereby making rich, the girl he raped. Meanwhile, low-born Robbie is one of the brightest and kindest characters in the novel. However, while he may be morally and intellectually exceptional, Robbie's low class does inhibit him from exercising the power to choose his own fate that other, higher-status characters do throughout the novel. Instead, he is left at the mercy of a biased system while other, more morally reprehensible characters go unpunished largely because of their greater social clout. And, further, Robbie is also not immune to class prejudice, as he assumes the even lower class Danny Hardman raped Lola, never imagining that it might have been Paul Marshall who did it. - Theme: Lost Innocence. Description: As Atonement's characters develop over the course of the novel and are inured to the sufferings of the adult world, they grow progressively less innocent. This universal loss of innocence is largely catalyzed by Lola's rape and Briony's false testimony. As a 13-year-old, Briony naively believes that she understands love and virtue and can flawlessly interpret her surroundings—and her incorrect interpretations have disastrous consequences. Briony's false testimony against Robbie is innocent in the sense that she cannot fully comprehend the harm it will cause, but after she maligns him, she is fundamentally changed. She will never be able to retrieve the naïve perspective she held at the beginning of the book. As her innocence is shaken by further exposure to an unforgiving world, particularly her experience nursing injured soldiers back to health, Briony grows less and less confident in her own perspective and more open to understanding the perceptions of others.Lola, of course, also loses innocence when Paul rapes her. Not only is she traumatically introduced to a violent, unsafe world, in the aftermath she allows herself to become complicit in Briony's lie. This complicity compounds itself further when Lola marries her rapist, Paul. From then on, she must consider her victimization from a coldly pragmatic perspective—to allow the truth to surface would undermine her husband, and her own high social station which she gained through the marriage. In this way, Lola's rape precipitates far-reaching psychological changes that make it impossible for her to regain the youthful perspective she held previously.Robbie and Cecilia, the two people most directly harmed by Briony's lie, also lose a great deal of innocence as a result. Once a promising medical student, Robbie is instead forced by jail time and wartime to focus his attention on his own survival. Instead of cultivating his intellect and learning to treat suffering, he must overlook others' suffering to ensure that he escapes France alive. In a matter of hours, Briony's testimony turns Cecilia's naïve infatuation with Robbie into bitter resentment of her own family. Of course, most importantly of all, when this innocence is lost, it cannot be replaced. Briony cannot amend her misdeeds with her writing, nor can she legally exonerate Robbie by revising her testimony. - Theme: The Unchangeable Past. Description: The most important plot developments in the work stem from actions or experiences that can never be erased or counteracted. Once Briony testifies against Robbie, she takes on a responsibility for Robbie's fate that she will never be able to shed, and she loses an innocence that she will never be able to regain. No matter what she does to atone for her misdeed, she will not be able to replace the future—love with Cecilia, being a doctor—that she has stolen from Robbie's life.Not surprisingly, Briony's accusation leaves an indelible mark on Robbie, too. As a consequence of his imprisonment, he is unable to continue his prestigious education and must instead enlist in the military. The violence and suffering that Robbie witnesses in the war traumatize him and permanently alter his temperament. Similarly, after Briony works her first shift in the hospital caring for seriously wounded soldiers, she feels as though she has crossed into a new stage of maturity and worldliness from which she can never return.This theme of irretrievability meshes interestingly with the novel's theme of individual perspective. In many ways, the most irrevocable changes in the novel come when characters lose the ability to perceive their realities in a certain way. For example, as an aging Briony reflects on her past, she no longer sees the world with the tragically narcissistic perspective she held as a child—and in this way, her new perspective irretrievably reshapes the reality of her life. - Theme: Stories and Literature. Description: The end of the book reveals that all of Atonement is a semi-autobiographical novel that Briony has written decades after her youthful mistakes took place. This framing device gives new signifying power to the self-conscious storytelling and narration that appear throughout the plot. As Briony grows up, her approach to storytelling evolves to reflect her maturity as a human being. When she is a petulant teenager, Briony obsesses about mastering her surroundings and peers: she wants The Trials of Arabella to turn out exactly how she envisioned it, and the wants Robbie and Cecilia's interactions to fit nicely into a storyline of her own devising. Her self-centered musings—"was everyone else really as alive as she was?"—indicate that she is largely insensitive to others' perspectives, and instead is quick to impose her own narrative on what she perceives. To her, everyone else is just a character in he story. Briony's narrow-minded and automatic judgment of others has disastrous consequences. Briony, in response to witnessing events she does not properly understand, constructs a story in which Robbie is a thoroughgoing villain. This story soon spirals out of her control—much like the Trials of Arabella did—and leads to Robbie's years of imprisonment.Later on, Briony again crafts stories—only this time, she relies on her writing to come to terms with the hurt she has caused. Her first attempts are too simplistic: she submits to a magazine a piece about witnessing Cecilia and Robbie's encounter at the fountain, and the magazine's rejection letter encourages her to delve deeper into the harms the naïve witness might bring to the older lovers. However, at the end of the novel, Briony is more prepared to reconcile with her past through writing. The entire book is an illustration of the deep power of writing and storytelling: Briony can use her writing to reframe her past misdeeds, empathize with the consciousness of others, and even bring Robbie and Cecilia back to life. Nevertheless, Briony's adult writings remain as unable to affect reality as her childish flights of fancy. Though she seeks to attain "atonement" through her semi-autobiographical reflections, she does not have to power to remake the past and remedy her harmful actions. One of Briony's final reflections captures this tension between the novelist's absolute control of narrative and simultaneous powerlessness over history: "how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal top or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. There is nothing outside her." She ultimately comes to believe that literature both can and can't offer atonement, that it will not change the world but that the doomed effort to do so through literature is what matters. - Climax: Briony Tallis's false testimony, condemning Robbie Turner for the rape of Lola Quincey - Summary: Briony Tallis is a literary, self-important 13-year-old who lives in an English country estate in 1935. Her cousins, 15-year-old Lola Quincey and 9-year-old twins Jackson and Pierrot Quincey, are coming to stay with the Tallises because their parents are embroiled in a divorce. Meanwhile, Briony's older sister Cecilia holds unresolved romantic feelings for Robbie Turner, the Tallises' gardener (Robbie's romantic feelings for Cecilia, meanwhile, are passionately resolved). Thanks to the Tallises' funding, Robbie studies with Cecilia at Cambridge and plans to become a doctor. From a window of the estate, Briony witnesses the two of them accidentally break a family heirloom vase in front of a fountain. When Cecilia removes her clothes in front of Robbie to retrieve the shards from the fountain, Briony starts to think Robbie is a threat to her sister. Later, Robbie gives Briony a letter of apology to give to Cecilia, but accidentally hands her a vulgar draft instead. Briony reads the letter and becomes convinced Robbie is a menace. When Robbie realizes his error, he goes to Cecilia to apologize. This apology turns to passionate lovemaking in the family library. Briony enters the room and interrupts, further cementing her resentment and suspicion of Robbie. The family gathers for a dinner to commemorate the visit of Leon, the oldest Tallis child. He has brought a friend, Paul Marshall, with him. Paul is the heir to a chocolate fortune. The twins leave the dinner table, and leave a letter behind explaining they have run away from the house because they miss their parents. The guests assemble search parties to look for the boys on the grounds. Briony, searching alone, finds Lola being raped in a remote part of the estate. The assailant runs away before Briony can identify him, but as she consoles Lola she convinces both Lola and herself that she saw Robbie commit the crime. Briony leads Lola back to the house and delivers her story to all the adults present. Policemen arrive and Briony testifies that she saw Robbie commit the crime. After many hours, Robbie returns to the house with the twins; he had been searching for them alone all night. When he gets back, he is taken into police custody. Part Two resumes after Robbie has served three and a half years in prison for Lola's assault. During that time, he has been in constant correspondence with Cecilia, even though she has not been allowed to visit him in person. She has cut ties with her family and started a career as a nurse. Cecilia's latest letter informs Robbie that Briony has contacted her in the hopes of retracting the false testimony she made years earlier. The outbreak of World War II allows Robbie to end his sentence by enlisting in the army. He goes to fight in France. When Part Two begins, he must walk to the coast with his comrades Corporal Nettle and Corporal Mace in order to evacuate with the British forces. During this walk, the men behold disturbing carnage. Despite having a painful shrapnel wound, Robbie makes it to the coast and is evacuated. Part Three focuses on Briony, who has foregone college to work as a nurse during the war. Work is demanding, and she is intimidated by her overseer, Nurse Drummond. An influx of injured men from the French evacuation arrives to the hospital, and the harrowing experience of treating them causes Briony to mature. In her rare free time, Briony writes stories, which she submits to magazines unsuccessfully. A letter from her father informs Briony that Paul and Lola are to be married. She attends their wedding and, afterwards, pays a visit to Cecilia. Unexpectedly, Robbie is present as well. The atmosphere is tense, but Briony agrees to take the steps necessary to alert her family and the relevant legal authorities of her change in testimony. Cecilia and Robbie see Briony off, and Briony understands that after she finishes the tasks she agreed to, she must begin an in-depth process of "atonement." The book's epilogue reveals that this atonement process was to write the preceding novel itself. Briony, now 77, narrates in the first person. She has just been diagnosed with irreversible dementia. She describes going to a library to donate her correspondence with Corporal Nettle—used to write this book—and afterwards attends a birthday party thrown by her surviving relatives, including Pierrot and Leon. While Briony longs to publish her memoir, she cannot do so while Paul and Lola remain alive. They are now well-connected socialites and will doubtless sue her for libel. Briony admits that her novelization has changed some details—for example, Robbie and Cecilia both actually perished in the war, but her fiction allowed them to live—but she reflects that even though achieving atonement will be impossible for her, her attempt to do so is indispensable.

- Genre: Novel, African-American Autobiography - Title: Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man - Point of view: First-person - Setting: The Eastern Seaboard of the United States (primarily Georgia, Connecticut, Florida, and New York) and European cities (Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Berlin) from roughly the 1870s through the 1910s. - Character: The Narrator or "Ex-Colored Man". Description: The unnamed protagonist and narrator of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is a racially ambiguous businessman with a remarkable aptitude for music, languages, and navigating various cultural and racial communities. He is born in Georgia to a black sewing-girl and the son of the prominent white family that either employs or enslaves her, but his mother raises him in a relatively integrated town in Connecticut, where he does not even realize he is black until his schoolteacher teacher separates the students by race one day. After his mother's death, the narrator moves back to Georgia but ends up working at a cigar factory in Florida, then gambling and playing both classical and ragtime music full-time in New York City and Europe. When he realizes that he might be able to translate black folk songs into classical genres, he returns to Georgia; but his trip is again cut short when he witnesses a man get lynched. Horrified, he becomes so ashamed of the United States' "brutality and savagery" toward blacks that he decides to save himself from racism and live as a white man in New York. In the final chapter, his barriers to success melt away, and he earns a decent living and builds a family with a white woman, the only person in his new life who knows his secret. After his wife's death, the narrator realizes in the book's closing lines that, by disavowing his blackness, he has prioritized the comforts of white privilege over his duty to fight for justice and potential to make history improving the conditions of African-American life. - Character: The Narrator's Mother. Description: A black sewing-girl either employed or enslaved by the prominent Georgia family that includes the narrator's father. After moving to Connecticut with the narrator to ensure that he can get a quality education, she sews around the clock to pay the family's bills and plays the narrator songs at night, sparking his interest in music. Even though the narrator's father sent her North in secret, and with little support, she nevertheless shows nothing but goodwill when she tells the narrator stories about him. Her loving, supportive relationship with the narrator is tragically cut short when she falls sick and dies shortly after he graduates high school in the third chapter. - Character: The Narrator's Father. Description: A seemingly powerful white man from a prominent Southern family with a taste for shiny shoes and expensive jewelry, the narrator's father only appears vaguely in his childhood memories and then twice more in the book. First, he visits during the narrator's school years and they have an awkward exchange—he is proud of the narrator's musical and academic achievements, but the narrator does not even feel enough of a connection to call him "father." Years later, the narrator realizes he is sitting next to his father and a woman who must be his sister at the Grand Opera in Paris. Realizing that he must not reveal the secret of his illegitimate birth and therefore cannot talk to his father, the narrator leaves the Opera and drinks himself "into a stupor." - Character: "Shiny". Description: The narrator's schoolmate, who is by far the best student in their school and later becomes a prominent professor. The narrator immediately notices his "black as night" skin and shining features. At their primary school graduation ceremony, "Shiny" passionately delivers Wendell Phillips' lecture "Toussaint L'Ouverture" to the audience of mostly white parents, stunning them despite his tiny frame and ill-fitting clothes. Much later, he runs into the now "ex-colored" narrator and his girlfriend at the Eden Musée in New York; he seems to understand the narrator's intent to "pass" and does not reveal the truth. "Shiny" represents the class of black intellectual elites fighting for racial justice—unlike many of the other black elites in this book (like the Washington Physician), who are satisfied enough with their own upward mobility or even blame poorer blacks for their condition. - Character: The Millionaire. Description: A mysterious, cultured, incredibly wealthy man who becomes the narrator's "friend" or "employer" (depending on the context) after watching him play at the "Club." The millionaire asks the narrator to play for his private parties and then brings him to Europe, where they spend more than a year. When the narrator decides to return to the United States to compile black folk music, the millionaire argues that he will not be taken seriously and would be "foolish" to try to change white Americans' prejudice. Even though he is almost always emotionally distant and cannot convince the narrator to stay in Europe, the millionaire is nevertheless his closest friend. - Character: The Narrator's Wife / The Singer. Description: A blonde-haired, "dazzlingly white" singer who meets the narrator when he is already living as a white man but still playing ragtime. He loves her voice, she loves his piano playing, and they soon begin a relationship—but the narrator realizes he has to tell her about his original racial identity, and she leaves New York for a summer when he does so, only to return and agree to marry him anyway. In this phase of the narrator's life, his wife is the only person who knows his secret; they have a relatively happy marriage and she dies giving birth to their second child. - Character: The Music Teacher. Description: He teaches the narrator how to play classical piano and read sheet music (which the narrator rejects at first). Gradually, he becomes an important mentor for the narrator, fostering his interest in a music career and even briefly housing and supporting him after his mother's death. (The narrator notes that he had one music teacher as a child and then began taking lessons with his church organist, so it is unclear which teacher coordinated his duet with the violinist and took him in after his mother's death.) - Character: The Violinist. Description: A girl a few years older than the narrator, whom he accompanies during a concert and quickly falls in love with. After their resoundingly successful concert, she actually kisses him in excitement—but he pulls away, having apparently forgotten his feelings. She later marries and, according to the narrator, loses her musical talent. - Character: The Second Pullman Porter. Description: After the narrator's savings are stolen, this second porter offers him $15, advice about finding hotel work, and secret passage in the laundry basket of his train car. Years later, at a party in Jacksonville, the narrator sees this porter wearing a tie that was also stolen from his bag and realizes that he was the one who stole the savings. - Character: The Washington Physician. Description: An imposing and regal black man whom the narrator encounters on his ship from Liverpool to Boston. The physician was born into slavery but managed to study at Howard University and rise into the Northern black elite, into which he introduces to the narrator. His attitudes about race are remarkably conservative: he has no issue with prejudice so long as it doesn't "interfere with my personal liberty" and condemns "those lazy, loafing, good-for-nothing darkies." - Character: John Brown. Description: An eloquent, bombastic preacher, John Brown captivates the crowd at the "big meeting" in Georgia by using his voice like an instrument during his sermon. He is also the only character in the book identified by his real name, which alludes to the 19th century white abolitionist John Brown, who led an armed raid in Virginia in an attempt to lead a slave rebellion in the South. - Character: "Singing Johnson". Description: The short, one-eyed chorus leader at the "big meeting," who has memorized hundreds of hymns that he begins to sing at appropriate moments in John Brown's sermon. He offers something of a foil to the narrator: while "Singing Johnson" travels around the South writing music and bringing congregations together, the narrator wants to travel around the South, record other people's music, and claim it for himself. - Theme: Racism and the Color Line. Description: The mixed-race narrator of James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man manages to move back and forth between the rigidly segregated worlds of black and white America at the turn of the twentieth century. Because he can "pass" for white, the narrator gets a firsthand look at the white Americans' violent prejudices and comes to understand that legal emancipation cannot improve the opportunities available to black Americans without a radical and sustainable change in white racist attitudes. Although this view of racism and inequality is relatively uncontroversial today, it was an important intervention in national conversations about race when Johnson published this book more than a century ago. At the time, African-American politics centered on the question of whether blacks should work to improve their standing within a discriminatory society and win respect from whites (a view associated with Booker T. Washington) or demand political equality as human beings (a view associated with W.E.B. Du Bois). Crucially, the "ex-colored" narrator's chameleon-like ability to navigate both white and black America also shows how the sharp racial categories that continue to structure American life are fuzzy social constructs rather than biological realities. The novel demonstrates that, unlike under slavery, when the systematic exploitation of black life and labor required white and black Americans to live in close quarters, by the turn of the twentieth century the model had shifted: the world was divided into two separate, unequal societies and racism operated through black citizens' exclusion from white institutions that offered economic opportunities, social prestige, and political power. Even in the narrator's remarkably integrated childhood town in Connecticut, race remains a crucial dividing line: he looks down on his black classmates until the teacher explicitly divides the white and black students, and he realizes he too is "colored." When he leaves Connecticut for Atlanta, the narrator marvels at how the black population seems to have developed its own, entirely separate society within the white-dominated South; he is unable to patronize white businesses and is confined to certain neighborhoods. Even in New York, the novel's black characters are mostly confined to a tiny, segregated black neighborhood in midtown Manhattan. As a result of this divided world, the narrator argues that white and black people are limited to particular, provincial viewpoints and unable to grasp the whole reality (like he is, since he can switch back and forth). The narrator sees that this division is grounded in racism, which means that attitudinal change is a necessary component of racial justice. The narrator most distinctly realizes this when he watches a man from Texas and a former Union soldier—both of whom believe he is white—argue about whether "the Anglo-Saxon race" deserves to rule over other races, or whether instead different racial groups in America should have equal opportunities and self-determination. The Texan claims various historical achievements for "the Anglo-Saxon race" and goes so far as to say he would rather have "no country at all" than "niggers [ruling] over [him]." The narrator compares the logical gymnastics required to justify this theory to the astronomical distortions required to believe the Earth is the center of the solar system. White people's racism is bolstered by negative stereotypes about a certain class of African-Americans—the ostensibly poor, bitter victims that the narrator also looks down on—as well as stereotypes from literature (like the archetype of "happy-go-lucky, laughing, shuffling, banjo-picking" rural Southern blacks) and entertainment (like those at minstrel shows). White supremacy is also internalized among black Americans, especially elites; the narrator's own cultural snobbishness and ultimate decision to give up his blackness are proof enough, but he also discusses, for instance, wealthy black people's tendency to marry people with "lighter complexions" and "whiten" the next generation. The narrator's ability to navigate both black and white spaces merely because he is racially ambiguous undermines not only racist beliefs in white supremacy but also the more fundamental notion that race can be strictly determined and has some biological "truth." In other words, his very existence as a mixed-race man who is able to "pass" as either black or white proves how concepts of race and racism are socially constructed. The narrator's racial flexibility creates a handful of satirical moments, like when he distances himself from darker-skinned black men or gets taken for white in rural Georgia towns until he visits the black preacher's house. Indeed, in Jacksonville, he even manages to (supposedly) become a better Cuban than the Cubans: he rises up in the cigar factory and learns Spanish so quickly that he gets the job of reading newspapers and novels to the entire factory workforce. The preface takes up the fictiveness of race explicitly, arguing that the book exposes the phenomenon of passing in order to give a "bird's-eye view" of the American "race-drama." Whether the narrator appears as white or black depends on other people's expectations and the social context: when he plays ragtime at the "Club," nobody questions his blackness; when he has a cigar in the whites-only smoking car of his train to Atlanta, nobody questions his whiteness. No one ever sees him as mixed, or both white and black; instead, everyone demands a concept of racial purity, which is distinctly American and grounded in the "one-drop rule," or the assumption that anyone with any black blood automatically counts as black. Although contemporary readers have probably been long familiar with the ideologies of racial purity and superiority that have sustained oppressive American institutions like slavery, Jim Crow, and now mass incarceration, James Weldon Johnson was exposing their mechanisms and arbitrariness at a crucial moment in American history, when the political conversation about racial equality had to grapple with what it would take to see and treat a formerly enslaved population as full human beings. - Theme: Collective Progress and Individual Achievement. Description: Throughout his life, the narrator maintains a tumultuous relationship with other African-Americans: he alternatingly disavows and identifies with his blackness, as well as the economic and political struggles of the more destitute and oppressed black people he encounters. Most of all, he consistently prioritizes his individual achievement over his role in a racial community, even if he understands the necessity to fight collectively against racism. At the very end of his book, he declares that "I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage," alluding to the biblical story of Esau, who literally traded his right to authority over his family for a meal of lentil stew. In other words, the narrator realizes that, out of fear and shame, he sacrificed the African-American community's collective interests in order to live an unremarkable but comfortable life as a white man; indeed, collective progress and individual achievement were not contradictory but rather complementary goals, and his best chance to achieve something meaningful in the world was his opportunity to use his privileges to become a leader in the community. By deciding to "pass," he let himself fade into a "small and selfish" obscurity. Virtually all of the African-Americans the narrator associates with come from the same elite, a small class able to rise socially because of its individual achievements. Compared to most of the book's other black characters, the narrator has a remarkably privileged upbringing: while he does experience some racism in his childhood, he lives in a relatively integrated town, wears fancy clothes, and seems like a "perfect little aristocrat" before he starts school, where he actually sides with the other white students against the black children. In Atlanta, the narrator mostly interacts with the middle-class Pullman Porters and is shocked to see poor "colored people in large numbers" and the segregated restaurants and boarding houses where they are forced to go. In Jacksonville, he joins "the best class of colored people" and resents the black "desperate class" that he thinks give the rest of his race a bad name; later, the Washington physician introduces him to the Northern black elite in Boston and Washington. And in New York, the narrator's acquaintances are limited to famous and wealthy blacks at the "Club," the walls of which are lined with "photographs or lithographs of every colored man in America who had ever 'done anything.'" None of the people he meets are politicians, activists, or community leaders with any interest in fighting racism. This elite class is often even unwilling to confront racism, preferring to deny it (claiming they have overcome it) or lament that it happens to less fortunate people elsewhere. The Washington physician has astonishingly regressive views about race despite his education and success: he looks down on poorer African-Americans as "lazy, loafing, good-for-nothing darkies" and insists that "I don't object to anyone's having prejudices so long as those prejudices don't interfere with my personal liberty." He has no sense of a collective black predicament; he is only concerned with his own career and "personal liberty." (Of course, prejudice does impact him—for instance, by preventing him from fraternizing with whites of his same economic class.) The narrator notes in Jacksonville and Georgia that this is a more general trend: affluent black people ignore the cultural achievements and daily struggles of lower-class blacks, refusing to see what they have in common and preferring to consider themselves a separate, superior class with no responsibility for the others. Of course, this is the same pattern that also leads white people to ignore civil rights struggles: for instance, the millionaire thoroughly understands American racism but still argues that people should make themselves "as happy as possible" and never "attempt to right the wrongs and ease the sufferings of the world," which "is a waste of effort." Yet the book offers a number of character foils to the narrator who show that it is possible to find individual success precisely by advancing the struggle for justice. The author is an obvious example—he went to many of the same places and had many of the same interests as his narrator, but became one of the United States' most prominent civil rights leaders in the first half of the twentieth century. So is the narrator's childhood schoolmate "Shiny," who gives a powerful commencement speech to a white audience and later becomes a prominent professor at a black college. In the closing portion of the final chapter, the narrator sees Booker T. Washington speak, and the event is remarkably similar to Shiny's earlier oratory; this leads him to realize and regret the shortsightedness of escaping rather than fighting to liberate his race. In the South, the preacher John Brown and chorus-leader "Singing Johnson," while primarily church figures, also offer the same communal leadership as political activists like Shiny and Washington. While these figures are all relatively elite, unlike the part of the elite class that the narrator joins, these activists realize that they "carry the entire weight of the race question" and use their position to fight for equality. At the end of the book, the narrator declares that he has "sold my birthright for a mess of pottage" precisely because he realizes that it would have been possible for him to join this strand of the black elite. Ultimately, the narrator justifies publishing his autobiography by arguing that it both reveals the "practical joke" he has played on society and also helps to resolve the sense of remorse he explains at the end of the book. In other words, it at once shows that he is capable of success despite his biological blackness and does something for the black community by portraying it faithfully for a wider audience. While he earlier sought to become famous in the world of white music through his compositions, the narrator ultimately realizes that it is more important for him to contribute to justice for the black community than win acceptance in the white world. - Theme: Music, Emotion, and American Culture. Description: Throughout his life, the narrator of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man finds solace, creative expression, and social status through music: because of its emotional power, it is perhaps the only thing in this book (besides the protagonist himself) that crosses the otherwise rigid boundary between the white and black worlds. The narrator becomes an expert in the racialized registers of white classical music and black ragtime and slave hymns, and eventually he decides to combine them, "ragging" classical pieces and seeking to translate vernacular music into classical forms. While this might seem like a way to at least symbolically unite the conflicted halves of his identity and American society, it actually furthers the white appropriation, commodification, and distortion of black culture, which deprives its original producers of the fruits of their creative labor. In this book, music is deeply tied to emotion, which allows it to cross the color line: it is perhaps the most important site for black creative expression and one of the few domains in which whites can take black culture seriously. At a party in Jacksonville, the narrator first observes the cake-walk and sees it as an example of black creative genius—two of his other three examples (the Jubilee songs and ragtime) are also musical. In fact, he notes that, lacking the United States' sharp division between black and white culture, Europeans simply call ragtime "American music." The narrator's success in both classical and black music comes from his ability to "play with feeling," putting his whole body into his performance. He also always finds love through music: his earliest crush is the violinist he accompanies, he woos the rich widow by playing the piano, and he both meets and reunites with his eventual wife because he was playing the piano and she was singing. The narrator's experience at the "big meeting" centers on the emotional effect of music: the preacher John Brown is effective not because of what he is saying but because of the way he modulates his voice for dramatic effect—the sermon is closer to song than speech. "Singing Johnson" organizes people around the country through collaborative call-and-response songs and manages to choose appropriate hymns to reinforce the most emotionally charged moments of John Brown's sermon. Music again becomes a way for black characters to make sense of their history of oppression and find the strength to fight against the incredible obstacles they continue to face from white supremacy. Because he recognizes that music can translate across the color line, the narrator makes a career out of combining two genres from opposite social worlds: classical music and black vernacular music. Music is an integral part of the narrator's upbringing; from his earliest days, his mother would play the piano many evenings, and he started playing it himself in his early youth, imitating her songs by ear. In Connecticut, the narrator is trained to play classical music, but he later learns ragtime and manages to switch between the two depending on the social context and his desired effect—at the millionaire's party, he starts with a classical tune to signal the party's refinement and later impresses the guests with the "unique entertainment" of ragtime. There is also a contrast between the way classical and folk musicians learn their craft: the former undertake formal training and the latter learn by ear. Although the narrator had formal lessons from an early age, his earliest forays into music were learning to play his mother's piano songs by ear. In fact, he believed that, had the pianist at the "Club" been formally trained to play, he would be restricted by the conditions of his training and "would not have been so delightful." He would have been derivative, either copying the "masters" or trying to supersede them by rejecting harmony. But the most important musical moments in the text come when the narrator combines the two forms—he composes his own ragtime tunes by adapting classical tunes he already knows, and has his epiphany about his calling—to collect Southern folk songs—when he sees a German musician turn his ragtime back into a classical form. The white absorption of black music into mainstream American culture also commodifies and exploits it, however. The narrator notes early on that ragtime is increasingly commodified and exploited by white musicians (who publish others' songs under their own names) and audiences (who appreciate it for its "exotic" qualities without acknowledging the performers or social contexts that created it). Indeed, the narrator also does both of these—he approaches ragtime more as a white performer than a black one. He becomes an "exotic" performer for the millionaire and the project that convinces him to leave Europe is precisely about taking credit for vernacular music that he did not create, publishing it under his own name and bringing it into the refined, documented register of white "culture" without acknowledging its actual creators. He does not combine black and classical music as equals, but rather subsumes the former to the latter. At the "big meeting" in Georgia, the narrator emphasizes that the spirituals are an anonymous, collective, cathartic experience tied to the particular institution of the black church and its particular responses to black oppression; were he to adapt it to classical form, it would lose the historical and emotional context that actually made it revolutionary and unique. In a sense, the narrator's decision to abandon his project ultimately ends up preventing black vernacular music from going the way of ragtime and becoming decontextualized under the control of white musicians, producers, and distributors. In contrast to the narrator's attempt to subsume slave songs to "classic musical form," the author and his brother actually tried to document the same music on its own terms, creating transcriptions adequate to the songs' original contexts and methods of performance—they adapted form to the genre, not the genre to form. - Theme: Secrecy, Purity, and Origins. Description: Because his very existence transgresses the American racial order that demands the strict social, emotional, and sexual separation of white and black people, the narrator's life is largely defined by the secrets he keeps from the world, from the secret of his paternity to that of his blackness. The novel itself—with its anonymous narrator and author, initially assumed to be the same person—relies on a similar secrecy about the truth of identity. Both kinds of secrecy in turn depend on a paradoxical relationship to origins: racism insists that whiteness and blackness are "pure" biological categories but sidesteps the fact that nobody has "pure" origins by refusing to acknowledge people's true ancestry; Western artistic values insist that the author must be the sole source of their work and therefore cannot acknowledge that art always depends on people's lived experiences in addition to their imagination. Because white Americans are bound to an ideology of racial purity, in which whiteness means exclusively white ancestry, relationships between white and black characters—and, indeed, most interaction between them—is always a closely-guarded secret in this book. Throughout the book, the narrator's father remains a secret because miscegenation is a taboo. The narrator and his mother move North because of his father's impending marriage to a white woman from another prominent Southern family. His mother then refuses to talk about his father for many years, until the narrator meets him again. When the narrator encounters him for the last time, years later in Paris, he cannot say anything because he risks exposing the secret of his existence to his half-sister. In turn, when the narrator becomes a father himself, he and his wife also keep his race a secret from his children; just as he was raised black despite his white father, his children are raised white despite their black father. Given the strong taboo against miscegenation, then, it is unsurprising that his wife initially disappears for a whole summer when he tells her he is black. In fact, intermixture between blacks and whites consistently occurs behind closed doors because it poses a threat to the racial order of strict segregation imposed formally in the South and informally in the North after the Civil War. The gambling bar and "Club" are both secret establishments; the narrator can only enter them because he knows the right people, mixed-race couples like the widow and her companion can only meet there, and their most transgressive elements—the game of dice that includes both black and white players, and the pianist's ragtime performances—are in hidden back rooms. In turn, when he first performs at the millionaire's apartment, the narrator plays classical music in front of the white guests and then moves to an adjacent room, out of sight, to play ragtime. The novel's narrative structure and public reception also depend on secrecy about its author's origins. The narrator is careful to hide his identity, and none of the characters in this book have names, except for the two who would be otherwise forgotten by the world and erased from history: the pastor John Brown and the chorus leader "Singing Johnson." The preface emphasizes that "passing" is a relatively common phenomenon, but unknown because it relies on secrecy; of course, the preface is attributed to "the publishers" but was actually written by Johnson. At the beginning of the first chapter, the narrator echoes this sentiment, explaining his fear that he will be discovered but insisting that his life has been "a practical joke on society." Fearing for his own future as a diplomat, James Weldon Johnson insisted on publishing the book in secret, which also hid the fact that it was fiction: early readers believed it was a true story and, when he admitted his authorship, insisted that it must have been an accurate picture of his life (even though he could by no means "pass" for white). By shrouding race and authorship in secrecy, Johnson shows how Western culture's parallel demands for pure racial and authorial origins are self-undermining: because both are so central to concepts of proper social order and artistic value, people are more comfortable accepting convenient stories about both than confronting the fact that no racial order or work of art is "pure." The narrator sees ragtime and slave songs as underappreciated because their origins are not identifiable—they cannot be traced back to single composers, even though "nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master." While his project collecting black music in the rural South follows from this rejection of pure genius, it is also an attempt to create a myth around authorship, which presumably could let white observers see slave hymns and ragtime as valuable cultural products—because they are works of artistic genius, and not merely because they are entertaining or musically noteworthy. When Johnson compiled his own Book of American Negro Spirituals, in contrast, he did not pretend to be their author but rather emphasized their anonymous and collective origins. While readers initially assumed the novel to be pure autobiography and later saw it as pure fiction, in fact it blurs the boundaries between the two: Johnson took settings and experiences from his life in order to create a character whose mindset and decisions are entirely opposite his own. Because the racial order of twentieth-century America relied on the assumption that a person's ancestry was legible on their skin, people like the narrator could "pass" by keeping their genetic origins secret, much like Johnson's novel "passed" as genuine autobiography by insisting on its author's anonymity. But anonymity can also be a valuable strategy for people who wish to expose the futility of organizing the world around origins—it allows people like Johnson (in terms of authorship) and his narrator (in terms of race) to speak the truth that nothing is "pure" while avoiding the social consequences of declaring that they and their work are hybrid products, possible only because of the mixture between different groups, on the one hand, and imagination and experience, on the other. - Climax: The narrator witnesses a lynching in Georgia and resolves to "change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would." - Summary: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man recounts the life of its fictional narrator from his secret birth in Georgia just after the end of slavery through his childhood in Connecticut, early working years back in the South, and musical career in New York and Europe, culminating in the adulthood he spends denying his past life in the African-American world and living as a white man instead. After the book's Preface promises an unprecedented portrait of both black America and that subset of black Americans who choose to "pass" for white, the first chapter jumps into the racially ambiguous protagonist's curious childhood in Georgia: the small house he shared with his mother and the well-dressed man who used to visit. It then follows him and his mother to their cottage in Connecticut, where he took up the piano, entered school, and learned for the first time during class, to his dismay, that he was black. In the second chapter, he begins coming to terms with his racial exclusion from his classmates and gets more deeply involved in music, even accompanying a young violinist, with whom he falls in love, and playing for the man from the first chapter, who comes to visit and turns out to be his father. In the third chapter, the narrator begins to question his place in the world, reading Uncle Tom's Cabin and listening to his mother's stories about her youth in Georgia. But she begins to fall ill as he makes his way through high school and dies shortly after his graduation, at which his black classmate "Shiny" gives an impassioned speech to the white audience. Next the narrator heads south, planning to attend Atlanta University. For the first time, he also encounters a distinct black community and the systematic discrimination it faces. When he returns from his first visit to the university to find all his savings stolen, he cannot bring himself to return to the university. Instead, he follows a porter's advice and heads to Jacksonville, where he moves into a boarding house run by a woman and her Cuban husband, who finds him work at a cigar factory. Over the next three years, the narrator picks up Spanish, moves up the ranks in the factory, and acquaints himself with the city's black upper class, who live in an educated and cultured society parallel to white society but unable to mix with it. He also starts partying on the weekends, sometimes with the factory workers and sometimes with Jacksonville's black elite. At one of these parties, the narrator meets and repays the man who loaned him $15 to start a life in Jacksonville—but also realizes this same man stole his money—and marvels at the cake-walk, which he sees as an exemplar of black culture. The cigar factory abruptly shuts down, and the narrator goes to New York with some of his fellow workers. He finds the city "fatally fascinating" and soon stumbles upon the two establishments where he becomes a perennial customer: a bar that hosts dice games, where he immediately wins $200, and the "Club," a flashy establishment frequented by black celebrities and where he becomes fascinated with ragtime music. The next three chapters recount the narrator's brief fall into gambling addiction and rise to musical fame: he learns to play ragtime for himself and becomes a fixture at the "Club." His music wins him attention from two white fans: a reclusive millionaire who hires him to play at private parties and a rich widow who begins seeing him to spite her usual companion, an extravagantly wealthy and well-dressed black man who shoots her dead when he finds out about the affair. The narrator flees the "Club" and runs into the millionaire, who decides to bring him to Europe for his lengthy upcoming trip. The ninth chapter recounts the narrator's extravagant trip around Europe with the millionaire: they spend more than a year in Paris, sightseeing during the days and visiting theaters and cafés at night. He continues to play piano for the millionaire and rapidly learns French (and then German for fun). One day, at the Grand Opera, the narrator notices a beautiful English-speaking girl only to realize that she is his sister: his father is sitting right next to her, but he knows he cannot say anything and stumbles out of the theater in agony. Soon, they leave Paris for London, Amsterdam, and Berlin, where a musician improvises the narrator's ragtime tune in classical form and he suddenly realizes his calling: to return to the South and compile "the old slave songs" that are still the cultural backbone of rural black life. The narrator tells the millionaire he will not continue on to their next destinations, Egypt and Japan, and they have a lengthy argument about racism and whether the narrator can do anything to resolve it. After a few weeks of soul-searching, the narrator decides to go and sets out for Boston. On the ship to Boston, the narrator meets a black physician from Washington who introduces him to various members of the Northern black elite. On his train to Macon, Georgia, the narrator listens to a group of white men debate whether black Americans deserve equality—they do not notice that he is black—and realizes that white racist attitudes are the main barrier to black achievement in the United States. He meanders around the rural South, collecting songs and eventually stumbling upon a "big meeting" at which an eloquent preacher and brilliant chorus leader steal the show. He makes a new friend and decides to spend a night in this friend's town, only to notice armed white people congregating near the rail station—the next morning, they drag a black man into the center of the town, douse him in fuel, and cheer while they burn him alive. The narrator observes in horror from a distance and suddenly finds himself overcome with shame—he realizes how unspeakable brutality underlies the United States' claim to be a "great example of democracy to the world" and realizes that he cannot trust Southern whites to pursue racial equality. He decides to return to New York and abandon his racial identity, to "change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would." The final chapter recounts his remarkably successful and painless life as a white man in New York: he drops out of business school but still finds a well-paying job as a clerk and begins investing in real estate. He easily makes money and starts moving in elite social circles, winning recognition for his ragtime and falling in love with a "dazzlingly white" singer. Intending to propose, the narratorstarts to realize that he cannot keep his secret any longer, and after they run into "Shiny," now a respected professor, he musters the courage to tell her that he is black. The singer leaves for the summer, but they soon reunite and marry. The narrator's wife dies delivering their second child, and the "ex-colored man" ends his narrative by summarizing his continual conflicting feelings about his "present position in the world." He loves his children, but he feels he has deserted his race and, after seeing Booker T. Washington speak, realizes that he could have helped take up the fight for racial equality and shape history—looking through his manuscripts of his old songs, he proclaims, "I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage."

- Genre: Short Story - Title: B. Wordsworth - Point of view: First Person - Setting: Port of Spain, a town in the republic of Trinidad and Tobago - Character: The Boy (The Narrator). Description: The main protagonist of the story is a young boy, although it is clear that he has grown up since the events of the story. His actions and words suggest that he is somewhere between the ages of 8 and 10 at the time the story takes place. He comes from a possibly difficult background, based on the contentious relationship he seems to have with his mother and the fact he lives in an impoverished area (beggars, for example, regularly come to the house where he lives). At the same time, his curiosity about B. Wordsworth upon first meeting him and his interest in what B. Wordsworth has to say reflects his openness to the world and to others. Central to his friendship with B. Wordsworth is also his ability to experience wonder. We see this when he gazes up at the stars with B. Wordsworth and then when B. Wordsworth shares with him his project of writing "the greatest poem in the world." In both instances he is changed and deepened by the experience. He is also perceptive—he notices, for example, that B. Wordsworth is dying when he visits him for the last time. And he is compassionate; he weeps out of pity for his dying friend. The boy moves from innocence to experience during the course of the story. While in the beginning of the story he sees the world in a mostly fresh and innocent way, the sense of sadness B. Wordsworth communicates on occasion and the sorrow the boy experiences at the end of the story suggest a growing awareness of the more difficult realities of human existence. - Character: B. Wordsworth. Description: Although B. Wordsworth is associated with the beggars who come to the boy's house on a regular basis, he is soon established as an educated man with a vibrant imagination and delicate feelings. Although he makes a half-hearted effort to sell the boy a poem upon first meeting him, he is much more interested in simply observing the world around him and appreciating the beauty and wonder of this world. His interest in insects, in the stars, and in greenery all reflect this. His imaginative way of engaging with the world is likewise reflected in his interest in poetry. Although at the end of the story he disavows actually being a poet, his words, actions, and manner of guiding the boy into a deeper awareness of reality suggest that he is a poet in a more nuanced sense. B. Wordsworth is at the same time a man without a clearly established social identity. There is no sense of a past that attaches to him (he also disavows the story he told the boy about a wife and child who died), no sense of a clear social identity in the present, and no sense of a future. He presumably dies alone, without family or friends at his side. If he largely functions in the story as a guide who initiates the boy into a poetic way of seeing the world, he is also an ephemeral figure, so much so that the boy wonders at the end of the story if he ever actually existed. - Character: The Boy's Mother. Description: The boy's mother appears on two occasions, both times near the beginning of the story. When B. Wordsworth appears in their yard and requests to watch the bees that live in the palm trees, she treats him with suspicion and then has the boy send him away when B. Wordsworth offers to sell them a poem. She seems to treat the boy rather roughly. The boy tells B. Wordsworth that he likes his mother when she's not beating him, and a short time later, when he comes home late from school after visiting B. Wordsworth, she does in fact beat him. Because there is no mention of a father in the story, it is possible that she is raising the boy on her own, and her actions are those of a stressed, impatient woman. The boy's friendship with B. Wordsworth may in part be due to his interest in escaping a difficult home life. - Theme: Identity Construction. Description: In "B. Wordsworth," the titular character creatively constructs an identity for himself, effectively choosing the kind of person he wants to be. That B. Wordsworth introduces himself to the boy in the beginning of the story as "Black Wordsworth" and says he is the brother of "White Wordsworth," the 19th-century English Romantic poet, immediately suggests B. Wordsworth's interest in constructing an identity oriented around the idea of fostering a poetic relationship with the world. His self-professed identity as a brother of the great poet likewise aligns with his claim that he's writing "the greatest poem in the world," a project that, like his identity, ultimately turns out to be a fiction (if readers are to believe what he tells the boy at the end of the story). It is a fiction with a purpose, however, as it creatively informs his understanding of himself and his way of seeing the world. The identity that B. Wordsworth has constructed for himself is further reflected in the place where he lives: a one-room hut surrounded by trees and overgrown foliage. Even though B. Wordsworth ultimately disavows the story he told the boy about why he keeps his yard overgrown (to keep alive the memory of a deceased wife and child), the story again seems less a made-up account than an important building block—regardless of its factual accuracy—in B. Wordsworth's constructed sense of self. The ambiguities surrounding B. Wordsworth's social identity don't invalidate who he is, then, but emphasize the lesson he models for the boy: namely, that it's possible for people to actively construct their own identities, thus freeing them to be whomever or whatever they want to be. - Theme: Art and the Artist's Life. Description: B. Wordsworth introduces himself to the boy in the beginning of the story as "Black Wordsworth," the brother of "White Wordsworth," or William Wordsworth, a 19th-century English Romantic poet who believed in cultivating a meaningful and immediate relationship to the natural world. B. Wordsworth claims that he is a poet and tells the boy that he's writing one line of poetry each month with the intention of eventually creating "the greatest poem in the world." It is not clear, however, whether he has actually written more than the one line he shares with the boy, "The past is deep." While B. Wordsworth may not be a poet in the conventional sense—in his last conversation with the boy, he denies that he ever was a poet—the story implies that he is a poet in the more abstract sense of adopting an artist's general relationship to the surrounding world. He embraces the world (especially nature) in a spirit of creativity, wonder, and deep feeling. In this way, he really does seem to have something in common with the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, who believed in appreciating natural beauty and leading an introspective life. B. Wordsworth even tells the boy that "when you're a poet you can cry for everything" and leads the boy on various excursions that seemed designed to teach the boy how to approach the world in a similar way—that is, how to engage with his surroundings on a meaningful, emotional level. The boy comments that B. Wordsworth does "everything as though he were doing it for the first time in his life." He also adds that, because of this, the world "became a most exciting place." Because of B. Wordsworth's artistic approach to life, the boy himself learns to see the world as an endless source of wonder and meaning. - Theme: Unconventional Friendship. Description: "B. Wordsworth" demonstrates the power of friendship to transcend arbitrary differences that might otherwise keep people apart. By most accounts, the young boy and B. Wordsworth have very little in common. B. Wordsworth is much older than the boy, and he speaks in a completely different style—a style that is reminiscent of a well-educated, upper-middle-class British man. The boy, on the other hand, speaks in the common dialect of Trinidad and Tobago. And yet, they get along quite well, clearly enjoying each other's company and presumably finding it rewarding to see the world through each other's eyes. In particular, B. Wordsworth teaches the boy to embrace a sense of wonder as he moves through life, and this sensibility makes the boy suddenly feel "big and great," as if his entire way of moving through the world has changed for the better. Furthermore, part of their friendship's dynamic has to do with the fact that B. Wordsworth is considerably older than the boy, meaning that their life experiences are undoubtedly different; after all, B. Wordsworth has experienced much more than the boy. And yet, for all of these differences, nothing stands in the way of their connection. To the contrary, their bond is perhaps fueled by the fact that they each bring something different to the table. In turn, it becomes clear that their friendship is based on mutual feelings and compatible—or complementary—worldviews rather than on superficial identifiers related to age or class. By outlining this dynamic, the story implies that sometimes the most unconventional and unlikely relationships can prove to be the most meaningful, as long as people forge connections that are unencumbered by arbitrary social norms and expectations surrounding friendship. - Theme: The Wonder of Nature. Description: An appreciation for the wonder of a nature is central to B. Wordsworth's worldview and to his friendship with the boy. The boy meets B. Wordsworth when the latter comes to his door requesting to "watch the bees" that have taken over the palm trees in the boy's yard. B. Wordsworth's interest in the bees signals a crucial preoccupation for him—the wonder of the natural world. This sense of wonder is one that the boy is initially unaware of; he sees the bees as pests and, later, wonders why B. Wordsworth keeps his yard overgrown. B. Wordsworth teaches the boy, more through his actions than his words, that the natural world is a place of wonder that one ought to pay attention to. B. Wordsworth clearly sees the world of nature as something that invites—or perhaps deserves—awe and appreciation, as made evident by his interest in both small, everyday elements of the world (like fruit trees and bees) and cosmic beauties (like the constellations he shows the boy). The natural world is also a way of keeping alive the memory of the dead, such as when B. Wordsworth suggests that he keeps his yard overgrown in order to memorialize a deceased wife and child. The boy's strong association of B. Wordsworth with nature also comes through when the boy wonders at the end of the story—after discovering that B. Wordsworth's hut and overgrown yard have been replaced with brick and concrete—whether B. Wordsworth ever truly existed at all. Just as the lush greenery of the yard has disappeared, the boy is filled with a deep sense of B. Wordsworth's absence. In turn, the story implies that perhaps the most compelling and astonishing thing about nature is that it often feels intertwined with seemingly everything about human life, including the magic of a close personal relationship. - Theme: Living and Dying. Description: The joy of living and the sorrow of death are deeply intertwined in "B. Wordsworth." Midway through the story, the boy asks B. Wordsworth about his overgrown yard. When B. Wordsworth tells him a story that suggests that his pregnant wife and unborn daughter died, the boy comments that B. Wordsworth, as he told this story, "seemed to grow older," suggesting that this memory is a painful one for B. Wordsworth even if he keeps his yard overgrown in order to keep the memory alive. Near the end of the story, the boy visits a very sick B. Wordsworth and understands that he is dying. B. Wordsworth on this occasion disclaims the earlier story about the "boy poet and girl poet," stating that it was "just something I made up." The boy, even so, notes that he "ran home crying, like a poet, for everything I saw." Even if B. Wordsworth's story is untrue, there is a palpable sense in the story of the beauty of life and the pain of loss, where the experience of beauty compensates for the pain. Even if the boy finally wonders if B. Wordsworth ever actually existed, the question seems to arise from a deeply felt sense of the shimmering reality that B. Wordsworth embodied when he was alive and the sad vacancy of the world in his absence. - Climax: The narrator pays a final visit to the dying B. Wordsworth. - Summary: The narrator of "B. Wordsworth," an unnamed boy, meets an unusual man, B. Wordsworth, who comes to the boy's house one afternoon and asks to watch the bees that populate the palm trees in the boy's yard. The man introduces himself as a poet and says that the B. of his name stands for "Black." He tells the boy that he is the brother of "White Wordsworth," the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and offers to sell the boy a poem. When the boy's mother turns him down, he admits that nobody has yet purchased any of his poetry. When the boy encounters B. Wordsworth again a week later, B. Wordsworth invites the boy to his home to eat mangoes. The boy notes the overgrown yard with several different types of trees growing in it and, after eating a mango, returns home to his irate mother. He runs away and, returning to B. Wordsworth, spends the rest of the day walking about town with him. When darkness falls, B. Wordsworth and the boy lie on their backs and gaze up at the stars, an experience that fills the boy with a sense of wonder about the cosmos and about his own littleness. The boy continues spending time with B. Wordsworth and on one occasion asks him why he keeps his yard overgrown. B. Wordsworth tells him a story of a woman who died along with her unborn child and says that "the girl's husband" keeps the yard wild in memory of her. On another occasion he tells the boy that he is working on a project that involves writing a line of poetry each month and that will one day be "the greatest poem in the world." He shares a line of the poem with the boy, "The past is deep," but the boy never hears him speak of the poem again. The boy notices B. Wordsworth growing older and upon visiting him one day sees that he is dying. B. Wordsworth tells the boy that he made up the story about the woman and child and his poetry and tells the boy not to visit again. The boy leaves, crying "for everything I saw." The boy, a year later, walks by the place where B. Wordsworth's house used to be and finds a building in its place with "brick and concrete everywhere." He wonders if B. Wordsworth ever actually existed.

- Genre: Short story - Title: Babylon Revisited - Point of view: Third person limited - Setting: Paris, 1930 - Character: Charlie Wales. Description: Charlie Wales, 35, is the protagonist of "Babylon Revisited," who has returned to Paris to regain custody of his daughter, Honoria. Charlie, Honoria, and Charlie's wife, Helen, lived in Paris for two years in the late 1920s. During that time, Charlie was very wealthy and didn't have to work, instead spending his time partying, travelling, and drinking heavily. However, Charlie's alcoholism eventually led to his collapse and the destruction of his marriage, after which Helen died. In returning to Paris, Charlie seems to be a changed man. He got sober after a stint in the sanatorium, began working again and recovered some of his wealth, and he now desires, above all else, to have a proper family and home in Prague, where he presently lives. To do so, he hopes to bring Honoria back with him, though he must win approval from Honoria's custodial parent, his wife's sister, Marion. In trying to prove himself to Marion—who mistrusts and even dislikes him—Charlie puts forward the best version of himself, but it's unclear whether he will remain sober or whether he has changed enough since his time in Paris to be entrusted with his daughter's care. His strong sense of remorse for his past actions, along with his desire to rebuild a family and a home, motivate him to behave with humility in the face of Marion's consistently cruel treatment of him, though at times he missteps, bragging about his wealth or becoming defensive. The murky details of Charlie's past—including the questions of whether he was responsible for Helen's death and whether he had an affair with Lorraine Quarrles—point to a potentially cruel side of Charlie that suggest Marion may be right to regard him with such suspicion, and that perhaps he shouldn't be relied upon to look after his daughter. Because the narrative follows Charlie's point of view so closely, it's difficult to clearly judge his marriage to Helen, his alcoholism, or whether he has truly changed, so he remains a morally complex—and even somewhat ambiguous—character. - Character: Honoria Wales. Description: Charlie's nine-year-old daughter, Honoria, lives with Marion and Lincoln Peters and their two children in Paris, but she would rather go live with her father in Prague. She's tactful and mature for her age, and seems to value family over material things (for example, when Charlie offers to take her to the toy store and buy her whatever she wants, she doesn't want to go because she feels Charlie has already bought her enough toys). Charlie worries that Honoria is growing up so quickly that, if he doesn't win custody of her and take her back to Prague with him, he might miss out on her childhood altogether. - Character: Marion Peters. Description: Marion Peters is Charlie's sister-in-law, and the legal guardian of his daughter Honoria. She despises Charlie, seeing him as an irresponsible alcoholic who not only made Helen unhappy in life but who also bears responsibility for her death. Although her thinly-concealed resentment of Charlie causes her to act bitterly toward him and makes her a deeply unsympathetic character, Marion holds the power to decide whether to allow Charlie to take Honoria back to Prague with him, and in this way she also acts as the moral judge of Charlie, evaluating whether or not he has really changed. Marion's resentment of Charlie stems not only from his treatment of her sister, but also from his wealth and the lifestyle it allows him to lead, which she sees as an injustice because her own family struggles to get by. At the end of the story, when Lorraine Quarrles and Duncan Schaeffer barge into the Peters family's home, the intrusion causes Marion to fall suddenly ill, suggesting that she has a nervous condition that worsens in stressful situations—and around Charlie in particular. - Character: Lincoln Peters. Description: Lincoln Peters is Marion's husband and Charlie's brother-in-law. Lincoln provides a comfortable, upper-middle-class life for his family by working at a bank. He is a reasonable and good-natured man, and a loving and concerned husband to Marion. While Marion and Charlie have a bitter relationship, Lincoln is much more hospitable toward Charlie, often acting as a mediator in Charlie and Marion's disputes. Lincoln confides in Charlie that he suspects Marion resents Charlie so strongly because of his wealth. While it seems that Lincoln would like Charlie to be reunited with Honoria, he ultimately defers to his wife's wishes in order to keep her emotionally stable. - Character: Helen Wales. Description: Helen is Charlie's deceased wife. She and Charlie drank, travelled, and partied excessively together in the '20s. Her marriage to Charlie was strained during their time in Paris, marred by infidelities and arguments, and it ended, according to Charlie, in "disaster." While Charlie's mental health deteriorated because of the turbulence of their lifestyle, Helen's physical health fell apart. She contracted and almost died of pneumonia one night when Charlie locked her out in a snowstorm, and she died shortly afterward of "heart troubles." Fitzgerald leaves some ambiguity surrounding the extent to which Charlie may have been responsible for Helen's death. Before she died, Helen put her sister Marion in charge of caring for her daughter Honoria, since neither she nor Charlie (who was in a sanatorium) were able to care for her themselves. - Character: Duncan Schaeffer. Description: An old friend of Charlie's from college. Duncan is one of the few people left in Paris that Charlie knows from his time living there. Unlike Charlie, however, Duncan doesn't seem to have sobered up or matured at all since losing everything in the crash. Rather, he continues to drink and party. Although Charlie initially leaves his address for Duncan at the Ritz, he seems to change his mind about wanting to see Duncan after they run into each other and Charlie realizes that his old social group has become repellent to him. Charlie sees Duncan as a ghost from his past life, and therefore he politely turns down Duncan's repeated invitations to go out together. When Duncan and Lorraine Quarrles show up drunk at Marion Peters' house without an invitation, the intrusion disturbs Marion Peters so much that it causes her to change her mind about allowing Charlie to take Honoria back to Prague with him. - Character: Lorraine Quarrles. Description: Lorraine is an old friend of Charlie's from the time he lived in Paris. Though Charlie once found Lorraine very attractive, he avoids her now. When Lorraine and Duncan run into Charlie at lunch, Charlie is repelled by them, describing them as ghosts from his past life—reminders of his recklessness and irresponsibility. Charlie notes that Lorraine looks older, but she doesn't seem to have emotionally matured at all. Fitzgerald insinuates that there may have been more than just a simple flirtation between Charlie and Lorraine before Charlie left Paris—that perhaps they had had an affair. When Charlie repeatedly denies Lorraine's requests to meet him, she reacts bitterly. Her and Duncan's drunken appearance at Marion Peters' home sets Marion on the path to changing her mind about allowing Charlie to take Honoria back to Prague with him. - Character: Paul. Description: The head barman at the Ritz. Charlie looks for Paul when he goes to the Ritz upon arriving in Paris, but, like all of Charlie's old acquaintances, Paul is not there. A key figure in the party scene for Americans in Paris in the 1920s, Paul reminds Charlie of his old life and his old ways. - Character: Alix. Description: A barman at the Ritz. Charlie talks to Alix at the beginning of the story, when he can't find the head barman, Paul, at the bar. Alix fills Charlie in on the gossip about all his old acquaintances from the parties of the '20s, helping to establish the fact that most of the Americans have left Paris in the wake of the market crash, and that the Paris Charlie once knew is gone. - Theme: Wealth and Poverty. Description: "Babylon Revisited" takes place one year after the stock market crash of 1929, in the early years of the Great Depression. Charlie Wales revisits Paris, the city where he and his wife lived lavishly during the height of the market boom of the 1920s, only to find that the bars and hotels he once frequented are all but deserted, "the big party" having come to a crashing halt. Fitzgerald portrays the relative austerity of life in Paris in 1930 as a kind of "hangover"—the inevitable consequence of the excess and overindulgence of the roaring 20s. Charlie's lonely life, with his wife dead and his daughter in the custody of his in-laws, is also a hangover from his recklessness during the boom, and Fitzgerald positions Charlie's unfulfilled longing for family as a parallel austerity to the economic conditions of the '30s, an emotional debt racked up in times of indulgence that has yet to be repaid. Lincoln and Marion Peters (Charlie's in-laws), while not poor, provide a point of reference to help readers understand Charlie's wealth. In the '20s, they were barely managing to make ends meet while Charlie and his wife Helen were off gallivanting around Paris and beyond. And yet, Lincoln and Marion were the ones entrusted with the care of Charlie and Helen's daughter Honoria when Helen died and Charlie was "flat on his back" in a sanatorium. Therefore, they were not only were witnesses to the excess of Charlie's lifestyle during the boom years, when they themselves had little by comparison, but they also bear the weight of the consequences of Charlie's foolishness and immoderation, as they are left to look after his child. Although Marion attributes her mistrust of Charlie to his drinking and his poor treatment of her sister, Fitzgerald implies that part of her resentment may be related to class—and more specifically to the arrogance, entitlement, and superiority that Charlie feels because of his wealth. Lincoln tells Charlie directly at one point that Marion "felt there was some kind of injustice to it"—referring to Charlie "not even working toward the end, and getting richer and richer." Although Charlie understands that wealth made him blind to the sources of real value in his life, he still must use his money as a source of power. When Charlie and Lincoln Peters discuss who will care for Honoria, they do so as though it were chiefly a financial matter. At the Peters family's home, Charlie makes a point of boasting about how well business is going for him in Prague, and he does so "for a specific purpose": to demonstrate that he's better-equipped than the Peters family to provide for Honoria. However, Charlie notices that his boasting stirs a "faint restiveness" in Lincoln's eyes, suggesting not only that money is a sensitive issue for the Peters family, but that perhaps they also associate Charlie's wealth with his immoderate behavior. Therefore, Charlie must strike a delicate balance: he is dependent on his wealth to prove his competence as a caretaker relative to the Peters family, but he must be careful not to give the impression that he's fated to repeat old mistakes. Charlie's reliance on money as a substitute for family is nowhere more evident than in his relationship with his daughter. Charlie and Honoria want to live together, so it's painful for both of them that their relationship seems limited to him giving her toys. When Charlie takes Honoria out to lunch, he tells her he's going to bring her to a toy store and buy her anything she wants, but Honoria responds that she doesn't want to go to the toy store, since she already has a lot of things at home. It's as though she is weary of accepting substitutes for her father's presence and affection. At the very end of the story, after Marion has changed her mind about allowing Charlie to take Honoria back to Prague, Charlie feels angry that the only thing he can think to do to feel close to Honoria is to send her "a lot of things" (meaning, presumably, toys). This demonstrates Charlie's main insight of the story: that while he "lost a lot in the crash," he lost everything of real value to him—his family—in the boom years through his immoderate behavior. Ultimately, Charlie uses his wealth to gain the upper hand in the argument over who will be Honoria's guardian, and in doing so he manages to avoid fully addressing Marion's concern that he has not changed. This raises a moral question about whether Charlie is using the power his money gives him to "buy" whatever he wants—in this case, his daughter—just as he did in the past. Class, then, is part of what makes Charlie a morally ambiguous character: although he claims to no longer be the wealthy playboy he once was, he continues to wield his wealth as a source of power. - Theme: Home and Family. Description: In the aftermath of his catastrophic recklessness during the market boom of the 1920s, Charlie has begun to rebuild his life. He's no longer interested in the frivolous relationships that once amused him, for he realizes now that they come and go like money. His sole focus has become, instead, securing a home and a family for himself. As such, the central tension in "Babylon Revisited" is the question of whether Charlie Wales' sister-in-law, Marion, will allow him to take his daughter back to Prague with him. While at dinner with the Peters family, who have been looking after Charlie's daughter Honoria, Charlie reflects that he believes that the "eternally valuable element" in life is character—which he seems to define as the quality of having moral integrity and strength. He expresses a desire to "jump back a whole generation and trust in character," and observes that everything else seems to wear out, which suggests not only that he sees morality and integrity as essential ingredients for building a home and family, but that the absence of these qualities in him had led his own family to fall apart. In this way, Fitzgerald shows readers that Charlie doesn't merely want to go back to how things were when he had a family and he was behaving recklessly. Rather, he wants to build a different kind of family, founded on this eternally valuable element: his newfound strength of character. Furthermore, after musing on character, Charlie wanders through the streets of the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris, where "all the catering to vice and waste was on an utterly childish scale." In contrast to the warmth and stability of the Peters' home where he was just at dinner, the emptiness and desperation of the abandoned bars and clubs lead Charlie to ruminate on the meaning of the word "dissipate," which he understands now to mean "to make nothing out of something." This underscores Charlie's dawning revelation that, like character, the bond of family abides, while other relationships and pleasures dissipate. Despite Charlie's newfound commitment to character and family, Marion Peters remains skeptical that he is any less of an irresponsible drunk than he had been two years ago, and her opinion is significant, because she has the power to decide against allowing Charlie to complete his family by taking Honoria with him to Prague. Marion is an embittered character who threatens to destroy Charlie's dream of having a family, and yet she is the character most concerned with doing what is right for her family, including Honoria. She therefore not only embodies the familial bonds of dedication, love, and responsibility, but she also represents the moral standard to which Charlie must prove he can rise. She shows that family is a prize that is not straightforward or unambiguously pleasant, implying that unlike the pleasures of the '20s, the things worth having in life do not come easily. Fitzgerald gives evidence that Charlie understands this difficult truth, as he accepts Marion's decision not to allow him to take Honoria to Prague. While it's deeply disappointing for Charlie, he recognizes that this punishment is fair (even though Marion's change of heart was brought about by factors outside of his control), which demonstrates that he's willing to accept responsibility for his past actions and be patient and humble before Marion in order to regain his family. Charlie speaks several times throughout the story of his desire to make a home, a concept he associates with having a family. Pleading with Lincoln Peters, Charlie at one point expresses his fear that he'll "lose Honoria's childhood," and with it his "chance for a home." At the story's conclusion, after Marion has changed her mind about allowing Charlie to take charge of Honoria, Charlie reflects sadly that "he wanted his child, and nothing was much good now, beside that fact." Without a home and a family, Charlie believes, he has nothing of value. Fitzgerald's message, then, could hardly be clearer: having lived through the glitz and glamor of the roaring '20s himself—and having seen it fade—"Babylon Revisited" is his proclamation that the only things of lasting value are the relationships people build and commitments they make to their loved ones. - Theme: Transformation and Redemption. Description: In "Babylon Revisited," Charlie Wales reconciles himself to his past by revisiting the city where his life fell apart. As Charlie sees it, his return is the culmination of a long process of personal transformation, as it provides an opportunity for him to not only reflect on how much he has changed since leaving Paris, but also to redeem himself in the eyes of his family. However, Fitzgerald leaves some ambiguity around the question of whether Charlie has truly changed—and if he has, whether that change will be lasting. Charlie confronts various ghosts from his past in Paris—running into old friends and visiting the places he once spent so much time and money—all of which threaten to lure him into old patterns of self-destructive behavior and show that he hasn't really changed. This pattern persists until the end of the story, and although Charlie remains resolute in the face of many temptations, Fitzgerald seems to suggest that Charlie's transformation is still, and will perhaps always be, precarious. The primary transformation that Charlie has undergone is that he has been sober for a year and a half, presumably since his time at a sanatorium following his "collapse" in 1929. However, Charlie takes one drink every afternoon, and he does so deliberately, "so that the idea of alcohol won't get too big" in his imagination. This habit shows that personal transformation is fragile—Charlie's daily drink creates an ambiguity about whether his transformation is permanent, signaling that perhaps Charlie will fall again into old patterns, thereby ruining the new life to which he seems so committed. Fitzgerald further emphasizes the precariousness of Charlie's transformation by introducing temptation in the form of reminders of his old life. While out to lunch with Honoria (who embodies the upright future Charlie desires), Charlie runs into two former friends from his time in Paris years ago. They are Duncan Schaeffer and Lorraine Quarrles, "ghosts out of the past" who seem to be in denial that the glory days of the '20s are over. Although Charlie describes the encounter as an unwelcome one, and remarks that "his own rhythm was different now," he admits that he still feels a "passionate, provocative attraction" to Lorraine, which symbolizes that he is still irrationally drawn to his old life, despite his new commitments. After Charlie seems to have won permission from Marion Peters to take his daughter back to Prague with him, he receives a flirtatious letter at his hotel from Lorraine, who requests that they meet. The letter reads as both a temptation from days past and a threat to Charlie's success in maintaining Marion's trust, but he reflects that the once-attractive Lorraine now seems "trite, blurred, worn away," and his thoughts drift instead to Honoria and the future. Charlie's steadfastness in the face of his old vices proves, it seems, that he's impervious to the temptations of the old days, and that his significant transformation is lasting and real. Though Fitzgerald allows readers to glimpse Charlie's resolve, Marion is still skeptical that he has changed enough to merit regaining custody of Honoria. This mistrust is not simply a recognition that his present behavior might not be the whole truth—it's a deeply rooted antipathy, which shows that transformation is not simply a matter of changing behavior, but also of earning redemption for past mistakes. For Marion, Charlie's apparent transformation is less meaningful in light of Charlie's prior behavior to Helen (Charlie's wife and Marion's sister). Marion sees Charlie as having been responsible in some way for Helen's death, but Charlie makes a compelling case in his favor, arguing that he has undergone a transformation and that he plans to remain sober. Marion reluctantly cedes control, granting Charlie permission to take Honoria back to Prague. This victory, for Charlie, is a symbolic recognition that Marion—his harshest critic—really believes he has changed. However, when Duncan Schaeffer and Lorraine Quarrles arrive, uninvited and drunk, at the Peters's family home, it upsets Marion enough that she changes her mind about allowing Charlie to take charge of Honoria. The reversal seems unjust, on the one hand, because Charlie is not entirely to blame for Duncan and Lorraine's intrusion, despite having left the Peters' address with the barman at the Ritz so that Duncan would be able to find him there. On the other hand, Duncan and Lorraine's sudden appearance—and its disastrous consequences for Charlie—are a reminder of the irrepressible and un-erasable nature of the past. Even if Charlie truly has changed, Fitzgerald seems to say, there is still a price to be paid. As the story ends, Charlie vows to come back to Paris some day, reasoning that the Peters family "couldn't make him pay forever." Perhaps the truest testament to Charlie's transformation is that, rather than placing blame on Marion and acting the victim, he seems to understand that he has caused enough pain that he may not be able to win redemption—or escape his past—by changing his behavior alone. - Theme: Alcohol, Immoderation, and Collapse. Description: In "Babylon Revisited," Charlie's life is in shambles as a direct consequence of his abuse of alcohol. Although the story deals directly with other forms of immoderation and vice—including greed and promiscuity—Fitzgerald uses the story of Charlie's struggle with alcoholism to encapsulate his moral point about immoderate behavior inevitably leading to collapse. In this way, Charlie's story echoes the economic cycle of "boom and bust" that led to the Great Depression, which serves as the story's backdrop. During the late '20s, when Charlie lived in Paris with his wife, Helen, and his daughter, Honoria, he drank heavily, which regularly led him to behave irresponsibly. Reflecting on a late-night drunken escapade in which he stole a tricycle with Lorraine Quarrles, Charlie confesses that the incident was only "one of many" in which he had behaved so recklessly. Charlie identifies the night he drunkenly locked his wife out of their home as his gravest mistake and "the beginning of the end" of their marriage. Moreover, the incident implicates Charlie in Helen's eventual death, since she contracted pneumonia that night and later died of "heart trouble." Finally, Charlie forfeits guardianship of his daughter while he is "flat on his back" in a sanitarium recovering from his alcohol-induced collapse. Thus, Charlie's immoderate use of alcohol was instrumental in destroying his family, and is therefore also responsible for the suffering he continues to experience in "Babylon Revisited." Importantly, Charlie's recklessness was not limited to his use of alcohol. He also exhibited hubris—or excessive self-confidence—in the boom years of the '20s, even admitting at one point that he felt like "a sort of royalty, almost infallible." Despite his old habits, Charlie seems to have reformed his behavior. Each time he visits the bar at the Ritz—the epicenter of his old life in Paris—he sticks to his new habit of having just one drink every day, as he does throughout the story. Even after learning the devastating news that Marion has changed her mind about allowing him to take Honoria, Charlie refuses the bartender's offer of another drink, thereby showing that he is not going to cope with his loss in his old ways. His moderation in drinking has transformed his perspective. Strolling the streets of Montmartre and surveying the now-empty bars and clubs with sober eyes for the first time, Charlie thinks to himself, "you have to be damn drunk" to enjoy any of it. His newfound sobriety gives him a new perspective not only on Paris, but also on his past self. When he recalls the night he and Lorraine stole the tricycle, he asks himself "how many weeks or months of dissipation to arrive at that condition of utter irresponsibility?" Through Fitzgerald's careful description, the irresponsibility of Charlie's drinking habit is made to closely parallel the reckless immoderation of the bull market that led to the crash in 1929 (and the Great Depression of the '30s). When defending himself against Marion's accusations that no one can reasonably rely on Charlie to remain sober, Charlie retorts that his drinking only lasted about a year and a half: "from the time we came over until I—collapsed." Within the timeline of the story, this places Charlie's collapse from alcoholism at the same time as the market crash. Therefore, Charlie's personal storyline parallels the broader economic arc of the era—a time of excessive greed and irresponsibility followed by a collapse. This parallel further illustrates the overarching moral point that Fitzgerald seems to be making in this story against excessive or immoderate behavior: that excess is inevitably linked to collapse. Fitzgerald himself struggled with alcoholism for his entire adult life and drank himself to death at the early age of 44. It is worth noting that in "Babylon Revisited," Fitzgerald does not treat addiction the way contemporary medicine understands addiction (as a disease that makes addicts deserving of help rather than condemnation). Instead, he treats addiction in the more old-fashioned sense, as a moral failing and a symptom of weak character. Thus, for Fitzgerald, alcohol is a fitting parallel to the excesses of the bull market, which were brought about by immoral and uncontrolled greed. But this story came in the middle of Fitzgerald's life, before his own story of alcoholism was completed, and it perhaps reflects an undue optimism about a person's ability to beat addiction through moral reform. Fitzgerald himself tried to quit many times and failed, which complicates the somewhat easy moralism of Fitzgerald using alcohol to embody unchecked vice. - Climax: Duncan and Lorraine arrive unannounced at the Peters' home - Summary: "Babylon Revisited" tells the story of Charlie Wales' return to Paris in 1930, a year and a half after the stock market crashed and he moved away. The story begins with Charlie asking Alix, the barman at the Ritz, about all the characters that used to frequent the bar, but it seems that all of Charlie's old acquaintances—except for a man named Duncan Schaeffer—have left Paris, no longer as fabulously wealthy as they had been during the boom years of the 1920s. Charlie, too, has changed. He works in Prague now, and has stopped drinking as much. Charlie leaves his brother-in-law's address with Alix and instructs him to pass it along to Duncan Schaeffer if he sees him. On his way to his brother-in-law's house, Charlie looks at the streets of Paris from his taxi. He reflects on the years he spent in Paris and thinks that he spoiled the city for himself. The days had come and gone, until suddenly "two years were gone, and everything was gone," and finally he himself was gone. When Charlie arrives at his brother-in-law's house, his nine-year-old daughter, Honoria, greets him warmly at the door. Inside, Lincoln Peters (Charlie's brother-in-law), Marion Peters (his sister-in-law), and their two children are waiting for him. Charlie and Marion greet each other coldly. Lincoln asks Charlie about business in Prague, and Charlie responds that it's going well—his salary was even higher last year than it had been before the crash—and although he is boasting for a specific purpose, he sees that it bothers Lincoln and stops himself. Charlie remarks that all the Americans seem to have cleared out of Paris, and though Marion replies that this fact delights her, Charlie reminisces that, for a period, being an American in Paris was like being a type of royalty—and that "it was nice while it lasted." Without thinking, he mentions having been at the bar earlier that afternoon, and Marion quips that she thinks Charlie would have had enough of bars. Charlie explains that he has one drink every afternoon, and no more. There is an obvious and "instinctive antipathy" between Charlie and Marion, but Charlie thinks Marion's aggressiveness will give him an advantage in the discussion he came to Paris to have. At dinner, Charlie wonders to himself whether Honoria is more like him or her mother, Helen, and he hopes Honoria does not combine whatever qualities that had led him and Helen to disaster. He reflects that he believes in character as the "eternally valuable element," and thinks that everything else wears out. After dinner he goes walking in Montmartre, a neighborhood full of bars and jazz clubs where he used to spend a great deal of time and money. Most of the bars are empty, and some have disappeared completely. What he once saw as the "effort and ingenuity" of Montmartre, he now sees as childish "catering to vice and waste." Looking back on his days of drinking and squandering wild sums of money in this neighborhood, he regrets that he allowed his life to get so wildly out of control that his child was taken away from him and his wife "escaped to a grave in Vermont." The next day Charlie wakes up feeling refreshed, the "depression of yesterday" gone. He takes Honoria to lunch at Le Grand Vatel, the one restaurant he can think of that doesn't remind him of the decadence of the old days. He and Honoria make a plan to go to the toy store and the vaudeville show, though Honoria objects that she doesn't particularly want to go to the toy store, since she has a lot of things at home and Charlie already brought her a doll. While at lunch, Charlie runs into Duncan Schaeffer and Lorraine Quarrles, a stunning blonde whom he'd spent time with in the old days. Duncan and Lorraine try insistently to rope Charlie into a plan for dinner, but he repeatedly declines, telling them that he and Honoria have plans to see the vaudeville show and that he'll call them. After they're gone, Charlie feels that it was an unwelcome encounter with ghosts from his past. At the vaudeville show, Charlie worries that Honoria will grow up without him having had a chance to influence who she'll become. During intermission, they run into Duncan and Lorraine again and sit for a drink, but Charlie is distracted. After the show, Honoria says she wants to come live with Charlie in Prague, which makes his heart leap. When Charlie arrives at the Peters' later that evening, the atmosphere is tense. He tells them he's "awfully anxious to have a home" and he wants to bring Honoria back to Prague with him. Marion, barely able to hide her contempt for Charlie, asks how anyone can count on Charlie to remain sober. Marion pointedly brings up an incident in which Charlie had locked Helen out of their home in a snowstorm and Helen had contracted pneumonia, nearly dying as a result. Charlie pleads with Marion, begging her to have confidence in him. He reminds her that his drinking only lasted a year and a half, from the time he arrived in Paris until he collapsed and ended up in a sanitarium—but before that he had a good track record. He expresses fear that he'll lose Honoria's childhood and his "chance for a home." But Marion can't put aside her contempt for Charlie and accuses him of being responsible for Helen's death—a tactical misstep on her part—at which point it becomes clear to everyone in the room that Charlie has gained control of the situation. Charlie leaves with Lincoln's assurance that he and Marion won't stand in Charlie's way. That night, Charlie has a dream about Helen in which she tells him she wants him to have Honoria. The next morning, Charlie looks for a governess for Honoria and has lunch with Lincoln Peters, who tells him that he thinks Marion resents Charlie because of his wealth. When Charlie returns to his hotel, there's a letter from Lorraine waiting for him in which she asks him to meet her, but Charlie doesn't want to see her. He goes back to the Peters' house that evening, and while he's there, Duncan and Lorraine arrive, having gotten Lincoln's address from Alix, the barman at the Ritz. They drunkenly ask Charlie to come to dinner, and when he declines they leave bitterly. Charlie tries to smooth things over, but the intrusion has disturbed Marion so thoroughly that she changes her mind about allowing Charlie to take Honoria back to Prague with him. Charlie leaves the Peters' and goes to the bar at the Ritz. The head barman, Paul, comes over to talk to Charlie, and says he heard Charlie lost a lot in the crash. Charlie says that he did, but that he lost everything he wanted in the boom. He calls Lincoln, who tells Charlie that he'll have to wait six months before discussing Honoria's custody again with Marion. Charlie thinks that tomorrow he'll send Honoria a lot of toys, but then he becomes angry that all he can do is shower her with monetary gifts. He tells himself he'll come back to Paris someday—that the Peters can't make him pay for his mistakes forever. He's sure his wife Helen wouldn't have wanted him to be so alone.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: Bad Dreams - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: A basement apartment in England - Character: The Girl. Description: The girl lives in the basement apartment where the short story takes place with her mother, father, and younger brother. She loves to read—especially her favorite book, Swallows and Amazons—and she spends a great deal of time in her own imagination, either by herself or recreating scenes from the same book with her school friends. The girl is just beginning to understand the rich details of the lives of those around her, as she demonstrates when she ponders her parents' histories, but this richness can sometimes seem horrific to her. The idea that her beloved youthful characters would grow old and die in the imaginary, dreamed epilogue of her book is something she doesn't dare to voice aloud. In this way, the character of the girl highlights how imagination can threaten as much as it can delight. The girl's decision not to call out to her mother about her bad dream demonstrates that she has come to learn the freedom that secrecy can provide, but it also emphasizes how secrecy can weaken relationships. - Character: The Mother. Description: The mother lives in the basement apartment with her two children—the girl and her brother—and her husband (the children's father). She is resentful about how her life has played out so far, specifically that she wasn't able to fulfil her desire of being a painter. She must devote her time to being a housewife and dressmaker and can only move out of the apartment if her husband finishes his degree, which she no longer enjoys living in. The mother therefore represents the frustration women can feel under the societal expectation that they prioritize their families over their careers and creative pursuits. The woman's imagination seems to be as active as her daughter's. Her quickly drawn conclusion that her husband caused the mess in the lounge allows her the satisfaction of directing her anger at him, having long suspected him of looking to undermine her. In this way, her imagination gives her a sense of emotional freedom, but at the same time, it distances her from her husband without him even knowing the reason. The mother's character therefore emphasizes the freedom, along with the dangers, that imagination can bring. - Character: The Father. Description: The father lives in the basement apartment with his wife (the mother) and their two children (the girl and her brother). He works during the day, then studies toward his degree at night. The father's trumpet and his writing left out in the lounge contrasts with the mother's neatly put-away sewing machine, demonstrating the father's relative freedom to pursue his creative and academic interests while his wife appears to prioritize keeping an orderly home. He seems unaware that his wife resentments him, given his physical affection toward her despite her privately held conclusion that he wants to undermine her domestic efforts. - Theme: Imagination. Description: In "Bad Dreams," imagination has the potential to bring people both horror and freedom. For the young female protagonist of the story, the book Swallows and Amazons provides refuge and joy, allowing her to relate to her classmates by sharing in the imagined world of the novel. The girl sleeps with the novel next to her and rereads it several times, treasuring it as a failsafe way to access a world beyond her own. But as this story begins, she wakes up from a nightmare in which she discovered a secret epilogue to her beloved novel. The girl finds the imaginary epilogue horrific: it details the mundane lives and deaths that the novel's vibrant, youthful characters go on to live after the novel ends. Just as the girl's imagination allows her to indulge in a fictional world, it also opens that world up to the creeping dread of reality.  Meanwhile, the girl's mother demonstrates that imagination can have a profound effect on one's experience of reality. When she discovers that someone has caused chaos in the lounge, tipping over all the furniture and leaving the room in a state of disarray, her imagination first leads her to assume that someone has invaded the house. Ultimately, she concludes that her husband (the girl's father) must have thrown a fit of rage—or, perhaps, played a cruel joke on her to show her how little he regards her efforts to keep the house in good shape. The woman's subsequent train of thought leads her to decide that her husband—who, in fact, had nothing to do with the mess in the living room—is her enemy. This conclusion doesn't really upset the mother, however. Instead, it seems to provide clarity that allows her to cope with her life, in which she's frustrated by the limits of being a housewife and mother. In this way, "Bad Dreams" highlights the power of imagination to delight us, enrage us, or betray us. In any case, the characters' inner conflicts portray imagination as a potent force that can illuminate one's experience of reality as much as it can warp it. - Theme: Secrecy. Description: Over the course of "Bad Dreams," characters conceal truths from their loved ones in order to protect themselves. When the young girl, the story's protagonist, wakes up from her nightmare, she considers telling her mother about it but decides not to. She's afraid that her mother might laugh at her, or that speaking the details of the dream aloud would make them feel realer and more horrific. Either way, the girl is afraid that sharing her experience will hurt her in some way, so secrecy is safer: it allows her to protect her feelings and to conserve the imaginary world of her book that existed before her nightmare threatened to taint it. But that protection comes at a cost: it stops her from sharing a vulnerable moment with someone who could comfort her. Similarly, when the girl's mother discovers the chaos in the lounge and concludes that her husband (the girl's father) is to blame, she subsequently decides that he is, as she's long suspected, her enemy—someone working against her efforts to keep a tidy home. Instead of seeing this as a problem to solve, she resolves never to confront her husband about the incident, leaving it to him to breach the subject with her. This allows the woman to indulge in her secret feud with her husband without it affecting the practical nature of her relationship or her domestic life, though it also means she never discovers that her daughter, not her husband, is responsible for messing up the lounge. Through secrecy, the woman allows herself to live two lives, one in which she can fully feel and express her anger, and another in which her relationship continues in seeming harmony. "Bad Dreams" suggests that in a world of cruelty and judgment, people may use secrecy to maintain order and control. At the same time, though, keeping secrets can also be harmful, as it can create and sustain distance between people and prevent the truth from coming to light. - Theme: Gender and Freedom. Description: "Bad Dreams" illustrates the creative freedom people are either encouraged to—or denied ethe opportunity to—seek out due to the societal expectations of their genders. As the story's protagonist, a young girl, wanders her house in the middle of the night, she observes that her mother has tidied away the sewing equipment and materials she uses daily and that the kitchen is extremely neat. Meanwhile, in the lounge, her father's trumpet case is open and evidence of his work in progress is out on his desk. This contrast is physical proof of the difference between the mother and father's activities and habits. Though both parents are creative—the mother with her sewing, and the father with his music and writing—the father seems able to fully indulge in his creative pursuits without concerning himself with their effect on his family, while the mother feels that her duty is to keep the household tidy and organized rather than focus on whatever project she's working on. The mother's perspective sheds light on her frustration at having sacrificed her creative pursuits in order to spend her time caring for her children and looking after the home. Though she went to art school, she was intimidated by the young men there, and it's implied that that intimidation discouraged her from pursuing painting, which she still considers her rightful vocation. What's more, her husband's career even restricts her homemaking: the family can't move out of the apartment that she's grown to resent and into their own home until he finishes his degree. Their relationship illuminates the inequalities in creative freedom for men and women. While women and men are equally capable of creative work, women must wrestle with societal limitations that might bar the way to careers and self-expression—limitations that are either irrelevant to their male counterparts or even, sometimes, imposed by them. - Climax: The young girl overturns the furniture in the lounge. - Summary: A young girl wakes up in the middle of the night in a bedroom she shares with her younger brother. She remembers the dream she was having: she found a secret epilogue to her favorite book, Swallows and Amazons, which described the characters' later lives and deaths. The girl wanders through the basement apartment, her parents asleep in their own room, and notices how the moonlight makes familiar items in the house seem monstrous. In the kitchen, all her mother's things have been put away neatly, but in the lounge, her father's trumpet case is open and his pages of writing, related to the degree he's pursuing in his free hours after work, are out on his desk. The girl thinks about how her parents are complete, separate human beings. Suddenly, she gets an urge to upset the neat stillness of the house, so she pushes over several pieces of furniture in the lounge. She decides she'll never tell her parents about what she did tonight. The girl's mother wakes up early and gets out of bed quietly so as not to wake her husband (the girl's father). She reflects on how she's come to resent this basement apartment, though they won't be able to move into their own home until her husband completes his degree. She wanders through the apartment, wishing she were an artist instead of a housewife. When she sees the mess in the lounge, she first thinks that there's an intruder in the home. But after finding the windows locked, she decides that her husband must have caused the chaos. Though this upsets her, she also feels gratified to have some evidence for what she has long suspected: that her husband is her enemy. She tidies the room and goes back to bed, resolving not to bring the incident up to her husband. When everyone wakes up for the day, the mother fries bacon for the father's breakfast. He embraces her and they share a kiss. The mother goes to find the girl, who is attempting to get ready for school while reading her favorite book from the beginning again. The mother takes the book away and tells the girl to hurry up.

- Genre: Semi-Autobiographical; Historical Fiction; Scar Literature - Title: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Point of view: First person, narrated by the unnamed narrator. There are short interludes narrated by the Little Seamstress, Luo, and the miller. - Setting: Phoenix of the Sky mountain in Sichuan province, China, 1972-73 - Character: The Narrator. Description: The narrator is a 17-year-old boy who has been sent from his hometown to a mountain in rural China to be re-educated in the ways of peasant life. His re-education has been decreed by the communist government as part of the Cultural Revolution, an effort to eliminate intellectuals and elevate the working class and peasants. The narrator, though he has only completed middle school and has never read anything besides communist texts, is considered to be an intellectual because his educated parents have been labeled enemies of the state. Because of who his parents are, the narrator's chances of returning from re-education are three in a thousand. The narrator is extremely loyal to his best friend, Luo, who was sent with him to the mountain. Upon learning that their friend Four-Eyes brought a suitcase of banned novels to the mountain, the narrator and Luo become obsessed with western literature and go to great lengths to gain possession of the suitcase. The narrator is particularly inspired by the novel Jean-Christophe, which helps him to develop his own personal philosophy that champions individuals who stand up to take individual action against the world. Despite this inspiration, the narrator situates himself as a passive observer to the relationship between Luo and the Little Seamstress (a beautiful village girl with whom the narrator is also in love). Out of loyalty to Luo, he never tries to win the Little Seamstress for himself, and he risks his safety to arrange a dangerous illegal abortion for her. However, when the Little Seamstress betrays him by not telling him she's leaving the mountain, the narrator realizes that friendship needs loyalty that flows in both directions. - Character: Luo. Description: Luo is the narrator's best friend. They've been friends their whole lives, as they grew up next door to each other in the city of Chengdu. Luo is sent to the mountain to undergo re-education with the narrator, but life on the mountain makes him very depressed; he battles insomnia and moments of deep desperation. His chances of getting off the mountain are even slimmer than the narrator's because his father, the dentist, is serving time in prison. The narrator claims that Luo possesses no useful skills, but Luo is a skilled storyteller. He performs "oral cinema shows" for the village headman, in which he sees a film and then recites the film's story for the village, making his story last the length of the actual film. This earns Luo and the narrator a reprieve from their manual labor, as the process of seeing a film entails a four-day round trip journey to the city of Yong Jing and the headman agrees to pay the boys for their time. Luo is often selfish (when the boys obtain their first novel, there's no question that Luo will read it first) and convinced of his superiority. Luo is quite taken with Balzac's novels, and he sees that Balzac's work has a transformative effect on his girlfriend, the Little Seamstress. Though Luo loves the Little Seamstress, he's patronizing towards her, believing that she's uncultured and less intelligent than he is. By reading Balzac to her, Luo intends to make the Little Seamstress cultured enough to be worthy of his affections, but his education has an unintended effect: she gains the confidence and vision to leave the mountain for good by herself. Distraught, Luo burns the beloved novels in an emotional and drunken frenzy. - Character: The Little Seamstress. Description: The Little Seamstress is the "princess of Phoenix mountain" and the teenage daughter of the tailor. She's beautiful and has a number of suitors on the mountain. Though she's a "simple mountain girl" and nearly illiterate, she tells Luo that she loves talking with people from the city, which shows her curiosity. Over the course of her romantic relationship with Luo, he reads her novels by Balzac, which she adores. The Little Seamstress finds out that she's pregnant with Luo's child while Luo is away from the mountain, and the narrator arranges for her to have an illegal abortion in Yong Jing. In the months after her abortion, the Little Seamstress uses what she learns from Balzac's novels to transform herself into a stylish city girl: she cuts her hair into a bob, adopts a Chengdu accent, and makes herself a bra. She meticulously and secretly arranges to leave the mountain for the city, and cites a line from one of Balzac's novels when Luo tries to convince her to stay. Both Luo and the narrator see her departure as the ultimate betrayal, and the narrator, in particular, feels as though she selfishly abused his generosity and loyalty to her. - Character: Four-Eyes. Description: Four-Eyes is another young man undergoing re-education in a village on Phoenix of the Sky. He's the only one on the mountain who wears glasses, and he lives in constant fear that the peasants will never release him from the mountain to the life he loved at home. His parents are writers, and he shares their dream that he becomes a writer as well. As such, they provide him with a suitcase of banned western novels. Four-Eyes is generally suspicious of other people and he regularly behaves in ways that are purely self-serving. Luo and the narrator hear him admit that he only remains friends with Luo so he can someday call on the dentist, Luo's father, for dental work. Four-Eyes certainly doesn't believe in the ideals of the Communist government, though his self-serving nature means that he's more than willing to pretend to be revolutionary in order to escape the mountain. The hope that he might be able to escape the mountain brings his worst traits and habits to the forefront, as he tricks Luo and the narrator into collecting folk songs for him, refuses to compensate them as he promised he would, and then alters the folk songs to be more revolutionary. - Character: The Village Headman. Description: The headman is the most powerful person in the village where Luo and the narrator undergo their re-education. He has three blood spots in one eye and horrible teeth. He's a generally unpleasant person and loves power. As such, he's especially taken with Luo's alarm clock, since it allows him power over the villagers' schedules. He loves oral storytelling most of all, and is willing to break with communist ideals to allow Luo and the narrator to see films in Yong Jing and then perform "oral cinema shows" for the village. - Character: The Tailor. Description: As the only tailor on Phoenix of the Sky, the tailor is a revered figure. He travels to villages around the mountain to sew and leaves his daughter, the Little Seamstress, behind to work in their home shop. He's jovial and personable, and enjoys the narrator and Luo's stories. The Little Seamstress says that he behaves like a child and does whatever he wants. - Theme: Education, Re-Education, and the Cultural Revolution. Description: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress takes place during China's "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside" movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which sought to "re-educate" young intellectuals by removing them from their urban homes and sending them to rural areas to work and learn from the peasants. The narrator states that Chairman Mao Zedong's reasons for sending Chinese youth to the countryside were somewhat unclear, as individuals like Luo and the narrator, whom the Chinese government classified as "intellectuals," weren't intellectuals by any stretch of the imagination—they had actually only completed a middle school education. With this cruel irony front and center, the novel sets out to explore what education means when knowledge itself is stifled, and what the consequences are of trying to mandate how individuals and populations behave and think. The peasants in charge of Luo and the narrator's re-education are mostly illiterate. They live simple lives and perform backbreaking work; in short, they are exactly what the communist regime wants the population to be like. Though Luo is obviously against the government's idea of re-education, he wishes to perform his own brand of re-education on the Little Seamstress and transform her from a beautiful but simple country girl into a cultured young woman worthy of his affections. This, of course, backfires when the Little Seamstress takes what she's learned from hearing Luo and the narrator read Balzac to her and decides to leave the mountain and Luo behind. The Little Seamstress undergoes the exact opposite of the government's idea of re-education, as do Luo and the narrator. Their exposure to banned Western literature provides them with ideas and goals that run completely counter to the communist project of the country. Though the narrator, Luo, and Four-Eyes are the only official recipients of re-education in the novel, the narrator continues to suggest that the idea of re-education isn't unique to them. The entire mountain is in the process of its own form of re-education, as it once thrived on the opium trade and, thanks to the Cultural Revolution, is now forced to embrace the idealized life of the poor, noble peasant. While the narrator doesn't go into great detail about what the villagers' lives were like before the Cultural Revolution, he suggests that they weren't thrilled to switch from cultivating opium to other crops. The villagers never fully bought into the ideals espoused by the government, as illustrated by their "quiet anarchy" when the village headman leaves for a month. Though the headman's motives aren't detailed, it's suggested that he cares more about maintaining and exerting his power than about either opium or enforcing communism in his village. Essentially, he doesn't seem to care where his power comes from; he just cares that he has it. This shows that the images of both re-education and the "noble peasant" are just that: images, not actual reality. The villagers, and the headman in particular, seem far more committed to obtaining and keeping power than they are to ideals espoused by the government. Though the Cultural Revolution was intended to shape the Chinese way of life by educating or re-educating citizens to fit a certain ideal, the novel suggests that attempting to shape people to embody a particular vision is a difficult or impossible task, and that controlling what happens as a result of another person's education is equally impossible. - Theme: Coming of Age. Description: At its most basic level, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress tells the coming of age stories of Luo, the Little Seamstress, and the narrator. While the three engage in the perfectly normal process of testing boundaries and questioning the truth of what they've been taught by parents and the government, the particularly oppressive nature of the Cultural Revolution makes this process significantly more dangerous and high-stakes for them. Because Luo and the narrator's parents have been labeled enemies of the state, the chances that Luo and the narrator will be allowed to return to their families is three in a thousand. This creates a great deal of anxiety for them around their coming of age, as their time on the mountain doesn't necessarily have an end date. The boys find themselves in a state of limbo, which leads them to grasp for ways to try to control their futures. As a violinist, the narrator knows that if he becomes accomplished enough, he could possibly have a future playing communist music. Luo, however, has no such talent to get him away from the mountain. Instead, he turns to romance with the Little Seamstress as preparation for the future, as the narrator indicates that Luo marrying the Little Seamstress is a distinct possibility. Luo views his secret rendezvous with the Little Seamstress as a mental and emotional escape. However, even though knowing he'll marry the Little Seamstress makes Luo slightly happier, it can't replace the hurt of being denied the future he once thought he would have. The narrator and Luo's coming of age begins to take off when they're introduced to the possibility of reading literature. The narrator tells the reader that all literature, western as well as Chinese, had been banned at the start of the Cultural Revolution. By the time he and Luo learned to read, the only thing to read was Mao's "Little Red Book." He describes the thought of literature as being intoxicating: just hearing about it is enough to conjure the idea perfectly in one's mine. All the novels in Four-Eyes' suitcase open the boys' eyes to the western world and to adult concepts like love and sex. Notably, Luo and the Little Seamstress have sex for the first time after Luo reads Balzac's Ursule Mirouët, which suggests that western literature paved the way for his and the Little Seamstress's sexual coming of age. The narrator develops his own unique view on life and the world around him after reading the novel Jean-Christophe by Romain Rollande. Jean-Christophe is particularly intoxicating to the narrator because it features a character who takes "free individual action against the whole world"—an idea that goes against every communist teaching the narrator has ever heard. This leads the narrator to wish for something that is wholly his own, not something shared with Luo as most of their possessions are. This idea of independence as a marker for maturity applies to the Little Seamstress, as well. Thanks to what she learns from western literature via the narrator and Luo, she finds the power within herself to actually take individual action against the world by leaving the mountain and her lover behind. Though love, sex, and education are some of the first ways in which the characters begin their coming of age processes, the novel suggests that the final tipping point to maturity occurs when a character seeks independence as a consequence of what they've learned from love or literature. - Theme: Storytelling, Censorship, and Power. Description: The Cultural Revolution sought to eliminate any kind of art, music, or literature that didn't fully support the political aims of the government. The narrator says that both western and classic Chinese literature are banned, and some works of music have been altered to pay homage to Mao. With this backdrop, the novel explores how storytelling and censorship work together and in opposition to each other, particularly showing how storytelling can give individuals power, and censorship can enhance the power and allure of works of literature. China's strict censorship of artistic expression and intellectualism suggests, first of all, that there is value and power in art, music, and storytelling—if there weren't, such types of expression wouldn't be a threat to the Chinese government's aims of a fully communist society. Artistic and literary pursuits, particularly when they shed light on other parts of the world or champion individualism, take power away from the government by making it clear to the people that there are other ways of living, and that people who live differently might be happy. This is best illustrated by the narrator's reaction to reading Jean-Christophe. The narrator takes from the novel that individuals who challenge the world are good and noble, and that staying alive to challenge the world is of the utmost importance. This point of view gives the narrator the courage to arrange the abortion for the Little Seamstress. Forbidden literature, then, is shown to lead directly to forbidden action. Throughout the novel, characters use works of literature as currency. The narrator and Luo trade physical labor for one of Four-Eyes' novels, and later, the narrator trades two novels to the gynecologist to pay for the Little Seamstress' illegal abortion. By ascribing this kind of value to literature, the novel shows that literature isn't just powerful in an emotional sense; it has real material value. Notably, literature as currency works in the narrator's society because banning them has made them all the more valuable to those who don't completely buy into the Party ideals. Essentially, by attempting to disempower the population by depriving them of this literature, the government gave those who do have access to the literature a great deal of power. The novel itself contradicts the narrator's initial claim that storytelling, while a charming talent, isn't one that's truly valued or worthwhile in communist China; the government's insistence on censorship makes that very clear from the beginning. In addition, the village headman obviously values storytelling as entertainment; he's willing to pay Luo and the narrator for four days' worth of manual labor so they can instead go see and recite films for the village. Similarly, Luo and the narrator collect the miller's folk songs for Four-Eyes so that he can land a job at a revolutionary journal. Finally, because the novel is based on the author's actual experiences of re-education, the novel itself stands as proof that storytelling and literature, particularly literature that challenges censorship and gives voice to individuals, is worthwhile and powerful. - Theme: Friendship and Loyalty. Description: The narrator is clear that he and Luo are best friends and always have been. They grew up in apartments next door to each other, watched their parents publically humiliated at political rallies, and are sent together to Phoenix mountain for re-education. However, what the narrator says about the strength and depth of his friendship with Luo is complicated by the questionable ways that Luo treats the narrator. As the narrator navigates the trials and tribulations of being Luo's friend, the novel suggests that loyalty isn't as simple or as straightforward as the narrator would like to think. Though the narrator never says so outright, Luo is a somewhat difficult person to be friends with. He's occasionally violent and often selfish, getting first dibs on Balzac's books from Four-Eyes' suitcase. As a result of this, the narrator situates himself as more of a sidekick to Luo than an equal. Further, the narrator seldom takes issue with this state of affairs, suggesting that their relationship is built on unequal footing. The narrator's style of storytelling reinforces the idea that he's a mere sidekick or onlooker to the story, and that (in his mind at least) the story itself is really about Luo and the Little Seamstress, and the ways in which the narrator supports them and their relationship. He gives this impression by consistently re-conceptualizing events to emphasize others rather than himself, as when he revises his initial mention of "his [the narrator's] tormenters" to "the Little Seamstress's swarm of disappointed suitors." This shifts the focus away from him and makes it clear that he believes his own existence is inconsequential in relation to those around him. This habit of putting others first, both in the narrator's actions and his words, becomes its own way of showing loyalty. The narrator's idea of loyalty becomes even more complicated when Luo leaves the mountain temporarily and charges the narrator with watching over the Little Seamstress in his absence. With Luo gone, the narrator can no longer ignore the fact that he himself is in love with the Little Seamstress. He transfers his physical displays of loyalty and friendship from Luo to the Little Seamstress, helping her with household chores and painting her fingernails for her. Initially, this leads to what the narrator deems a betrayal of sorts, as he masturbates thinking about the Little Seamstress, and in his sexual frustration, he begins to brainstorm ways to break his promise to Luo. However, the narrator's loyal nature returns when the Little Seamstress confides in him the following day that she's pregnant with Luo's child. The narrator takes it upon himself to talk her out of inducing a miscarriage with herbs or bodily harm, and procures an illegal abortion for her in Yong Jing. At the end of the novel, the narrator finally suggests that he views loyalty as being transactional, as he's angry with the Little Seamstress for leaving without telling him. The narrator feels he's owed this information, since he arranged her abortion, which he sees as the sole reason the Little Seamstress can even consider leaving her mountain home. He feels that the Little Seamstress owes him her life as she knows it, and he thus considers her leaving in secret to be the ultimate betrayal. This suggests that as the narrator grows up and comes of age, he begins to place more value on the loyalty that others show him, rather than simply effacing himself out of loyalty to others. While he still places himself in the role of mere spectator and supporting character to his friends' failing romance, his feelings of anger and betrayal suggest not only that he believes that he's deserving of loyalty, but that loyalty from both sides is a necessary element of an equal friendship. - Climax: When the Little Seamstress leaves the mountain for the city - Summary: Luo and the narrator arrive at the mountain Phoenix of the Sky, a dizzyingly tall and extremely rural mountain near the Chinese border with Tibet. The village headman wants to burn the narrator's violin, but Luo explains to the headman that the narrator is a talented violinist and will play a sonata titled "Mozart is Thinking of Chairman Mao." The headman allows the narrator to keep the violin. The narrator explains that he and Luo are considered intellectuals by the government and, because of this, they have been sent to the mountain to undergo re-education by the poor peasants. The boys perform backbreaking work and carry buckets of feces to the fields every day. The mountain is rainy and depressing, and the narrator plays his violin to try to lift his and Luo's spirits. He explains to the reader that because of his musical talent he may someday get to leave the mountain, but Luo's only talent is storytelling. The headman is the only one who appreciates Luo's talent, and he sends Luo and the narrator to the town of Yong Jing to see movies and then relate them back to the village. The Little Seamstress is the "princess" of the mountain. One day, the narrator and Luo run into her father, the tailor, on a narrow mountain path, and the tailor teases the narrator about his violin. Several weeks later, Luo and the narrator stop by the tailor's house to ask the Little Seamstress to lengthen Luo's pants. Luo is obviously taken with the Little Seamstress, but when the narrator asks him about it, Luo says that the Little Seamstress isn't cultured enough for him. The narrator and Luo are sent to work in the extremely dangerous coal mine for two months. After six weeks, Luo contracts malaria. The miners whip Luo to drive out the infection, and when they instruct the narrator to take over, the narrator discovers a letter from the Little Seamstress, saying that she's arranged for them to come to her village and perform an "oral cinema show." When they arrive and the Little Seamstress sees how ill Luo is, she cancels the show, tucks Luo into her bed, and applies a poultice to his arm. She calls four sorceresses to keep a vigil around Luo. When the sorceresses begin to fall asleep, the Little Seamstress asks the narrator to tell them a story to keep them awake. Luo regains consciousness partway through the narrator's poor recitation and speaks the final heart-wrenching line of the story, sending the sorceresses into tears. The next morning, Luo feels well enough to head home. He and the narrator stop when they see their friend Four-Eyes struggling with a water buffalo in a muddy field. Four-Eyes suggests that his friends rest at his house. When the narrator is searching for a sweater for Luo under Four-Eyes' bed, he finds a small, heavy suitcase. Four-Eyes won't say anything about it, but he looks panicked when Luo suggests that it contains books. One snowy day in spring, Luo and the narrator go to see Four-Eyes, who has recently lost his glasses but is still attempting to work. Luo offers to help Four-Eyes finish his work in exchange for a book. Four-Eyes refuses, but is unable to complete his task. Luo and the narrator help him, and he gives them Ursule Mirouët by Balzac. Luo stays up all night reading and leaves in the morning after giving the book to the narrator. The narrator reads all day and when he's done, he copies a passage from the novel onto the inside of his jacket. Luo returns early the next morning and tells the narrator that he and the Little Seamstress had sex for the first time. Luo and the narrator return the novel to Four-Eyes, but he won't lend them any more books. One day, they find Four-Eyes boiling his clothes, and he tells his friends that he had the opportunity to get off the mountain by collecting folk songs from an old miller. He ruined the opportunity by offending the old man and got lice in the process. Four-Eyes promises the boys a book if they can successfully record the miller's songs. Luo and the narrator disguise themselves as soldiers and visit the miller. They join him in sucking on salty rocks, and the miller sings bawdy songs. When they present their work to Four-Eyes, Four-Eyes deems the songs "smutty rhymes." He decides to alter them, and the narrator punches Four-Eyes. Luo, the narrator, and the Little Seamstress go to Yong Jing to see a film. At the hotel that night, they learn that a woman is on her way to retrieve her son from his re-education. The next day, while the narrator waits for his friends next to a path, the narrator meets this woman. She's Four-Eyes' mother, the poetess, and she says that Four-Eyes has gotten a job at a revolutionary journal. When she leaves and the narrator tells Luo and the Little Seamstress what he learned, the Little Seamstress suggests they steal the suitcase of books before Four-Eyes leaves. Luo and the narrator fashion a master key to pick Four-Eyes' lock and plan to steal the books during the village's celebratory banquet. Four-Eyes' village's headman slaughters a buffalo, and he and Four-Eyes drink the animal's blood. Later, Luo and the narrator watch the festivities before breaking into Four-Eyes' house. They find the suitcase, which is full of translated Western novels. When they try to leave through the window they find it locked. They hear Four-Eyes and the poetess returning to the house and hide under the beds. When Four-Eyes and his mother leave, Luo grabs the suitcase and they run away with it. Four-Eyes never reports his missing books. The headman leaves for a party conference, and Luo and the narrator spend a month reading all the books in the suitcase. The narrator is most taken by the novel Jean-Christophe. Luo spends his days visiting the Little Seamstress and reading to her. When a storm ravages the mountain, it creates a dangerous path along the way that scares even the narrator, who isn't afraid of heights like Luo is. When the headman returns, he's very angry because he received poor dental care in Yong Jing. He asks Luo to repair his bad tooth, since his father is a dentist, but Luo refuses. The tailor arrives in the village a few days later and decides to stay with Luo and the narrator. Before they go to bed the first night, the tailor asks the boys to tell him a story. The narrator begins to tell The Count of Monte Cristo, and the tailor is hooked. The telling takes nine nights. On the third, the narrator is interrupted by the headman, who accuses him of spreading reactionary trash. The headman threatens to take the narrator to the Public Security Office, but says that he'll leave the narrator alone if Luo can repair the headman's tooth. The tailor fashions a drill out of his sewing machine needle. The headman can't stand the pain of the makeshift drill, so Luo suggests they tie the headman down. The headman agrees, and the narrator works the treadle. He takes revenge on the headman by making the treadle go as slowly as possible. The novel switches to passages of narration by other characters. The old miller narrates a story of coming upon Luo and the Little Seamstress having sex in a secluded pool. Then Luo narrates, saying he taught the Little Seamstress how to dive, and how she loved to dive for his key ring. He says that he has to leave for a month to sit at his mother's sickbed. The Little Seamstress takes over the narration and tells the narrator that Luo's stories made her want to dive. On the last day she and Luo went to the pool, they acted out a part of The Count of Monte Cristo, and then she dove for Luo's keys. At the bottom of the pool she encountered a snake that bit her, and she left Luo's keys underwater. Luo asks the narrator to keep an eye on the Little Seamstress while he's out of town with his sick mother. The narrator envisions himself as a "secret agent" and he mostly enjoys the task. He begins to take on household chores at the Seamstress's house and finds that he's very attracted to her. As he's heading home one night, a band of the Little Seamstress's suitors attacks the narrator. They discover his Balzac novel, but the narrator escapes with only a bruised ear. That night, the narrator dreams about the gang of suitors cutting his ear off and the Little Seamstress rescuing him. He masturbates thinking about her. The next day, the Little Seamstress tells the narrator she's pregnant. The narrator explains that being an unwed mother is illegal, abortion is illegal, and getting married before age 25 is illegal. The narrator goes to Yong Jing to try to get help from the gynecology department at the hospital. The female patients yell at the narrator and he spends two days trying unsuccessfully to learn how to procure an abortion. On the third day, he decides to try to get help from the Christian preacher, who sweeps the streets. The narrator learns that the preacher is in the hospital. At the hospital, the narrator sits with the preacher and the preacher's family, who try to record the preacher's last words. The narrator catches a glimpse of the gynecologist and follows the doctor into an exam room. He offers the gynecologist a novel by Balzac in exchange for the abortion. The Little Seamstress's abortion is the next Thursday. It's successful, and the narrator gives the gynecologist Ursule Mirouët as well as Jean-Christophe. The Little Seamstress buys tangerines for the preacher, who died days earlier, and puts them on his grave. The narrator jumps forward to himself and Luo, drunk and laughing, burning the banned novels. He explains that the Little Seamstress left suddenly after deciding to become a city girl. In the time leading up to her departure, she cut her hair into a bob, asked the tailor to buy her white shoes, and altered a jacket for herself. The result was modern and stylish, and Luo decided that reading to her had paid off. The narrator says that he and Luo didn't realize then that the final aspect of the Little Seamstress's transformation hadn't happened yet. A month later, the narrator and Luo are working in the fields when they hear a commotion in the village. The tailor is in the village, and he tells the boys that the Little Seamstress left for the city. Luo and the narrator run down the mountain in pursuit of the Little Seamstress. After two hours, the narrator spots the Little Seamstress sitting by the graveyard. He stops and watches Luo reunite with her. The narrator watches as the two begin talking and he hears Balzac's name. He feels betrayed that the Little Seamstress didn't tell him she was leaving. The seamstress gets up and resumes her march down the mountain. The narrator calls after her, but she keeps running. Luo tells the narrator that the Little Seamstress said that she learned from Balzac that her beauty is a treasure, and she's going to the city to try her luck.

- Genre: Short Story - Title: Barn Burning - Point of view: Faulkner is famous for his stream-of-consciousness technique, which moves in and out of characters' minds in a way that can be both powerful and, at times, confusing. The third-person narration closely follows Sarty's own perspective, and we do often gain access into Sarty's thoughts at certain moments. But the narrator also informs us of certain things that Sarty does not know and could have no way of knowing. As a result, it is sometimes unclear whether the narration is taking Sarty's perspective or is enacting a broader third-person narration. - Setting: Yoknapatawpha, a fictional county in Mississippi that serves as the setting for almost all of Faulkner's works. - Character: Colonel Sartoris "Sarty" Snopes. Description: The youngest son of the Snopes family, ten-year-old Sarty is named after a Confederate officer named Colonel Sartoris who comes up in a number of William Faulkner's other works. The story often calls Sarty simply "the boy." Sarty is in the process of developing his own character and values over the course of the story. He feels a fierce, instinctive loyalty to the rest of his family, but that loyalty coexists both with a feeling that his connection to his family is inevitable, and with a hunger after other, alternative kinds of connections. Sarty has an implicit idea of justice that conflicts with his father's, for instance, and he also—unlike other members of his family—manages to retain a sense of hope for the future, as epitomized by his reaction to the elegant, welcoming-looking home of Major de Spain family. - Character: Abner Snopes. Description: The patriarch of the Snopes family, Abner claims that he was once a "horsetrader," though he was actually little more than a stealer of horses during the Civil War, as well as a mercenary (someone who fought for money rather than out of loyalty or patriotism). This is perhaps the reason he was shot during the wary by a member of the police, and now walks with a limp. Now, Abner attempts to support his family through sharecropping, though he never lasts long in one place before being forced or pushed away. Tall, stiff, and somber, Abner's physical appearance is bolstered by his psychological resentment and bitterness with respect to his position in society. His rage against what he sees as the unfairness of this position leads him to ultimately self-defeating actions, like burning barns and soiling Major de Spain's rug. Abner cannot see any way out of his predicament other than defiantly challenging the status quo, despite (or perhaps because) he knows nothing will change. - Character: Lennie Snopes. Description: Abner's wife Lennie is only named once in the story; she is usually referred to as Sarty's mother. Unlike Abner and Sarty, Lennie does not seem to have much of an independent life outside the home, where she dutifully works in support of her family's needs. Instead she lives in perennial fear of Abner's next moves, even while she understands that it's useless to try to stop his actions. Lennie loves her children, but her main emotion is desperation: just as Abner sees himself as unable to control society, which he so desires to conquer, she feels out of control within the family. - Character: Sarty's sisters. Description: While Lennie faces the difficulties of sharecropping life within the home with quiet determination, Sarty's sisters deal with their lot with pure passivity. The sisters are described (from Sarty's perspective) as large, lazy, and "bovine" or cow-like. Dressed in flouncy dresses and tacky ribbons, the girls seem out of place, if not merely irrelevant to the struggles with justice and authority that characterize Sarty's childhood. Lennie deals with their passivity and unhelpfulness as with any other difficulty: even as their mother, she refrains from trying to mold or change them. - Character: Sarty's brother. Description: Also unnamed, the brother is older than Sarty and seems to have traveled farther along the path of becoming their father. Sarty considers him to be more an adult than a fellow child: several times Sarty becomes confused when he assumes that not he but his brother is being spoken to. The brother is mostly sullen and quiet: we don't learn anything about his own fears or desires, though it does seem that he either agrees with Abner most often or else is willing to choose loyalty over any other sense of values. - Character: The aunt. Description: Lennie's sister, Sarty's aunt, lives with the family, but is mostly portrayed as simply another woman in the household who, ultimately, will give in to Abner's desires. Only at the end does she begin to assert her own opinions, when she claims that she'll tell Major de Spain that Abner is planning to burn the barn down if Lennie doesn't release Sarty. - Character: Major de Spain. Description: Abner's new employer after he is asked to leave his former community, the Major de Spain is a wealthy rural landowner and is the Snopes family's landlord as well as their employer. He thinks of himself as fair and even-tempered, but he also is incredulous at the idea that his authority might be questioned, as it is by Abner. - Character: Mr. Harris. Description: Mr. Harris is a fellow farmer and a neighbor of the Snopes family at the beginning of the story, who takes Abner to trial for burning his barn, after Mr. Harris complained about Abner's hog constantly getting into his own pen. While he initially asks the judge to make Sarty testify against his own father, he ultimately gives up and retracts his wish. - Character: The Justice (II). Description: The story's second judge presides over the community where the Snopes family has just moved, and oversees the case in which Abner has sued Major de Spain over the twenty bushels of corn that, the Major has calculated, Abner owes him for soiling the rug. The judge is immediately recognizable to Sarty as a judge because of his glasses and air of authority. This justice does find against Abner, although he lessens the punishment, given the Snopes family's poverty. - Theme: Resentment, Race, and Prejudice. Description: The Snopes family is made up of poor white sharecroppers, an economic class from the post-Civil War American South through which poor farmers earned their living by working off land of owned by another, a landowner who provided certain materials and sometimes housing in exchange for the labor and a percentage of the resulting crop. While former slaves often became sharecroppers in the upheaval after the Civil War and Reconstruction, struggling white people increasingly turned to it as well, even though the system could be grueling and unforgiving, with many sharecroppers entering a cycle of debt to their landowners from which they might never emerge. Abner Snopes, the patriarch of the Snopes family, is deeply resentful of his economic situation—but this resentment is also racial. Economically, the Snopes family has much more in common with other black sharecroppers, or even with the black servants who work at the de Spain house, than with the white landowners. And racial prejudice is not, of course, limited to the Snopes family, in American history or in this story. It appears that part of the reason the black servants at Major de Spain's house are so terrified when Abner soils the rug is that they live in such fear of their master. But Abner in particular finds it vital to distinguish himself from black people in order to cling to one last sense of superiority and self-respect. And Abner uses his prejudice to justify his own superiority to everyone else. For instance, he positions himself as superior to the much richer de Spain family because their house is built, he says derogatorily, from "nigger sweat." In other words, Abner has found a way to make his own status as a poor white person one of "purity" based on his prejudice. He holds black people as naturally inferior to him because he is white. But he also holds wealthier white people as inferior to him because they use their money to hire black labor, and thereby are surrounded by black people. Under this prejudicial logic, Abner as a poor white person is superior because he neither is black nor can hire blacks. And his ideas seep into the rest of the family—Abner's son, Sarty, also uses derogatory language in talking about blacks, even if he hasn't developed as full-bodied a logic of racism as his father. Yet the story also makes clear that Abner's viewpoint is ultimately motivated by resentment at the fact that he and the black servants are in the same position, his "white sweat" mixing with theirs. Such ugly prejudices are, the story suggests, meant to be seen in part as an element of Abner's own personal resentment and selfishness. But they are also portrayed, through the story's broader portrait of the society in which Abner lives, as indicative of the larger racial and economic relationships that underlie—and warp—the entire American South. - Theme: Aspiration, Desperation, and Defiance. Description: The world of "Barn Burning" as Abner Snopes sees it—and as his son Sarty originally does as well—portrays social and economic inequalities as a given. One's professional and class-based identity, as a judge, sharecropper, servant, or landowner, is understood as inescapable, and Abner seems to feel these inequalities more acutely than most. Other members of the family deal with their economic reality differently. Sarty's sisters, for example, who are described somewhat condescendingly as "bovine" and passive, embrace lethargy rather than actively trying to defy the system. His mother, in turn, seems mainly fearful and desperate. She knows that there's little she can do to stop her husband's defiant actions, though she frets over them all the same.Abner, indeed, chooses an openly defiant attitude, one that embraces actions that seem to do nothing other than signal his refusal to accept his lot—and he seems, initially, to be succeeding in encouraging his two sons to adopt the same stance. Like the other adults in the family, Abner sees the wealth and success around him and recognizes that it is outside his reach. Because he likes to think of himself as a once-successful "horsetrader," his social and economic descent is only more painful. At the same time, he's fully aware that setting a barn afire or soiling an expensive rug will ultimately do little to nothing to change things. But his destructive bent is also a kind of self-destructiveness—and, at the same time, a reminder that for the family's place in Southern society at this moment in history, passivity and defiance are in many ways the only choices available to the poor.The only way the story challenges this attitude, is through the ambivalence of Sarty regarding his father's choices. In many ways, Sarty wants to align with his father's defiance: he babbles on about how they'll refuse to give up the ten bushels of corn due to the de Spain family for the soiled rug, for instance (though much of this may well stem from his general desire to be loved by his father). At the same time, though, Sarty does have the imaginative capacity to picture other realities, to choose a posture that wouldn't be his sisters' passivity, mother's desperation, or father's defiance. That posture is one of hopeful aspiration, epitomized by the sense of "peace and joy" that he feels in looking up at the de Spain home. When Sarty looks at wealth, he sees not inequality, unfairness, and unattainable dreams, but safety and security, as well as an idea that things could be different for him. - Theme: Independence and Justice. Description: The Snopes family is entirely dependent on their landowners for their livelihood, but Abner Snopes constantly tries to assert his own independence anyway—even when that involves bending the wills of the other members of his family, too, to his own desires. Abner deeply resents having to work for other men to support his family, and many of his defiant actions, his lack of concern towards the rules and regulations of others, can be understood as stemming from such resentment. Yet even while asserting independence, Abner also appeals to other systems, such as the courts, becoming dependent on them at the same time as he refuses to play entirely by their rules. Justice, then, plays an ambivalent role for the Snopes family, even as ten-year-old Sarty—watching his father as well as the other characters in the story—struggles to determine what "justice" might mean for him. Abner's activities entangle his family, and Sarty in particular, in so many court proceedings that Sarty—who is eventually able to recognize any judge by his formal, bespectacled appearance—has trouble keeping them straight. Indeed, at one point Sarty confuses one trial with another, and as he and his father enter the courtroom, begins defending his father against the charge of burning a barn—when, in fact, it's his father who is suing Major de Spain. Abner may appeal to official court-sanctioned justice just as often as other people make formal complaints against him—but when justice doesn't go his way, he's willing to disregard what he's told and claim independence once again. When a judge tells him he'll owe ten bushels of October corn to Mr. de Spain, for instance, he tells his son that they'll just wait until October and then see. Once again, Sarty seems to want to support his father even as he possesses a distinct, more innate sense of justice. It's Sarty, for instance, who objects to the fact that his father appears to be planning to burn the de Spain barn without sending a man ahead to warn the de Spains, like he did the last time. And it's Sarty who ultimately warns the Major as a result. But it is as a consequence of what Sarty understands to be justice that his father and brother (presumably) are shot—in the Major's own form of vigilante justice. In the stuffy courtroom, verdicts can often seem unfair; yet as Sarty learns, the apparently independent system outside it turns out to function along an even more unpredictable logic of individual "justice." - Theme: Loyalty, Family, Blood. Description: What "Barn Burning" calls the "old fierce pull of blood" is a profound motivating force for Sarty—a force that, he both expects and fears, may turn out to determine his own life as well. In the story, blood is referred to in almost a genetic sense: young Sarty has inherited his father's blood, and various similarities can be traced between the other family members as well. By discussing both past and future generations of the family, the story suggests that this blood lineage makes certain features, certain attributes, crop up again and again in a family through history. The stable, enduring legacy of blood has several implications for Sarty. It suggests that he must be loyal to his father, putting blood above justice or truth, for instance, and being willing to lie in order to do so. But it also suggests that Sarty may well be fated to repeat his father's actions. Indeed, the bonds of blood can seem like real, physical chains to Sarty, wedding him to his family even when he wishes he could escape them. When he first thinks of running away, Sarty realizes that he simply can't—that he's indelibly bound to this family. He does, nonetheless, end up betraying his father by warning Major de Spain that Abner is going to burn down his barn. Yet this betrayal results in Sarty's bonds to his family being irrevocably severed—with his father and brother shot by de Spain and possibly dead, Sarty's sense of justice or honor has physically and not just emotionally separated him from his family and blood. And whatever has happened to his father and brother, at the end of the story Sarty walks away without looking back, making clear that he will never return to his family. In acting in a way that led to his father's shed blood, Sarty has shed the "blood" of his ties to his family. What does remain an open question in the story, though, is the extent to which Sarty's escape will, or won't, prevent him from following in his father's footsteps and fulfilling what is contained in his blood. - Climax: Sarty breaks free from his mother's grasp and races up to the de Spain house to warn the Major that Abner, Sarty's father, is about to burn down his barn—the first time Sarty blatantly challenges his father's authority and chooses to follow his own values. - Summary: "Barn Burning" opens in a general store that is being used for a courtroom, where a ten-year-old boy—Colonel Sartoris (Sarty) Snopes, though he's usually referred to as "the boy"—is crouching in the back, barely able to see his father, Abner Snopes, and his neighbor, Mr. Harris, who has made a complaint against Abner. According to Harris, Abner allowed his hog to get into Harris's yard several times—after Harris finally kept the hog and ordered Abner to pay if he wanted it back, Abner allegedly set his barn afire that night. Since Harris has no real proof, he wants Sarty to testify. With a rush of fear, Sarty realizes he'll have to lie and defend his father, but then Harris changes his mind. The Justice says he can't find Abner guilty, but advises him to leave town: Abner says he was planning to anyway. Abner, Sarty, and his brother go outside, where his mother, aunt, and two twin sisters are waiting with their meager possessions loaded into the wagon. That night they stop and make a small fire. Abner pulls Sarty aside and accuses him of having wanted to betray him to the Justice during the trial. He hits Sarty, deliberately but without rage, and tells him that being a man means being loyal to one's own blood. The next day the family arrives at a two-room house, just like all the other ones where the family has lived. Abner tells Sarty to accompany him to the main house where his employer, the Major de Spain, lives. Upon seeing the mansion Sarty feels a surge of joy, imagining that it's impervious to his father's destructive tendencies. But as Abner marches up to the house, he (seemingly on purpose) steps in horse droppings; a black servant opens the door and says the Major isn't at home, but Abner brushes past him and stamps his foot into the fancy imported rug, soiling it. He turns around, Sarty following him, and after they leave he scoffs at the fact that black laborers built this house. Later that day, the servant brings the rug to the Snopes family house to be cleaned. Abner orders the two sisters to clean it, and they do reluctantly and lethargically—but he throws a stone fragment into the homemade lye, ensuring that it will streak the rug. The Major comes back to the house and, almost shocked, tells Abner that he ruined a hundred-dollar rug, but since Abner will never make that amount in his life, he'll charge him twenty bushels of corn against the next crop. Sarty works hard the rest of the week, and on Saturday his father orders him to prepare the wagon. He takes his two sons to another courtroom. Sarty is confused and begins to protest to the Justice that his father didn't burn anything, but his father orders him out. Instead, however, he remains at the back of the courtroom, where he can see the Major de Spain, incredulous that Abner has dared to sue him for charging him the bushels of corn. The Justice finds against Abner, but thinks twenty bushels is too much for a sharecropper, so he modifies the amount to ten. After the trial, Abner takes the boys to the blacksmith's, where he regales the shop owner with false stories about his prior days as a horse trader. He buys the boys some cheese, then takes them to a horse lot, where he watches the horses and comments on them. They finally return home. Soon, however, Sarty hears his mother's cries, and realizes that his father is filling a kerosene can with oil. He orders Sarty to get more oil from the stable, and although Sarty doesn't want to, he can't stop himself from racing to get it. Once back, he asks his father desperately if he's going to send someone to warn the Major, like he did last time. His father orders Sarty's mother and aunt to restrain him. They do so, although the aunt claims that if Sarty isn't let go, she'll go up to the main house herself. Finally Sarty wriggles his way out of his mother's grasp and races up to the main house, where he shouts, "Barn!" in the Major's face before wheeling around again. He hears the Major on his horse behind him and waits in a ditch for him to pass; then he continues to run, this time away from his house—as he's running he hears one shot, then two, and begins to cry out for his father. He reminds himself that his father was in the war, though he doesn't know that his father was only it in for his own, private gain. Cold and grieving, Sarty prepares to continue walking away from his home and family.

- Genre: Short Story, work-place drama/comedy/tragedy. - Title: Bartleby, the Scrivener - Point of view: The story is told from the first-person voice of an unnamed narrator we know little about aside from the fact that he is an elderly lawyer, (and therefore he can be referred to as The Lawyer.) - Setting: 1850's, New York, in a Wall Street law office. - Character: Bartleby. Description: Bartleby's actions throughout the story come to embody the idea of passive resistance. By the story's end, Bartleby therefore becomes an antagonist to The Lawyer's goal of getting the most productivity out of his workers. While Bartleby begins as an exemplary employee, he soon says he "would prefer not to" do any of the tasks The Lawyer asks of him other than write. Bartleby is also a testament to the inherent failure present in language: it is revealed that Bartleby previously worked at the Dead Letter Office, where his task was to destroy lost or undelivered letters. Further, Bartleby rebuffs any of The Lawyer's attempts to learn about Bartleby by talking with him, revealing nothing to The Lawyer about his beliefs, his family, his relationships, or his personal history. Eventually, Bartleby's passive resistance becomes more extreme and he refuses to do even the basic requirements of his copying job, The Lawyer tries to fire Bartleby, who prefers not to vacate The Lawyer's office, even after The Lawyer changes offices and leaves Bartleby behind. At this point, Bartleby becomes a testament to the limits of charity (and the inherent self-annihilating flaw of extreme passive resistance), as when The Lawyer returns to his office to offer Bartleby his old job back, or to get him a new job, or to take Bartleby into his own home until they can determine a better solution, Bartleby resists all of these efforts. Further, when Bartleby winds up in prison and The Lawyer returns to Bartleby to offer him good food to eat to keep him alive, again Bartleby resists, preferring not to eat until he, presumably, dies. Whether Bartleby has the right to kill himself through passive resistance—and whether The Lawyer should have endeavored to help him further—is up to the reader to determine. - Character: The Lawyer. Description: We never learn his name, but The Lawyer, who narrates the story, tells us that he is a lawyer who owns his own law practice located on Wall Street in New York City. The Lawyer's status as both a Christian man and a business owner often forces him into internal conflict. As when he debates about whether to keep Bartleby employed, he often exhibits a tension between capitalistic pressure and Christian charitable morality, a tension many Americans were facing in the urbanizing economic boom of the mid-1800's. As with the character of Bartleby, the reader is told little to nothing about The Lawyer's personal life or family history, leaving the reader open to put themselves in The Lawyer's shoes. Like most reasonable people, The Lawyer's charitable urges have a breaking point—he's willing to tolerate Bartleby until Bartleby's presence threatens to hurt his business. Whether The Lawyer's line of charitable demarcation is right or wrong is up for debate, as The Lawyer puts up with far more than many reasonable bosses would (as can be seen by his relationship with Turkey and Nippers, neither of whom he fires despite each of them only putting in half of a good day's work each day), but there is little doubt that Jesus Christ would have put up with more than The Lawyer does, and would even perhaps have suffered in order to try to save Bartleby. Additionally, The Lawyer showcases the inability of language to connect people, as every one of his attempts to get to know Bartleby fail. Further, even The Lawyer's writing of this story itself—which delves into The Lawyer's complex feelings for Bartleby—is an example of language failing to connect, as Bartleby himself is deceased, and therefore can never read the story in order to understand the way The Lawyer felt about him. This irony of the text has led some critics to argue that the story of Bartleby is itself a dead letter that The Lawyer has written to a dead man to tell him what he couldn't say in life. - Character: Nippers. Description: A young scrivener in The Lawyer's office who does a kind of changing of the guard with Turkey at lunchtime—Nippers is only useful after lunch, because he suffers from what The Lawyer calls "indigestion," which could possibly be some kind of drug habit of which the Lawyer is unaware. Like Turkey, we never learn Nippers's real name, as The Lawyer only refers to him by his nickname. - Character: The Other Lawyer. Description: This lawyer arrives in the narrative after The Lawyer has changed offices in order to escape Bartleby. This second lawyer informs The Lawyer (who narrates the story) that Bartleby hasn't vacated the premises of his old office, and threatens to call the police to take Bartleby away if The Lawyer doesn't intercede. - Theme: Passive Resistance. Description: Bartleby's frequently repeated motto, "I would prefer not to," echoes throughout the narrative. Always polite, never aggressive, Bartleby says "I would prefer not to" to an ever-increasing range of things as the story progresses. In short, Bartleby's story is one of passive resistance, in which he refuses to do anything that he would prefer not to do. Initially, Bartleby's resistance seems to exist within a fairly common capitalist struggle: an employer (The Lawyer, the story's unnamed narrator) wants to get the most utility out of his employee, and the employee (Bartleby) wants only to do the parts of his job he feels like doing. This is a delicate balance, and usually, when the scale of the employee-employer relationship tips too far to one side, either the employee becomes fed up with the job's requirements and quits, or the employer becomes fed up with the employee's disobedience and fires them. However, rather than flat-out refuse his boss's requests (which would likely lead to his dismissal), Bartleby uses a strategy of passive resistance, which, for a long time, allows him to both stay employed and keep his daily tasks within the limited set of responsibilities he finds acceptable. Up to this point of the story, Bartleby seems diffident and strange, but also almost a kind of hero. After all, through his method of passive resistance, he avoids having to proofread and correct his own copy, avoids being sent out to the store for errands, avoids telling The Lawyer anything about his family or his past, avoids being reprimanded for living in the office after hours and on weekends, and even avoids getting fired by "prefer[ing] not to" vacate The Lawyer's office. But as the story progresses, and The Lawyer eventually moves his entire office to a new building as a way to escape Bartleby who still "prefers not" to leave the old one, the nature of Bartleby's passive resistance changes as well. As he faces ever more dire straits, Bartleby resists being "a little reasonable," resists The Lawyer's multiple and various offers to help him (including The Lawyer's offer that he come live in The Lawyer's home), and, even when he is dying in prison, Bartleby resists The Lawyer's offer of food. It's never clear if Bartleby's passive resistance originated simply as a refusal to perform work he didn't want to do and grew into something more general, or was always more general but that only became clear as his situation worsened. But what is clear by the end of the story is that Bartleby's passive resistance is more general, exemplified by his transition from preferring to eat gingernut cakes to preferring to eat nothing at all. And yet, just what Bartleby is resisting, and what precisely the story is saying about that resistance, is also never made clear. It's possible to argue that Bartleby is resisting the increasingly capitalistic and materialistic culture in which he finds himself. It's also possible to argue that the story is showing how cruelly society treats any kind of nonconformist who dares to resist that society's values. And it's further possible to argue that Bartleby is resisting the very aspects of the human condition – the lack of compassion, isolation, inability to communicate – that makes society act in the way it does. Perhaps Bartleby, in the end, is resisting the condition of life that, as a human, is forced upon him. - Theme: The Disconnected Workplace. Description: Bartleby, the Scrivener is set during a time when Wall Street was becoming ever more important as a financial hub of American society, a society that was itself being transformed by the increasing importance of capital and finance in an industrializing world. This transformation had many impacts, but one of them was the increasing prevalence of the sort of office workplace in which the story is set. In fact, if you want to push things a bit, you could argue that Bartleby is one of the first office comedies, though Bartleby's "comedy" and viewpoint is so dark that it actually ends up as an office tragedy. Regardless, the tropes about the office that have come to dominate office comedies such as The Office or Office Space – the dreary dullness, absurdity, and disconnection of the office workplace – are captured with unmatched power in Bartleby. Disconnection, in fact, is the basic state of this Wall Street law office. Turkey and Nippers, the two scriveners who work for The Lawyer before he brings on Bartleby, initially seem like comic characters (because they are described in comic ways by The Lawyer/Narrator who employs them). But the story manages to communicate deep despair in their situations and character that the narrator himself fails to understand. The description of these two clerks working like "sentries" who trade guard, as one is productive only in the morning and the other only in the afternoon, establishes their separateness. They work in the same place, but are never in any way together. Further, some close reading reveals what the narrator himself seems not to see: that Turkey is only a good employee before noon because he gets drunk at lunch, while a number of critics suggest that Nippers's "indigestion" that afflicts him in the morning is likely the result of a drug addiction that The Lawyer is oblivious to.The sense of disconnection between the people in the office is heightened by The Lawyer's many failed efforts to get to know Bartleby (his only employee that he refers to by name). In fact, the entire time The Lawyer knows Bartleby, from when he hires him until Bartleby's imprisonment, The Lawyer learns nothing more from Bartleby about his history or personality than his name. Even when, at the story's very end, The Lawyer finally includes details about Bartleby's past (that he worked at the Dead Letter Office), he states that he has learned this through rumor only, so even this alleged information is disconnected from certainty.Melville further builds the dreary disconnection of the office through its physical setting and space. One of the story's recurring symbols is the suffocating presence of walls within the law office. The narrator notes early on that the few windows in the office produce little to no light, as they run up against the walls of adjacent buildings, though that doesn't stop Bartleby from staring out them for hours at a time. Also, the office itself is divided by "ground-glass folding doors" into two separate rooms, one in which The Lawyer works, and one where the scriveners' desks are located. So, the narrator can see his workers through the glass, but cannot hear them when the doors are closed. When The Lawyer hires Bartleby, he decides to station Bartleby's desk in his own office, which would hint at the possibility for more connection. However, even then, The Lawyer places the desk in the corner of the room and provides a "high green folding screen" that keeps Bartleby within earshot but serves to "entirely isolate Bartleby" from his sight.This feeling of disconnection and entrapment surfaces not only from the office's cramped layout, but also from the very name of the street where it is located: Wall Street. In fact, late in the story, after The Lawyer has moved offices and Bartleby has been forcibly removed by its subsequent tenants and put in a prison called The Tombs, the Lawyer goes to visit Bartleby but ends up getting trapped in the central yard area of the prison, with its "surrounding walls of amazing thickness." This description, mirroring the earlier description of the office and the very name of the street on which so many such offices are located, perhaps implies that in the Wall Street boom of the mid-1800's, offices in general had become eerily similar to prison cells. - Theme: Isolation and the Unreliability of Language. Description: From its very first sentence, Melville signals to the reader that Bartleby, the Scrivener is a story in which language isn't always meant to be taken at face value. The Lawyer, who narrates the entire story, describes himself in the first line as "a rather elderly man." Presumably, The Lawyer knows his own age, but instead of passing that information along to the reader he chooses to describe himself as elderly—but he doesn't just leave it at that, he calls himself "rather elderly." It's the "rather" that makes this opening sentence as nonspecific as it is. It is entirely unclear without context what "rather elderly" means—is The Lawyer a middle-aged man who is being modest? A man near the very end of his life trying to be humble? Or is he simply a man in the midst of old age, not quite at the end, but further from his first breath than his last? The reader cannot know for certain the answer to any of these questions that the first sentence raises, because Bartleby, the Scrivener is told from the perspective of an unreliable—and often unspecific—narrator. For example, The Lawyer never tells the reader his own name, and only refers to his employees other than Bartleby by their nicknames: Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut. So, the point-of-view of the story is in itself an example of language failing to create a perfect two-way relationship between storyteller and listener, between reader and writer.This point is exemplified by the story's end. In the midst of the climactic sequence, The Lawyer abruptly stops telling the story of Bartleby's passive resistance, which at this point is leading the scrivener to waste away in prison because he refuses to eat any food, and instead The Lawyer says that "imagination" on the part of the reader should be good enough to envision Bartleby's end. The Lawyer then states that what is to be told next should be questioned by the reader, as The Lawyer has heard it through rumor only, and he goes on to say that those rumors indicate that before Bartleby began working at The Lawyer's office, he had spent a number of years working at the Dead Letter Office. This means that Bartleby spent his life destroying lost letters, letters that were meant to connect two people through shared language but failed at that task. The story implies, then, that when he'd had too much of the dead letter office, Bartleby came to work at The Lawyer's office to try the exact opposite—as a scrivener, Bartleby copied letters. But, as the story shows, that, too, didn't fulfill the kind of communication Bartleby was seeking, perhaps because language is an inherently imperfect or incomplete communicative tool.Bartleby's interactions with The Lawyer are full of failed communication. The Lawyer speaks with Bartleby to try to find out about Bartleby's family and history, but Bartleby brushes him off with his usual "I would prefer not to," excuse. Later, when The Lawyer is adamant that he must fire Bartleby and find a family member to whom he can pawn off the responsibility of caring for Bartleby, The Lawyer finally pleads with Bartleby to be "a little reasonable." Bartleby replies that he "…would prefer not to be a little reasonable." Reason uses language as its mode of communication, and, like two negotiators who speak different languages, The Lawyer is entirely unable to understand anything about Bartleby by talking with him because Bartleby refuses to engage with him on common logical ground. One might then argue that all that is necessary for true communication or connection is active engagement from both sides, but the story, at least as Bartleby sees things, seems to take a darker view. Bartleby seems to have come to the conclusion that even if people do engage they still won't be able to communicate, and so he prefers not even to try, and then, ultimately, not even to live. In Bartleby's view, then, every person is like a dead letter, with information to share, but no one with whom to share it. And, of course, the fact that The Lawyer isn't even sure that Bartleby even ever worked in the Dead Letter Office only further supports this idea, as even the dark interpretation of Bartleby's life is made hazy and uncertain—even Bartleby's message of the meaninglessness of attempts at connection might itself be meaningless. - Theme: Charity and Its Limits. Description: Through most of Bartleby, the Scrivener, The Lawyer treats Bartleby with what most reasonable people would describe as great charity. When he catches Bartleby in the office on the weekend and deduces that Bartleby must be secretly living there, The Lawyer is initially annoyed, but then realizes how lonely it must feel to live in a usually-busy office building while it's completely empty during the weekend. Rather than fire or reprimand Bartleby, The Lawyer decides to keep Bartleby on as an employee and not mention his living situation whatsoever. Then, even after Bartleby ceases doing any work at all and just spends his days staring out the window with no view, The Lawyer still keeps Bartleby employed in the spirit of charity. Later, when The Lawyer learns that his reputation and business are threatened by Bartleby's behavior, he finally does fire Bartleby, but The Lawyer still gives him a generous severance. And though The Lawyer does abandon Bartleby by moving his office (after Bartleby "prefers not" to leave despite being fired), The Lawyer returns to try to help Bartleby when it becomes clear that the next tenant plans to call the police on the scrivener. There, the Lawyer offers Bartleby anything he can think of—a clerkship in a dry-goods store, a bartending job, and even offers to let Bartleby come live with him until they can work out an arrangement. And, finally, when Bartleby is wasting away in prison, The Lawyer's guilt pushes him to be charitable once more—not to the point of claiming Bartleby and having him removed from prison, but enough to pay someone at the prison to cook for his former employee. The Lawyer's charitable behavior in nearly every instance is highlighted by how uncharitably the rest of society treats Bartleby: without empathy and with complete indifference, locking him away in prison until a family member claims him or he dies. And yet, the story is not one of The Lawyer's heroic charity, because Bartleby refuses every single one of The Lawyer's charitable efforts. Because of this, the story then forces its focus back onto The Lawyer's charitable acts and raised two related though different questions. First, the story makes the reader question whether The Lawyer's charitable acts were actually charitable enough. The Lawyer's motives, after all, were not always entirely pure. From his initial charity of allowing Bartleby to continue to work for him, The Lawyer derives a self-satisfied and soul-soothing pleasure, congratulating himself that another less charitable boss would fire Bartleby and throw him out onto the street. And his later charitable offers, as with the offer of food at the prison, were motivated at least in part by a sense of guilt. In addition, The Lawyer's charitable offers were always reasonable. They were generous, to be sure, but they weren't, say, the kind of completely self-sacrificing charity that a figure like Jesus Christ might have offered. The Lawyer tried to "do what he could." He never tried to do more. The story therefore leaves open the question of whether things might have turned out differently if The Lawyer had practiced a more radical and total kind of charity. And in asking this question the story asks whether it is acceptable to ever limit one's charity, as doing so is essentially a writing off of other people under the guise of being "reasonable" about every person's responsibility to be responsible for him or herself. And yet in Bartleby's constant refusals of all attempts to help, the story also raises the possibility that Bartleby would have refused all charity, no matter how complete. And by extension, the story suggests that total, radical charity, free of any sort of personal baggage or hesitancy, might be either beyond the grasp of any human to achieve or, even if achievable, not enough to bridge the gap between people. - Climax: After refusing to vacate the office, Bartleby is imprisoned, where he then "prefers not to" eat. - Summary: The story, set in a Wall Street law office in the mid-1800's, begins with the unnamed narrator, The Lawyer, stating that he would like to focus his tale on a group of humanity as of yet unwritten about: scriveners, or law-copyists, of whom he's known many. But, rather than focus on a group of them, he will tell the tale of the oddest one he's known: Bartleby. After explaining that his office is occupied by himself, two other scrivener employees (Turkey, who is a drunk and therefore only useful before he starts drinking at lunch, and Nippers, who has some kind of habit that means he is only productive during the afternoon hours), and Ginger Nut, a twelve-year-old office boy, The Lawyer says that he has posted an ad to hire a new employee. Bartleby comes for an interview, and The Lawyer hires him. While at first Bartleby proves an excellent employee, producing a huge quality of writing for his employer, his working habits are rigid and peculiar. When his boss asks him to examine a paper with him for errors, Bartleby replies that he "would prefer not to." At first The Lawyer thinks he has misheard his employee, but when he repeats himself and Bartleby again prefers not to help, a pattern emerges that The Lawyer must reckon with. He considers firing Bartleby, but decides to try to reason with him, telling him that it's common courtesy in this industry to go over copy for errors as a group. Bartleby listens, but again repeats that he'd "prefer not to" help. After considering firing Bartleby once more, The Lawyer decides not to, as he becomes busy with other matters and decides that Bartleby is useful for what he does provide—vast quantities of writing. And, in fact, The Lawyer justifies that keeping Bartleby on costs him little to nothing, but it makes him feel charitable and eases his Christian conscious. One Sunday morning, The Lawyer is on his way to Church and decides to stop by the office. There, he finds the office door locked, and when the door is opened he finds Bartleby on the other side. Bartleby tells him that he needs a few moments alone inside, and after The Lawyer walks around the block and returns to the office, he finds himself alone. With Bartleby gone, The Lawyer snoops inside Bartleby's desk, finds a few belongings, and determines that Bartleby must be living in the office at night and on weekends. At first The Lawyer thinks of Bartleby's poverty and solitude, feeling a great pity for him, but soon that pity morphs into anger and repulsion, as The Lawyer believes Bartleby to have some incurable mental illness. He resolves to find out more about Bartleby's personal life, find one of Bartleby's relatives to take care of him, and fire Bartleby with generous severance pay as soon as possible. The next day, The Lawyer calls Bartleby into his office. He asks Bartleby many questions about his family his personal history, but Bartleby prefers not to answer any of them. When he asks Bartleby to be a little reasonable, Bartleby says he would prefer not to do that either. A day later, Bartleby ceases doing any work at all—he spends his days staring at the wall, and The Lawyer decides it is time to rid the office of Bartleby. At the end of the week he gives Bartleby a 20-dollar bonus (a generous amount at the time), wishes him well, and tells him to leave the key when he departs. The Lawyer is happy with how he's handled the firing, but to his dismay Bartleby is still in the office when The Lawyer returns on Monday, and his 20-dollar bonus is sitting on his desk untouched. When The Lawyer confronts Bartleby that morning about why he has stayed, Bartleby simply says that he would prefer not to leave. The Lawyer knows he only has two options: call the police and have Bartleby removed, or simply keep him on as an employee. In what he deems a charitable gesture, The Lawyer decides to do the latter, and keeps Bartleby in his office as a valueless employee. That is, until, other lawyers begin to discuss Bartleby's peculiar presence in The Lawyer's office. When The Lawyer believes these rumors might hurt his business, he decides to change offices and leave Bartleby behind for the next tenants or the landlord to deal with. However, the landlord soon tracks The Lawyer down and tells him that if The Lawyer doesn't intervene, the police will be called and Bartleby will be forcibly taken away. The Lawyer returns to his former office, talks to Bartleby, but despite many charitable offers, including a new job and even to come stay at The Lawyer's home, Bartleby refuses all and The Lawyer leaves in a huff. A while later, The Lawyer learns that Bartleby has been taken to prison. Out of pity, The Lawyer visits him, and pays another inmate to provide Bartleby with good-quality food. Alas, Bartleby prefers not to accept this gesture as well, refusing to eat and instead choosing to lie on the floor of the prison, wasting away. The Lawyer cuts off his narration of Bartleby's tale at this point, saying that the reader can provide the imagination to figure out how it ends for Bartleby. Instead, The Lawyer ends the story by relaying a piece of information he's heard by rumor: that before working in the scrivener's office, Bartleby worked for a number of years at the Dead Letter Office, burning lost letters.

- Genre: Historical novel - Title: Beloved - Point of view: Third person omniscient, with first-person passages from various points of view - Setting: The outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio in the years just before (1855) and directly following (1873) the Civil War; flashbacks to the Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky - Character: Sethe. Description: The main character of the novel, Sethe is an enslaved woman who first smuggles her two older boys to freedom and then escapes with her own baby girl children to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1855. A determined and strong character, she flees Sweet Home while pregnant with Denver and, once in Cincinnati, works to run the household of 124. Prior to the beginning of the novel, Sethe killed her own child when her former master, Schoolteacher, came to take her and her children back to work as slaves. In 1873, Sethe tries to make a new life with Paul D and then with Beloved, but is eventually overcome by Beloved and her painful past. By the end of the novel, she seems to have lost her mind, but also seems to have escaped Beloved's haunting of her. - Character: Denver. Description: Denver is Sethe's youngest child. She is quiet and independent, but also craves attention and love from Sethe and Beloved. She loves to hear Sethe tell her about her miraculous birth. Toward the end of the novel, she gathers enough courage to venture outside of 124 by herself and get help for Sethe. As the novel ends, she seems to have a potentially promising future and to have been saved from the past that controlled Sethe's life. - Character: Baby Suggs. Description: Baby Suggs is Halle's mother, Sethe's mother-in-law, and Denver's grandmother. Halle buys her freedom before the events of the novel and, after establishing a life at 124 in Cincinnati, she becomes something of a preacher or holy person in the surrounding community, holding gatherings in the Clearing in the forest. But after Sethe kills her child, Baby Suggs becomes exhausted and withdrawn, caring only about seeing bits of color, and slowly dies. - Character: Paul D. Description: Paul D was a slave at Sweet Home along with Halle, Sixo, and two other Pauls (Paul A and Paul F). He suffered greatly under Schoolteacher and also as a prisoner on a chain gang in Georgia. After the Civil War, Paul D spent years wandering around, unable to feel at home anywhere. This changes when he arrives at 124 and tries to settle down with Sethe, but he is forced out of the household by Beloved. He tries to repress his painful memories by keeping them in what he calls the tobacco tin where his heart once was, but Sethe and Beloved force him to confront his troubled past. Ultimately, he returns to care for Sethe, even after she seems to have lost her mind. - Character: Beloved. Description: It is never clear exactly who or what Beloved is. One day, she climbs out of the Ohio River with no memory of where she is from or who she is. She says she comes from "the other side" and has been looking for Sethe. She is, in some sense, the spirit of Sethe's murdered child. But, as Denver recognizes at the end of the novel, she is also more. She can perhaps be understood as an embodiment of the seduction and danger of the past, as she causes Paul D and Sethe to remember and narrate their own personal stories and eventually become overwhelmed by them. She also seems to give voice to the pain and suffering of all slaves, as she is able to recall, somehow, the middle passage from Africa to the United States. Ella and the other women who come to rescue Sethe perceive her as a "devil child" and drive her away from 124 with song. - Character: Stamp Paid. Description: Stamp Paid is a former slave who works on the Underground Railroad and helps bring Sethe to 124 by ferrying her across the Ohio River. Late in the novel, he tells Paul D about Sethe's murdering her child, which causes Paul D to leave 124. Stamp Paid feels guilty for his part in Paul D's abandonment of Sethe, and works to make amends. - Character: Amy Denver. Description: Amy Denver is a white woman, who flees from her indentured servitude in an attempt to get to Boston and purchase some velvet. She encounters Sethe when Sethe is almost dying of exhaustion, pregnant, and running from Sweet Home. Amy cares for Sethe and helps get her to the Ohio River and freedom. She also helps Sethe give birth to Denver, who Sethe names after her. - Character: Schoolteacher. Description: Schoolteacher comes with his nephews to manage Sweet Home after the death of Mr. Garner. He is extremely cruel. Not only does he beat and abuse his slaves, but he also takes notes on them and measures and studies them like animals. He seems, literally, to see them as animals. - Character: Mr. and Mrs. Garner. Description: The original owners of Sweet Home, the Garners are relatively kind slave owners compared to Schoolteacher (and indeed most slave owners). They allow Halle to buy Baby Suggs' freedom, for example, and boast of their male slaves as Sweet Home men. Nonetheless, they are still slave owners and treat their slaves as inferiors. - Character: Ella. Description: Ella is a black woman who was locked up by a white father and son, who abused her. She is a friend of Sethe, but abandons Sethe after she kills her child. At the end of the novel, though, she organizes the group of women who come to rescue Sethe from Beloved. - Character: Halle. Description: A male slave at Sweet Home, Halle is Sethe's husband and the father of her children. After seeing Schoolteacher's nephews hold down Sethe and take her breast milk, he goes mad. The last anyone sees of him is Paul D seeing him at a butter churn, smearing butter all over his face in insanity. - Character: Howard and Buglar. Description: Howard and Buglar are Sethe's sons. When Schoolteacher comes to recapture Sethe and her children, she tries to kill them along with her baby daughter, but is able only to kill the daughter. By the beginning of the novel, they have run away from 124 and are absent for the entire story. - Character: Sixo. Description: Sixo is one of the slaves at Sweet Home. He is remembered for walking more than thirty miles to see a woman. He steals a pig and eats it, and then tells Schoolteacher that since he was eating it in order to do more work, it wasn't really stealing. Schoolteacher punishes him for defiance. After his failed escape attempt from Sweet Home, he is deemed crazy and burned alive. He laughs as he dies, since he knows that the Thirty-Mile Woman escaped even if he did not, and that she is bearing his child. - Theme: Slavery. Description: Through the memories and experiences of a wide variety of characters, Beloved presents unflinchingly the unthinkable cruelty of slavery. In particular, the novel explores how slavery dehumanizes slaves, treating them alternately as property and as animals. To a slave-owner like Schoolteacher, African-American slaves are less than human: he thinks of them only in terms of how much money they are worth, and talks of "mating" them as if they are animals. Paul D's experience of having an iron bit in his mouth quite literally reduces him to the status of an animal. And Schoolteacher's nephews at one point hold Sethe down and steal her breast milk, treating her like a cow.Even seemingly "kind" slave-owners like Mr. and Mrs. Garner abuse their slaves and treat them as lesser beings. Slavery also breaks up family units: Sethe can hardly remember her own mother and, for slaves, this is the norm rather than an exception, as children are routinely sold off to work far away from their families. Another important aspect of slavery in the novel is the fact that its effects are felt even after individuals find freedom. After Sethe and her family flee Sweet Home, slavery haunts them in numerous ways, whether through painful memories, literal scars, or their former owner himself, who finds Sethe and attempts to bring her and her children back to Sweet Home. Slavery is an institution so awful that Sethe kills her own baby, and attempts to kill all her children, to save them from being dragged back into it. Through the haunting figure of Beloved, and the memories that so many of the characters try and fail to hide from, Beloved shows how the institutionalized practice of slavery has lasting consequences—physical, psychological, and societal—even after it ends. - Theme: Motherhood. Description: At its core, Beloved is a novel about a mother and her children, centered around the relationship between Sethe and the unnamed daughter she kills, as well as the strange re-birth of that daughter in the form of Beloved. When Sethe miraculously escapes Sweet Home, it is only because of the determination she has to reach her children, nurse her baby, and deliver Denver safely. Similarly, Halle works extra time in order to buy the freedom of his own mother, Baby Suggs, before seeking his own freedom. The strength of mother-child bonds are further illustrated by the close relationship between Denver and Sethe, upon which Paul D intrudes. But, within the novel, the strength of motherhood is constantly pitted against the horrors of slavery. In a number of ways, slavery simply does not allow for motherhood. On a basic level, the practice of slavery separates children from their mothers, as exemplified by Sethe's faint recollections of her own mother. Since it is so likely for a slave-woman to be separated from her children, the institution of slavery discourages and prevents mothers from forming strong emotional attachments to their children. As Paul D observes of Sethe and Denver, "to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love." The scene in which Sethe is held down and robbed of her own breast milk shows, on a cruelly literal level, Sethe being robbed of her very bodily capability to be a nurturing mother. The conflict between motherhood and slavery is perhaps clearest in the central act of the novel: Sethe's killing her own daughter. The act can be read two ways: on the one hand, it represents an act of the deepest motherly love: Sethe saving her children from having to endure slavery, believing that death is better. But on the other hand, it can also be interpreted as Sethe refusing to be a mother under slavery. Slavery would not allow her to be a real mother to her children, so she would rather not be a mother at all. - Theme: Storytelling, Memory, and the Past. Description: The past does not simply go away in Beloved, but continues to exert influence in the present in a number of ways. The most obvious example of this is the ghost of Sethe's dead daughter. Though literally buried, the baby continues to be present in 124 as a kind of ghost or poltergeist. But beyond this instance of the supernatural, Sethe teaches Denver that "Some things just stay," and that nothing ever really dies. Sweet Home, for example, although firmly in Sethe's past, continues to haunt her through painful memories and the reappearance of Schoolteacher and even Paul D. As the novel continually moves between present narration and past memory, its very form also denies any simple separation between past and present. Sethe's term for this kind of powerful memory is "rememory", a word that she uses to describe memories that affect not only the person who remembers the past, but others as well.One of the ways in which memories live on is through storytelling. The novel explores the value but also the danger of storytelling. Storytelling keeps memories alive and Sethe's telling Denver about her family and her miraculous birth gives Denver some sense of personal history and heritage. As stories spread between Sethe, Baby Suggs, Paul D, and Denver, personal memories give rise to a kind of collective oral tradition about the past, and offer former slaves the ability to tell their own story and define themselves, as opposed to constantly being defined by slave-owners, such as Schoolteacher (who takes notes for his own writings about his slaves). But storytelling also awakens painful memories, especially for Sethe and Paul D. Bringing up past pain can prevent characters from moving on. The end of the novel suggests that, after Beloved's disappearance, people had to forget about her in order to go on living, as it repeats, "It was not a story to pass on." But nonetheless, Toni Morrison's novel does pass on the story of Beloved, suggesting that there still is some value in our learning about this painful story of the past, that as a nation we should not (and cannot) forget about the history of slavery.One of the ways that communities find expression in Beloved is through song. Baby Suggs' sermons are centered around song and dance, while the group of women that forces Beloved from the house does so by singing. Paul D and his fellow chain gang prisoners get through their labor by singing. A chorus of singing people provides the perfect example of the strength of operating as a community. The combined effect of a singing group is greater than that of all its individuals singing alone. Similarly, in order to endure slavery and its lasting effects, characters in Beloved rely on each other for strength. - Theme: Community. Description: As the practice of slavery breaks up family units, Beloved provides numerous examples of slaves and ex-slaves creating and relying upon strong communities beyond the immediate family. Baby Suggs' congregation that gathers in the woods illustrates this, as neighboring African-Americans come together as a community. They come together again toward the end of the novel, as different families provide food for Sethe and Denver when they are in need and a large group of women come to 124 to exorcize, in a manner of speaking, Beloved from the house.Even in the depths of slavery, when Paul D is on the chain gang, he and the other prisoners escape by cooperating as a team. And it is only through the communal network of the Underground Railroad that Sethe and many other slaves are able to find their way to freedom and establish new lives in the north. At the same time, the novel's most tragic act—Sethe's killing of her baby—is partially caused by a failure of community. The community's resentment about the joyousness and opulence of the feast that Baby Suggs puts together—which the community interprets as being prideful—leads to the community's failure to warn Baby Suggs or Sethe of Schoolteacher's approach, and thus Sethe is unable to hide and instead is forced to act quickly and radically. - Theme: Home. Description: Beloved is split into three major sections, and each of these sections begins not with any description of a character, but with a short sentence describing Sethe's house: "124 was spiteful." Then, "124 was loud." And finally, "124 was quiet." As 124 is haunted, it seems to have a mind of its own and is almost a character of the novel in its own right. The house is extremely important to Baby Suggs and Sethe as a matter of pride. After escaping slavery, they are proud to finally have a home of their own (the ironically named Sweet Home was neither sweet nor a home for its slave inhabitants).But the idea of a home is important in Beloved beyond the walls of 124. As a child, Denver finds a kind of home in a growth of boxwood shrubs, a place that feels her own. Paul D spends practically the whole novel searching for a home. He is unable to settle down anywhere and, after much wandering, finally arrives at 124 but gradually moves out of the home into the outdoor cold house before leaving to sleep in the church basement. Slavery has robbed Paul D, like many others, of a home so that, even after he finds freedom, he can never find a place where he feels he truly belongs. These characters' attempts to find a home can be seen as a consequence of the original dislocation of African-American slaves from their African home, the horrible voyage known as the middle passage that is vividly recalled by Beloved. - Climax: The revelation of Sethe's attempt to kill her children (and successful murder of her baby) to keep them out of slavery; the women of the neighborhood surrounding 124 and sing outside the house, driving Beloved away. - Summary: On the edge of Cincinnati, in 1873 just after the end of the Civil War, there is a house numbered 124 that is haunted by the presence of a dead child. A former slave named Sethe has lived in the house, with its ghost, for 18 years. Sethe lives at 124 with her daughter Denver. Her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, died eight years previously after languishing for years with exhaustion and seeming overwhelming sadness. And her two sons, Howard and Buglar, ran away from the haunted home just before Baby Suggs' death.Paul D, a former slave who used to work on the same plantation, called Sweet Home, as Sethe, arrives at 124 and moves in, making a kind of family with Denver and Sethe. Paul D awakens painful memories for Sethe and Denver is jealous of the attention and affection that Sethe gives to him. But just as Denver is getting used to the new familial arrangement, a strange woman appears at the house. She calls herself Beloved and says that she doesn't know who she is or where she is from.Beloved asks Sethe many questions about her past and somehow seems to know about things only Sethe knew, such as about a pair of earrings Sethe received as a gift from the wife of her former master. Denver loves having Beloved around the house and eagerly tells her about the miracle of her own birth: Sethe escaped from Sweet Home while pregnant with Denver and almost died of hunger and exhaustion while trying to make it to Ohio. But a white woman named Amy Denver found Sethe, cared for her, and helped her get to the Ohio River, where she gave birth to Denver. Sethe named Denver after the kind white woman.Paul D recalls his experience working on a chain gang. He and the other slaves eventually escaped together and had their chains cut by a group of Cherokee. Paul D wandered north and stayed with a kind woman in Delaware for some time, but he was unable to settle. He felt an urge to wander and did so for years before coming to 124.Missing Baby Suggs, Sethe takes Beloved and Denver to the clearing in the woods where Baby Suggs used to have spiritual gatherings before she fell into her exhausted state. Sethe wishes that Baby Suggs were there to rub her neck and suddenly she feels other-worldly fingers massaging her neck. But then the fingers begin to choke her until they finally let go. Denver thinks that Beloved is somehow behind the choking, but Beloved denies it.Beloved gradually and mysterious forces Paul D out of the house by making him restless, so that he ends up sleeping outside in the cold house. When he is sleeping outside in the cold house one night, she persuades him to sleep with her and stirs up his painful memories. Beloved tells Denver that she wants Paul D out of 124.The novel moves back in time to follow Baby Suggs as she waits for Sethe and her son Halle (Sethe's husband). Sethe has snuck her children out of Sweet Home and sent them ahead to 124, and she and Halle are supposed to escape together and come to the house. Halle never arrives, but Sethe does, and Baby Suggs is happy to have at least Sethe and her children reunited. She hosts a grand celebration for the neighboring community and her meager stores of food miraculously furnish a huge feast for ninety people. After the celebration, she feels uneasy, and realizes that she has offended the community with an excessive display of joy and pride. She senses that something bad is coming as a consequence.Soon after the celebration, four horsemen come to 124: Schoolteacher (who became the owner of Sweet Home after the kinder original master died), his nephew, a slave catcher, and a sheriff. They have come to take Sethe and her children back to Sweet Home to work as slaves. The offended community does not warn Sethe or Baby Suggs, and when Sethe sees Schoolteacher coming, she gathers her children and runs to a shed. When the four horsemen find her, she has killed one child with a saw and is ready to kill her other children. Schoolteacher decides that she is crazy and not worth bringing back to work. The sheriff takes Sethe off to jail.Back in the present, a former slave named Stamp Paid (who helped Sethe escape to 124 eighteen years ago) tells Paul D about Sethe's killing her own child. Paul D confronts Sethe about it, and then leaves 124. Feeling guilty for causing Paul D to leave Sethe, Stamp Paid goes to 124 to talk to Sethe. But she does not come to the door. Stamp Paid hears strange voices from the house and sees Beloved through a window.Within the house, Beloved causes Sethe to remember more and more of her painful past. The novel follows Sethe's stream of consciousness as Sethe maintains that her killing her child was an act of love. Sethe believes that Beloved is the returned spirit of her dead child. The novel then follows the thoughts of Denver and Beloved. In a series of vivid but fragmented recollections, Beloved remembers being taken on a ship from Africa to the United States, the "middle passage" of the Atlantic slave trade.Sethe begins to get weaker and weaker, falling under the sway of Beloved, whose every whim Sethe obeys. Denver ventures out of the house in search of work, to try to get food and provide for the household. She goes to the house of the Bodwins, who once helped Baby Suggs settle at 124, and tells their maid Janey about Beloved and the situation at 124. The community rallies together to supply food to 124.As news spreads of Beloved's strange presence at 124, a group of women join together to rescue Sethe and Denver from her. They gather around 124 and break into song, in a kind of exorcism. Mr. Bodwin approaches the house and Sethe mistakes him for Schoolteacher. Crazed, she tries to attack him but is restrained by Denver and other women. Beloved disappears.After Beloved's departure, 124 seems to become a normal household. Sethe has mostly lost her mind, but Denver is working and learning, hoping one day to attend college. Paul D returns to 124 and promises to always care for Sethe. The inhabitants of 124 and the surrounding community gradually forget about Beloved entirely, even those who saw and talked to her.

- Genre: Historical Fiction - Title: Beneath a Scarlet Sky - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: Milan, Italy during World War II - Character: Pino Lella. Description: The novel's protagonist, Pino Lella starts out as a carefree Italian youth whose main concern is finding love. One day, while walking around Milan, he meets a woman named Anna and asks her out on a date. Anna accepts but doesn't show up. That night, the Allied forces begin bombing Milan. Not long after, Pino is sent away from the city to Casa Alpina. At Casa Alpina, Pino is trained by Father Re to carry out escort missions to help Jewish people escape to Switzerland. Just before his 18th birthday, Pino's father, Michele, asks him to return to Milan. Michele tells Pino that once he turns 18, he will be drafted. Michele's connections give Pino a choice: he can join the Italian army and be sent to the Russian front, or he can join the SS. Although he resists both options, Pino eventually chooses the latter. Shortly after joining the SS, Pino is recruited by General Leyers to be his personal driver. While serving Leyers, Pino is reunited with Anna, who works for Leyers's mistress. Additionally, Pino's aunt and uncle ask him to spy on Leyers and help the resistance. Under Leyers's command, Pino witnesses many atrocities and learns important information, all of which he reports to his aunt and uncle. In the meantime, Pino and Anna fall in love and, toward the end of the war, Pino asks Anna to marry him. She accepts. As the war comes to a close, Pino is asked by the partisans to arrest Leyers, which he does. Around the same time, Anna is captured and executed by the partisans because they think she is a Nazi collaborator. After Anna's death, Pino becomes despondent. The only thing that pulls him out of his sadness is a mission given to him by Major Knevel. He is tasked with escorting Leyers, who is now being hailed as a hero, to the Austrian border. Pino accepts, but only because he plans to kill Leyers on the way there. After stopping for a break, Pino pulls a gun on Leyers, but Leyers convinces Pino to spare him. The novel ends as Pino drops Leyers off at the Austrian border and Leyers implies that he knew Pino was a spy all along. - Character: General Leyers. Description: General Leyers is a high-ranking member of Organization Todt, the civil and military engineering branch of Nazi Germany. He is in direct contact with Hitler, as well as many other high-ranking members of the SS. After Pino joins Organization Todt, Leyers recruits Pino as his personal driver. Together, the two of them drive around Milan and its surrounding areas to perform various duties. These include meeting with Mussolini, checking up on defenses, and overseeing the various laborers whom the Nazi have enslaved. Although at times Pino cannot help but like General Leyers, he also despises him for his callousness and cannot understand why he would allow such atrocities to take place. Unlike some of his colleagues, such as Walter Rauff, Leyers does not endorse barbaric violence. He explicitly opposes deploying the firing squad that kills Tullio, as well as the Nazis' scorched earth policy. At one point, he even rescues a few Jewish children from a cattle car. However, after he does so, he makes the children memorize his name, likely for his own self-interest. Toward the end of the novel, Mimo tells Pino that he must arrest Leyers and give him over to the partisans. Pino complies and does as he is told. Later, Major Knebel orders Pino and Carletto to drive Leyers to the Austrian border. He tells them that Leyers is a hero and that they need to keep him safe. Pino agrees to take on the mission, but only because he plans to assassinate Leyers on the way to Austria. Indeed, Pino does pull a gun on Leyers, largely because he blames him for Anna's death, but he ultimately decides against pulling the trigger. In the final moments of the novel, Leyers shakes Pino's hand and whispers "Now you understand, Observer." "Observer" is Pino's codename, and the fact that Leyers knows it suggests that he may have known Pino was spying on him all along. - Character: Anna Marta. Description: Anna Marta is the love of Pino Lella's life. Pino first meets Anna by happenstance while roaming the streets of Milan. Pino asks Anna out on a date, and she accepts but fails to show up. Pino doesn't see Anna again until he becomes a driver for General Leyers. On his first trip to Leyers's home, Pino is greeted by Anna at the door. He learns that Anna works as a maid to Leyers's mistress, Dolly Stottlemeyer—and this, of course, means that Pino will see Anna quite frequently. One day, while Leyers is away, Pino looks around his apartment for his valise key and is caught by Anna. Pino tells Anna what he is doing, and Anna decides to help him. From this moment forward, Anna and Pino begin falling in love with one another. At first, they treat their relationship as an escape from the war, but eventually Anna becomes fully invested in helping Pino. Additionally, Anna reveals her tragic background to Pino; her father and former husband are dead, and her mother has disowned her. Despite their tragic circumstances, Anna and Pino still manage to fall deeply in love, and near the end of the war, Pino asks Anna to marry him. Unfortunately, their marriage never happens. Toward the end of the novel, Anna is treated as a Nazi collaborator because she works for Dolly and is executed by a partisan firing squad. - Character: Mimo Lella. Description: Mimo Lella is Pino's outgoing and competitive younger brother. Shortly after the Allies begin bombing Milan, Mimo is sent to live with Father Re at Casa Alpina. After the Lellas' home is destroyed, Pino is sent to live with his brother, and before long, both of them lead escort missions to help Jewish people escape to Switzerland. Although Pino eventually leaves Casa Alpina, Mimo stays and continues undertaking escort missions. Later, after Pino becomes Leyers's driver, Mimo returns to Milan and tells his brother that he's joining the partisans. Immediately afterwards, Mimo notices that Pino is carrying a swastika armband, so he screams at him and calls him a traitor. For much of the second half of the novel, Mimo and Pino don't talk to one another because Pino cannot tell his younger brother that he is working as a spy. Eventually, however, Mimo learns the truth and apologizes to his brother for the way he acted. By this time, Mimo has made a name for himself in the partisan army; his lack of fear and dedication to the cause end up serving him well. - Character: Tito. Description: Tito leads a small band of men who occupy the territories surrounding Casa Alpina. Tito and his men claim to be partisan soldiers who fight on behalf of the people of Italy, though in reality there are brutes and thieves. Pino first encounters Tito at the inn in Madesimo and then again at Casa Alpina. Both times, Tito tries to get Pino to submit to his will through violence. The first time, Tito succeeds. The second time, though, Pino triumphs by getting Tito's gun away from him. Tito appears one last time at the end of the novel when Carletto and Pino are transporting Leyers to the Austrian border. Just before Pino, Carletto, and Leyers reach their destination, Tito and his men show up and attempt to take revenge on Pino. However, Leyers shoots Tito, and Carletto guns down his men. - Character: Carletto Beltramini. Description: Carletto Beltramini is Pino's best friend. Over the course of the war, he watches his mother and father die. During the latter's death, Carletto spots a swastika armband sticking out of Pino's pocket and thinks his friend is a traitor. The two of them don't talk again until the war is almost over, at which point Pino can finally reveal that he was actually acting as a spy. Carletto joins Pino on his final mission to take Leyers to the Austrian border. - Character: Father Re. Description: Father Re is a priest who resides at Casa Alpina. Along with the other prominent religious figures such as Cardinal Schuster, Father Re organizes missions to help Jewish people escape to Switzerland. When Pino comes to live with Father Re, the priest trains him physically and mentally to help with these missions. He also helps restore Pino's faith in God and humanity after Pino witnesses some fascist soldiers putting the heads of their enemies on spikes. - Character: Benito Mussolini. Description: Benito Mussolini was the real-life dictator of Italy during World War II. Several times throughout the novel, Leyers and Pino visit Mussolini's villa, and Leyers uses Pino to translate. Over the course of their several meetings, Mussolini becomes increasingly desperate and delusional about the state of the war and his own power. At the end of the novel, Mussolini is executed, and his body is brought to Milan, where it is desecrated by an angry Milanese mob. - Character: Cardinal Schuster. Description: Cardinal Schuster is the highest-ranking religious figure in Milan. He is a kind, intelligent man who seeks peace and an end to bloodshed. He regularly communicates with Father Re and plays a role in helping Jewish people flee from Italy. Near the end of the novel, he comforts Pino after Anna's death and talks him out of taking his own life. - Character: Tullio Galimberti. Description: Tullio Galimberti is a family friend of the Lellas and is beloved by Pino. He is also a member of the Italian resistance and gets caught, sent to prison, and tortured. After a rebel bombing occurs in Milan, Tullio is executed by the Nazis to send a message, along with 14 other prisoners. - Character: Mrs. Napolitano. Description: Mrs. Napolitano is a Jewish woman Pino escorts to Switzerland. She is pregnant while making the trek to Switzerland and has a difficult time. Getting her to the Val di Lei is the biggest challenge Pino faces while living at Casa Alpina. Additionally, Mrs. Napolitano is a talented violin player, and she plays for Pino as he and Mimo return to Casa Alpina. - Theme: War and Morality. Description: Beneath a Scarlet Sky takes place in Nazi-occupied Italy during World War II, showing a side of the conflict that is rarely seen in literature. During the war, Italy allied itself with the Axis powers (Germany and Japan) while under the rule of Benito Mussolini, a fascist dictator. However, Beneath a Scarlet Sky largely ignores the overarching scope of the conflict to instead focus on individuals. This shift in focus alters the moral landscape of the story to paint a more complex portrait of the war. It does not create a sympathetic portrait of fascist countries, but it does demonstrate the moral complexities faced by individuals living under fascist regimes.  The moral chaos caused by war is most clearly seen in Pino Lella, who becomes a spy for the Allies. His job is to act as the driver for Nazi General Hans Leyers, while feeding information back to the Allies. Although Pino feels he is doing the right thing by helping the Allies, he also quickly realizes that his situation is not so black and white. Because he pretends to be allied with Leyers, Pino is forced to stand by and watch as Leyers commits atrocities or allows them to happen. Among other horrors, Leyers oversees thousands of starving slaves, signs off on executions, and watches as Jews are sent to labor camps. Meanwhile, Pino can only sit and watch while trying to maintain his cover. Despite Leyers's actions, even he is portrayed with shades of gray. Pino often finds himself liking Leyers more than he would wish, and twice he has to stop himself from smiling after gaining Leyers's approval. Additionally, Leyers occasionally performs a morally virtuous act, such as freeing several Jews before they can be sent to labor camps. Furthermore, at the end of the novel, Leyers reveals to Pino that he knows Pino's code name, suggesting that he may have known Pino was a spy all along. The novel does not exonerate Leyers, but it does make him a more morally ambiguous character than one might expect. Ultimately, then, the novel advocates for a morally complex understanding of individuals living under fascism, rather than categorizing people as purely good or evil. - Theme: Coming of Age. Description: Despite its focus on World War II, Beneath a Scarlet Sky is also a coming-of-age story that explores the maturation of a young man living in Nazi-occupied Italy. Pino Lella, the young man in question, starts the novel as an unremarkable youth, more focused on typical teenage concerns such as music and women than he is with war. However, soon his hometown of Milan is bombed by the Allied Powers and taken over by Nazis. In response, Pino's father, Michele, sends his son to live with Father Re in the mountains. There, he is forced to grow up quicker than would normally be expected of most young men. Father Re teaches Pino the physical and emotional discipline he needs to survive and to help others. At the tender age of 17, Pino is sent by Father Re on missions to help Jewish people escape Italy. These missions force Pino to mature quickly; he is the one in charge, even though he is much younger than most of the people he escorts. When Pino returns to Milan on his 18th birthday, his parents remark that he left them as a boy and came back as a man. However, Pino also learns that growing up during wartime comes with a price, as turning 18 means he must enlist in the Italian or German army. Both options are appalling to Pino, but he is left with little choice. Typically, coming of age novels focus on characters who achieve new levels of freedom because of their maturation. Indeed, in this novel, Pino's transition into adulthood comes with choices, but Pino quickly learns that these choices are extremely complicated. Should he join the Italian Army? The Nazis? The partisans? Something else entirely? None of these options are wholly appealing, and all of them come with their own set of consequences. Later, in the novel's finale, Pino is faced with another difficult, adult choice: should he or shouldn't he assassinate Leyers? On the one hand, he has witnessed Leyers oversee atrocities. On the other hand, as Leyers points out to him, Pino is not entirely innocent himself. In both cases, Pino eventually comes to a decision on his own and has to live with the consequences of his actions. Whether he's made the correct choice—especially regarding Leyers—is never made clear. In fact, the novel posits that entering adulthood, especially in this time and place, is synonymous with not always knowing whether one has made the right decision. In many cases, there may not even be a right decision to be made. - Theme: The Power of Music. Description: Music shows up throughout Beneath a Scarlet Sky and proves to be a powerful force for Pino and his friends. At the start of the novel, Pino expresses his love for jazz music and classical music. He also listens to his father and friends play "Nessun Dorma" ("None Shall Sleep"), a famous aria from Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot. This scene takes place after the Lella and Beltramini families have fled Milan because the city is being bombed. Additionally, Carletto is especially upset because his mother is terminally ill. However, when Pino and Carletto hear "Nessun Dorma," they momentarily connect with a deeper reality that touches them on a spiritual level. For the duration of the song, wars and terminal illnesses are forgotten and replaced by the beauty of the music. Later, after helping a violinist escape to Switzerland, Pino asks her if she will play "Nessun Dorma" as he returns to Italy. She does so, and the song lifts his spirits; it gives him the power to continue his long and difficult journey. Then, toward the end of the novel, the Allied forces begin retaking Milan. To celebrate, they ask Pino to round up some musicians and throw a party. Pino does so, and once again, the music results in great happiness, both for the musicians and their audience. Despite all of the hardships the American soldiers and Milanese citizens have faced, they are able to lose themselves in song and dance without being crushed by the weight of the war. In fact, to get to the Hotel Diana—where the party is held—the attendants have to walk through streets filled with bodies. Even after witnessing such horrors, the music prevails and the partygoers enjoy themselves. Here and elsewhere in the novel, then, music is depicted as a transcendent medium that is larger and more powerful than even a conflict as great as World War II. It is not merely an escape from hardship, it is a life-giving and unifying force that brings people together after so much death, destruction, and division. - Theme: Love and Death. Description: Pino Lella starts Beneath a Scarlet Sky as an immature youth who does not know what romantic love means. He claims to fall in love with every girl he meets, though really, he is simply struck by their beauty. However, all that changes when he meets Anna Marta, a beautiful young Italian woman whom Pino truly falls in love with. At first, Pino's love for Anna begins like all the others—she is beautiful, and he takes note of that fact. However, eventually, their love deepens into something more substantial. At first, both Pino and Anna treat their relationship as an escape from the war. Both are embittered by the chaos that surrounds them, but they do not let it filter into their relationship. However, the all-encompassing nature of the war, as well as Anna's tragic past, do not allow Pino and Anna to ignore the outside world forever. Anna eventually learns about the horrors of Pino's double life, and Pino learns that Anna was previously married to a man who was killed in the war. Nevertheless, Pino realizes that these tragedies do not destroy his relationship to Anna; instead, their love for one another grows stronger. At one point, Anna risks her life to help Pino smuggle a radio that the partisans want to use to confuse the Germans. After working together to achieve this goal, the two of them spend a romantic evening together, which Pino describes as one of the greatest nights of his life. By this point, Pino and Anna's relationship does not function as an escape from the war. Instead, they act together—as a couple in love—to actively thwart the Nazism. Unfortunately, although Pino learns what it means to truly and deeply love someone, he also learns what it means to have that person taken away. In the climax of the novel, Pino is forced to watch an Italian firing squad execute Anna because she is mistaken for a Nazi collaborator. This experience nearly ruins Pino; his love for Anna pushed him through the most brutal parts of the war and now Anna is gone. Notably, though, Pino's love for Anna does not dissipate. His love for her survives the war and her death. This can be seen in the scene in which Pino returns to Cimitero Monumentale in search of Anna's body, hoping to provide her with the burial she deserves, even if it means risking his own life. Although it would be hard to call the ending of the novel hopeful or romantic, it is nonetheless a testament to the endurance of both human kindness and love even in the face of tragedy and death. - Climax: Pino watches helplessly as Anna is shot to death by a firing squad after falsely being labeled a Nazi collaborator. - Summary: Beneath a Scarlet Sky takes place in Milan, Italy during World War II. At the start of the novel, it is June of 1943, and the Nazis are beginning to occupy more and more of Italy, including Milan. However, despite these dramatic circumstances, Pino Lella, the novel's protagonist, starts the story focusecd on normal teenage concerns. In particular, he wants to find himself a girlfriend. Together with his brother Mimo and his friend Carletto, he wanders Milan, looking for the love of his life. Eventually, he spots a beautiful young woman named Anna, whom he asks out on a date. Anna accepts the offer but does not show up to the date when the time comes. The same night, Allied forces begin bombing Milan. This scares Pino's parents, and they send Mimo away from the city to Casa Alpina, a religious camp in the Alps. Pino's father, Michele, wants to send Pino too, but Pino insists on staying in Italy. For a while, Pino's father respects his son's wishes—however, after the Lella home is bombed, he sends Pino to live at Casa Alpina. At Casa Alpina, Pino and Mimo live with Father Re, who is an old family friend. Father Re is a supporter of Italian resistance efforts, and he coordinates with other high-ranking religious members to help Jewish people escape to Switzerland where they cannot be persecuted by the Nazis. Father Re trains Pino and Mimo physically and mentally to undertake escort missions, which involve leading groups of Jewish people to Switzerland, often in treacherous conditions. The most perilous of these missions involves a pregnant woman named Mrs. Napolitano, who is understandably afraid of the many dangerous paths Pino and Mimo lead her on. However, like the rest of their missions, Pino and Mimo ultimately lead Mrs. Napolitano to safety. When not undertaking escort missions, Pino spends much of his time with Alberto Ascari, an aspiring young racecar driver who teaches Pino to drive. Additionally, Pino has the misfortune of meeting Tito and his band of outlaws. Tito and his men regularly harass the towns surrounding Casa Alpina under the guise that they are partisan soldiers. Pino makes Tito his enemy one day at Casa Alpina after he steals a gun that Tito was pointing at Father Re. A few days before Pino turns 18, Michele tells Pino he must return to Milan. Once there, Michele tells Pino that he will be drafted on his 18th birthday. Pino has two choices: he either must join the Italian Army or the SS. If he joins the Italians, he will be sent to the Russian front where he will likely die. Alternatively, if he joins the SS, he will become a pariah in his own community, but he will be safe. Pino doesn't want to do either, but eventually he decides to join the SS as part of Organization Todt. Shortly after becoming an SS member, Pino is recruited by General Leyers to be his personal driver. Pino's Aunt Greta and Uncle Albert are thrilled. The two of them have connections with the Allies and they want to use Pino as a spy. Pino accepts the role, but is told that he cannot tell anyone, even his own parents, what he is doing. Shortly after being employed by Leyers, Pino reunites with Anna, who works as a maid for Leyers's mistress, Dolly. Leyers spends a lot of time with Dolly, meaning that Pino gets to see Anna regularly. However, the rest of his time is spent driving Leyers, often to places he would rather not go. Quickly, he learns that the Germans are enslaving vast numbers of people from a variety of regions. They use these people to complete arduous work and rarely feed them. Additionally, Pino takes trips with Leyers to see Benito Mussolini, Italy's puppet dictator, who is concerned with his lack of power. All of this information he reports back to his aunt and uncle who find it incredibly useful. However, Pino's new position comes at a cost. Because he cannot tell anyone the truth, he loses Carletto's friendship and the love of his brother. Both of them think he is a traitorous Nazi. This is especially difficult for Mimo, who eventually leaves Father Re's camp to join the partisans. However, there is one person who Pino does tell the truth: Anna. After Anna catches him snooping around Leyers's apartment, Pino fills her in on his role as a spy. Gradually, the two of them fall in love with one another and Anna begins helping Pino however she can. Additionally, Anna tells Pino that she came into her current position after her father died, her mother disowned her, and her former husband was killed in the war. None of this information bothers Pino; it only makes him love her more. Pino asks Anna to marry him when the war is over, and she accepts. This gives Pino hope and allows him to continue his physically and psychologically draining job as Leyers's driver. Toward the end of the war, when it is clear that the Germans are losing, Pino is finally able to tell Carletto and Mimo the truth. Both of them forgive him immediately and apologize for their behavior. Additionally, Mimo gives Pino a job: he must arrest Leyers and turn him over to the partisans. Pino accepts. A few days later, when it is clear the Germans have lost the war, Pino points a gun at Leyers, arrests him, and takes him to the partisans, who thank Pino for his service. For a few days, Milan is chaos as the Italian fascists, the Nazis, and the partisans fight for control of the city. In the chaos, Dolly and Anna are captured by the partisans and labeled Nazi collaborators. While looking for Anna, Pino comes across a mob and decides to follow them. The mob leads him to a public execution where several so-called Nazi collaborators are being put to death by a firing squad, including Dolly and Anna. Pino tries to stop them, but he is too late. Both Anna and Dolly die. The crowd sees that Pino is upset and assumes that he is a Nazi collaborator as well. He is chased throughout the city, though the mob never manages to catch him. After Anna's death, Pino contemplates suicide, though he never goes through with it. He also attempts to recover Anna's body so he can give her a proper burial, but he fails. Shortly after Anna's death, Benito Mussolini's body is brought to a city square in Milan and Pino watches along with an American soldier, Major Knebel, as the Milanese people desecrate it. Additionally, Major Knebel gives Pino a mission. He wants Pino to transport General Leyers, who is now being labeled an American hero, to the Austrian border. Pino accepts the mission, but only because he plans to kill Leyers on his way to the border. Carletto also joins in on the mission. On the way to the Austrian border, Leyers reveals to Pino that he specifically asked for him to be his driver because he admires his skills. However, such flattery does not work on Pino, who eventually pulls a gun on Leyers with the intention of killing him. Along with the other atrocities he is responsible for, Pino largely blames Leyers for Anna's death. However, Leyers points out to Pino that he was going back to check on Anna and Dolly the day Pino arrested him. As such, Leyers says, Pino is at least equally responsible for what happened to Anna. Pino thinks Leyers is right and decides against killing him. Eventually, Pino, Carletto, and Leyers approach the Austrian border. However, in the final stretch, they encounter Tito and a number of his goons. Tito tries to exact revenge on Pino, but before he can, Leyers shoots him and Carletto guns down the rest of his men. Shortly afterward, the three men reach the border, where American troops are waiting for them. Before Leyers leaves to go with the Americans, he shakes Pino's hand and whispers "Now you understand, Observer." Pino is dumbstruck. "Observer" is the codename given to him by his aunt and uncle. The fact that Leyers knows it suggests that he may have known Pino was a spy from the beginning. This leaves Pino questioning all of his interactions with Leyers from throughout the entire novel. Together, Pino and Carletto depart for Milan, and Pino expresses to Carletto that the events of the war will be with him forever.

- Genre: Gothic short story - Title: Berenice - Point of view: First-person - Setting: Egaeus's ancestral home - Character: Egaeus. Description: Egaeus is the narrator and main character of this story. As a narrator, Egaeus is unreliable due to his self-professed mental illness. Egaeus does not share his family's last name with the audience, implying that because his family is so ancient and well-respected, sharing their last name might tarnish their reputation. Egaeus was born in his family library (this also where his mother died) and he believes that's why he was always so studious and introspective even as a small child. Egaeus also believes that he had a past life, the evidence of which is in the "remembrance of aerial forms—of spiritual and meaning eyes." Presumably the only child of his parents, Egaeus was raised alongside his beautiful cousin, Berenice. Although he claims he never loved her, he was always interested in her as an object of study because of their striking differences. This interest only intensifies as Berenice falls ill with "a species of epilepsy," and he becomes engaged to her to make her happy. Around the same time as Berenice becomes ill, Egaeus experiences a mental "stagnation" that grows into a mental illness of a "monomaniac character" that causes him to fixate on and obsess over minute details such as shadows or something in the margin of a book. One night, shortly before he is supposed to marry Berenice, he sees her smile at him and becomes obsessed with her teeth. As he fights the overwhelming desire to possess them, a maid finds Berenice unconscious and, believing her dead, tells Egaeus. Once Berenice is buried, Egaeus's desire for her teeth eclipses his reason, and he exhumes her body and removes all of her teeth. Shortly after that, Egaeus regains consciousness in the library, but doesn't remember what he did until the "menial" comes into the room and shows him. - Character: Berenice. Description: Berenice is Egaeus's cousin and was raised alongside Egaeus in his ancestral home. Nothing is said of Berenice's parents or why she was raised with Egaeus. Unlike the sickly and gloomy Egaeus, Berenice is "agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy" and spends her time "roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path." Unfortunately, Berenice develops a "species of epilepsy" as a young woman. Among the symptoms of her disease, Berenice occasionally falls into a catatonic sleep that resembles death. As her illness eats away at her youth, beauty, and happiness, Egaeus, knowing she had "loved me long" and wanting to give her some happiness, offers to marry her. Shortly before their marriage, however, Berenice falls into another catatonic sleep, only this time it lasts so long and looks so much like death that they bury her. Egaeus, having become obsessed with Berenice's teeth when she smiled at him earlier in the story, exhumes her body and removes them. A short time after Egaeus returns to the library, Berenice is discovered alive in her tomb. Egaeus does not remember actually pulling her teeth out, but he has the vague recollection of the "shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice," which could indicate that Berenice woke up while Egaeus removed her teeth and, therefore, can remember what he did. - Theme: Mental Illness and Physical Disease. Description: Edgar Allan Poe's stories are well-known for their explorations of mental illness, disease, and death. In "Berenice," both mental illness and physical disease take over the lives of the characters, destroying their past identities and propelling them forward toward the story's horrifying conclusion. Egaeus, the story's unreliable narrator, develops a "monomaniac" mental illness that causes him to obsess over seemingly mundane objects. Berenice, Egaeus's cousin and fiancée, develops epilepsy which causes her to fall into a deep catatonic episode that resembles death, causing her to be mistakenly buried alive. When Egaeus's "monomania" leads to an obsession with Berenice's teeth, he commits the horrifying crime of exhuming her body and removing her teeth, only to later find out that she was not really dead. The true horror of this story, however, is not Egaeus's crime, but Poe's illustration of human beings' capacity for inhumanity, particularly when illness strips them of their identity and their capacity for reason. Egaeus is still a young man when he begins displaying symptoms of the serious mental illness that leads him to mutilate Berenice in an extremely uncharacteristic act of violence. Egaeus was born in his family's library, and he believes that this is why he was always an introspective child, but he was a young adult when a "stagnation" halted his development. While Egaeus thinks his childhood was normal, his description of being "addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful meditation" suggests that he was already showing signs of a developing mood disorder. Egaeus says his "disease" ultimately developed a "monomaniac character," causing him to spend hours studying "frivolous" things. What is most alarming, however, is that he says he sometimes loses "all sense of motion or physical existence," meaning there are periods when he not only loses control of his thoughts, but his actions and ability to account for them. Although Egaeus has his peculiarities, there is no indication that he is naturally violent. However, in his uncontrollable obsession with Berenice's teeth, Egaeus loses the morality that belongs to his lucid self, enabling him to pull out Berenice's teeth to appease his obsessive thoughts. Berenice falls victim to what Egaeus describes as "a species of epilepsy" that frequently results in catatonia. According to Egaeus, Berenice's disease reduces her from a human being to an object. Egaeus describes Berenice before her illness as "agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy." Her disease, "the destroyer," strips her of these qualities. Aside from the physical changes, Berenice's disease impacts "her mind, her habits, and her character" so much that Egaeus "knew her no longer as Berenice." Already Egaeus has turned Berenice into someone else, someone he has no emotional connection with. However, she is lowered still further to the rank of object when Egaeus describes her not as a person, but as an "it." Not only has Berenice lost her own personal sense of identity to her illness, but now Egaeus no longer recognizes her as truly human. The combination of Berenice's loss of what made her human through physical disease and Egaeus's loss of reason through mental illness becomes the perfect storm as Poe explores the extent of mental illness's power over human reason. Shortly before falling into a catatonic state, Berenice stands in the doorway of Egaeus's library and smiles at him, revealing her perfect teeth. Her appearance is entirely altered—her black hair has turned yellow, she appears taller, and she's emaciated—and this perhaps explains why Egaeus initially believed her smile was "peculiar," but the "disordered chamber" of his mind goes further and believes it was actually "a smile of peculiar meaning." As he obsesses over Berenice's teeth, a French phrase—"que tous ses dents étaient des idées," which in English means "all her teeth were ideas"—runs through his mind. The "peculiar meaning" of her smile, then, is that her teeth are full of immaculate ideas, and the possession of them could restore his unbalanced mind to sanity. What's left of Egaeus's humanity fights against this obsession, but the burial of Berenice triggers a dissociative episode, during which he goes to her body and cuts her teeth out. In this way, Egaeus's mental illness becomes the antagonist of the story, making a victim of both Egaeus and Berenice and condemning them both to a life that is almost certain worse than death. Having suffered severe depressive episodes himself and watched several family members die of lingering physical diseases, Poe had intimate knowledge of the power these things had to take away an individual's humanity and sense of personhood. In "Berenice," Poe explores the ways people are transformed by their illnesses—both physically and mentally—and, in the cause of Egaeus, how easily one can lose themselves and their humanity completely. - Theme: Death and Resurrection. Description: Edgar Allan Poe's notorious preoccupation with death and the way his poetry and short stories reflect it usually involves the untimely demise of a young, loved, and impossibly beautiful woman. In "Berenice," however, no characters actually die, and the real tragedy is that Berenice doesn't die. From the outset, Poe establishes that in this story, death is not always the end. Egaeus, the narrator, believes that he lived another life in the past and was reincarnated. Berenice, his fiancée, develops a "species of epilepsy" that frequently causes her to fall into a catatonic state strongly resembling death. When Egaeus develops a mental illness with a "monomaniac character," he suffers a different form of death: the loss of his reason. One evening, Egaeus becomes convinced that he can resurrect his reason by the possession of Berenice's teeth. Through this story, Poe challenges his audience's beliefs about death by portraying it as fluid and impermanent. In the opening paragraphs of the story, Egaeus describes being born in the family library—this is the same room his mother died in, further highlighting his belief that death, rather than being a fixed end, is the first step towards new life—and his early childhood. He also reveals that he believes he had a past life, and his birth was actually a rebirth. Egaeus specifically says that "it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before—that the soul has no previous existence." His statement reveals that he doesn't just consider concepts like resurrection or reincarnation possibilities, but realities of which he is proof. Furthermore, he does not limit his opinion on reincarnation to just himself, but specifically says "the soul" rather than using the possessive and saying "my soul." This implies that all souls can come back, and death is therefore impermanent. Egaeus's mental illness, however, takes a huge toll on his soul. His obsessive thoughts over "frivolous" objects eat away at him, leaving him desperate for a remedy so he can live up to his potential. Poe further complicates conventional views of death as a permanent state with Berenice, who suffers from "some species of epilepsy." Berenice's epilepsy often sends her into what Egaeus calls a "trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution." It can be assumed that there have been numerous times when Berenice was truly believed to be dead when she entered these "trances," and her "startlingly abrupt" return to consciousness from them would have been equally alarming. Egaeus believes that the soul lives on after the body dies because he has a "memory like a shadow" of a past life, but Berenice's situation involves her body seeming to die and then be resurrected. Over time, this diminishes her soul. As Egaeus notes, Berenice's disease effects a "revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral […] being of my cousin" and she loses her formerly cheerful and energetic disposition. However, despite physical and mental changes, Berenice's teeth remain immaculate. Egaeus suffers from a sort of mental death due to his mental illness, while Berenice suffers catatonic episodes that equate to numerous small deaths due to her epilepsy. When it seems like Berenice has truly died, Egaeus believes that he has a chance to resurrect his former mental equilibrium by possessing her teeth. One night, Berenice flashes Egaeus a toothy "smile of peculiar meaning," and Egaeus quickly becomes obsessed with the idea that her teeth "could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason." Just as he believes the soul can be reincarnated in a new body, Egaeus believes he can resurrect his lost reason by possessing the one thing about Berenice that has not been corrupted by disease. Berenice once again falls into a catatonic sleep, but this time Egaeus, possibly subconsciously guided by his mental illness, actually has her buried. The obsessive thought that her teeth can resurrect his mental balance overcomes his reason and, in a dissociative episode, he exhumes her body and cuts out her teeth. However, after he becomes lucid again, his servant tells him that Berenice is alive but mutilated, and he discovers what he's done. Once again, death defies conventional expectations in Berenice's abrupt and tragic return to consciousness. On the other hand, death has also defied Egaeus's expectations because he was unable to resurrect his mental stability as shown by his ultimate inability to identify her teeth by name—one of the symptoms of his mental illness is that, during an episode, he will repeat a word until it loses meaning—and instead calls them "small, white, ivory-looking substances." In "Berenice," death is not always a permanent state, with Berenice frequently appearing dead and then coming back to life and Egaeus's adamant belief that when the body dies the soul is reborn in another. Ultimately, Poe suggests that death will always defy expectation, shown by Berenice's return to consciousness after being horribly mutilated and Egaeus's failure to successfully resurrect his sanity. - Theme: Repressed Sexuality. Description: In "Berenice," Poe creates two characters who could not be more different, even though they grew up together as cousins and become engaged as adults. While Berenice is guided by her heart and drawn to light and happiness, Egaeus prefers the gloom of his library and the comfort of books. Egaeus's studies are religious in nature and, possibly because he was always "ill of health," he seems to be drawn towards misery, turns inwards, and represses his emotions. His mental illness, however, brings closer to the surface his sexual desire for Berenice. In his portrayal of Egaeus and his crime against Berenice, Poe explores how repressing natural desires can lead to unnatural thoughts and acts of violence. Egaeus was born in his family's library, surrounded by some "very peculiar" books that he would spend his life studying. Because of this and his family's long reputation as "visionaries," Egaeus believes that it is natural that he spent the majority of his life engaging in "monastic thought" in his library. Egaeus uses religious terms to describe his early thoughts and studies, describing his thoughts as "monastic" and his studies as that "of the cloister." This implies that he is a very religious person and has likely taken to heart warnings of the dangers of sexuality and praises of sexual purity. Egaeus also says that as a child he was "addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful meditation" while his beautiful cousin, Berenice, moved "carelessly through life" before her disease. Unlike Egaeus, Berenice embraced all of her emotions and sought happiness, allowing her to lead a happier life. Part of the reason Egaeus's thoughts continue to bring him pain could be that he is torn between love and desire for his beautiful and adoring cousin, and the warnings his "monastic" books have given him about giving in to sexual desire. Egaeus insists that he had never felt love for Berenice, but the passage of the book by Ebn Zaiat that sits open on his table suggests that he considered Berenice to be his "beloved," something he may only have been ready to admit when he believed she was dead. Egaeus describes "living with in my own heart" as a child, meaning he did not readily express his feelings for other people no matter how close they were to him. Furthermore, he insists that he had never loved Berenice, even in "the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty." He goes on to say, "feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind." As an unreliable narrator, Egaeus cannot always be taken entirely at his word, but his statement could explain why he became absorbed in observing the changes Berenice's disease wrong on her body: she developed the added benefit of being an interesting object of study. Before Egaeus exhumed Berenice's body from her crypt, he had been reading a book by Zaiat and set his book open at a passage about returning to a loved one's grave to alleviate their concern. The implication is that this passage inspired Egaeus's compulsion to return to Berenice's grave, which could mean that he now considered Berenice his "beloved." There is reason to believe that Egaeus's repression of his sexual desire contributed to the deterioration of his mental health, particularly after Berenice becomes ill herself. Egaeus is understandably horrified at the way Berenice's illness changes her body and her personality, but it is particularly telling that it was only after she developed the "fatal and primary" disease of epilepsy that his own mental illness "grew rapidly." This rapid mental deterioration is due in part of Egaeus confronting within himself the realization that he does, in fact, desire Berenice. Despite the negative impacts of her disease on her body, Berenice still maintains immaculately white teeth, which Egaeus becomes obsessed with when she smiles at him one night. White is often used to symbolize purity and virginity, and that is what Egaeus is actually becoming obsessed with possessing. During an obsessive episode, Egaeus develops the irrational thought that possessing Berenice's untarnished teeth will restore his own mind to its untarnished state. Stealing Berenice's teeth after he thinks she's dead becomes a form of bodily violation, as he rips her purity away from her to keep it in a box for himself. Egaeus desires Berenice, but he is also repulsed by this desire. The internal conflict Egaeus experiences between these two things ultimately feed into the mental illness that drives him to mutilate Berenice's body. Denied the opportunity to possess Berenice by what appears to be her death, and unable to reconcile himself to it, Egaeus steals a tangible symbol of her purity: her immaculately white teeth. The true horror, however, is that Berenice does not die, and Egaeus will have to live with the guilt of knowing he gave in to his base desires and irreparably harmed Berenice. - Climax: Berenice wakes up after being buried alive and Egaeus discovers he has removed her teeth. - Summary: "Berenice" opens with the narrator, Egaeus, discussing misery and its ability to manifest in a number of different forms. Egaeus paves the way for the tragedy that will follow by asserting that "evil is a consequence of good." Although Egaeus shares his "baptismal name" with the reader, he does not share his family name, but states that their ancestral home—in which he was born and presumably continues to live—is ancient and "gloomy." His family, Egaeus continues, was considered "a race of visionaries" and this is reflected in the "peculiar nature" of the family's collection of books, frescos, tapestries, and old paintings. The library is particularly meaningful to Egaeus, who was born in it and whose mother died in it. Egaeus introduces the reader to his belief in reincarnation, saying: "It is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before." Egaeus believes his soul had inhabited another body and had another life, and the proof of this is in his dim memories of "sounds, musical yet sad" and "spiritual and meaningful eyes." Egaeus goes on to describe how he spent his earliest years in the library studying its books and meditating. He believes that being born in the library is the reason he "loitered away" his childhood in study and contemplation rather than in activity. However, when he was still in "the noon of manhood," a "stagnation" settled over his life and significantly hindered his intellectual development. Egaeus then introduces his cousin, Berenice. They grew up together in Egaeus's family home, but they were polar opposites: Egaeus was quiet, gloomy, and studious while Berenice was active, happy, and cheerful. As he describes Berenice as a child, Egaeus says that simply saying her name brings back a clear vision of her in her "gorgeous yet fantastic beauty" before "the destroyer" came in the form of a fatal disease that warped her beauty, happiness, and character. Berenice's disease had a number of symptoms, but the most alarming was that it would send her in to a "trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution," from which she would abruptly wake up. Coincidentally, as Berenice suffers more and more from her physical disease, Egaeus's mental illness also intensifies. It takes a "monomaniac character" that causes him to spend hours and hours on "frivolous" objects such as "the typography of a book" or "a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry." Egaeus emphasizes the fact that his hyper-fixation on these objects is nothing at all like what a typically imaginative person would experience, but rather has a truly negative impact on every aspect of his life. Among the other symptoms he experiences as a result of his mental illness is that he occasionally loses "all sense of motion or physical existence." While Egaeus's books provide him with ample details and ideas to fixate on, he tells the reader that he never did spend much time contemplating the changes Berenice's disease created in her character. Instead, as was typical of his illness, Egaeus found himself focusing on the "less important" changes in Berenice: the changes in her "physical frame." Egaeus asserts that not even in "the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty" had he been in love with her, but as her disease wastes away her beauty, he finds himself unaccountably drawn to her. In "an evil moment," Egaeus proposes to Berenice and she agrees to marry him. Shortly before their marriage, Egaeus is sitting alone in his library when Berenice appears before him. She is emaciated, her black hair has turned yellow, and she seems taller than she used to be; Egaeus studies her and notice all "its" changes. When he turns his attention to Berenice's lips, she smiles at him and he notices her teeth. Without warning and unable to stop himself, Egaeus begins to obsess over Berenice's teeth: she is fundamentally changed, but her teeth remain as white, untarnished, and orderly as they had been before disease had deteriorated the rest of her beauty. Egaeus imagines studying them in minute detail in "every light." He begins to believe that possession of the teeth will restore balance to the "disordered chamber" of his mind. Egaeus sits in the library thinking about Berenice's teeth for the rest of the night and the next day. The next night, however, a maid screams in the distance and causes him to get up and go find out what is wrong. She tells him that Berenice has had a fit and is now dead. Berenice is almost immediately buried, but Egaeus has very little memory of the event. In fact, he struggles to understand the "horror" he feels about the period after she was buried. As he tries to understand his feelings, he feels he can hear "the spirit of a departed sound" of a "shrill and piercing shriek" that he believes came from a woman. Egaeus senses that he "had done a deed," but fails to remember what it was. Beside him on a table is a small box belonging to the family physician, a lamp, and a book open to a passage about returning to a loved one's grave. This line makes Egaeus's hair stand on end, but he is unsure why. As he thinks, a servant comes into the room and, obviously terrified, tells Egaeus that the household servants had been disturbed by "a wild cry" in the night. Following the sound of it, they had arrived at Berenice's "violated grave" and discovered that she was still alive, although "enshrouded." The servant then points out to Egaeus that his clothes are bloody and covered in mud, there are human nail marks on his hand, and there is a spade inexplicably sitting in the corner of the room. Egaeus suddenly jumps at the box sitting on the table next to him and drops it. It "burst[s] into pieces" and they see that it is full of "thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances."

- Genre: Short Story, Realism, Coming-of-Age - Title: Bernice Bobs Her Hair - Point of view: Third Person - Setting: - Character: Bernice. Description: Marjorie's cousin and the story's titular protagonist. Bernice is an 18-year-old girl from an exceptionally wealthy family in New England. She regularly spends her summers with her Aunt Josephine, whose daughter Marjorie, also 18, shows by comparison how far Bernice stands from her peers in terms of social ability. Bernice feels intimidated by Marjorie at first, finding her cruel and unfeminine. Sheltered from the realities of dating, peer pressure, and teenage culture—let alone the struggles of anyone beneath her family's socioeconomic sphere—Bernice begins the story believing earnestly in the conservative mores of her parents' generation. She is prudish and ladylike, but also childish, naive, and awkward. Challenges to her values frequently end in confusion, tears, and embarrassment. Bernice's resentment towards Marjorie is eventually replaced by admiration, as Marjorie teaches her how to be popular and trendy. Gradually, through Marjorie's advice, Bernice gains self-confidence and social savvy, though she still falters occasionally. Much of her success is due to Marjorie's precise coaching, but her downfall is also Marjorie's doing. Jealous at the newfound attention Bernice is getting, Marjorie tricks her cousin into getting a bad haircut. This swiftly destroys Bernice's popularity, but it also causes her to find the willpower and courage she has been missing. At her core, Bernice proves to be strong and clever. Her critical thinking skills are what led her to seek Marjorie's help in the first place—and together with her newfound self-reliance, they help her cast aside the insecurities and misconceptions about popularity that kept her from actualizing her potential. With newfound bravery, she strikes back at Marjorie by snipping off her braids in the dead of night, and leaving for home on her own terms, cleanly cutting ties with her cousin. - Character: Marjorie Harvey. Description: Bernice's cousin and Mrs. Harvey's daughter. Presented as a foil to Bernice, Marjorie Harvey is shallow, witty, charming, fashionable, and unscrupulous. Ever seeking the spotlight, she takes pleasure in stringing along Warren McIntyre, her longtime friend and a very attractive prospect, for the conspicuous popularity it gives her. She rejects the traditional brand of femininity that her mother and Bernice represent in favor of a modern model that permits more freedom and boldness of expression. Marjorie clearly values the skill, intelligence, and willpower that a young woman needs to assert her agency in a male-dominated society—but where she herself excels in all of these qualities, she lacks kindness, integrity, and guiding principles. She views popularity as a goal unto itself, and she doesn't seem to enjoy the fruits of her social conquests beyond the prestige they offer. Marjorie is quite willing to manipulate someone, or betray them, to achieve her ends. She does this in different ways to both Warren and Bernice—yet this eventually leads to her downfall at Bernice's hands when Bernice snips off Marjorie's braids. - Character: Warren McIntyre. Description: Warren McIntyre is Marjorie's longtime friend and former childhood playmate, who aims to win her affections. A 19-year-old attending Yale University, he boasts of good looks, familial wealth, fine taste, a respectable name, and the interest of most girls his age. Consequently, his opinion of himself is rather high. He seeks the popular and attractive girls, and expects his attention to be met with flirting and flattery in turn. Warren's opinion is critical to a fault, and decidedly fickle: initially he finds Bernice dull, but later he finds her an attractive prospect after she has won some measure of popularity. Likewise, only when he pursues Bernice does Marjorie, previously uncaring, show an interest in him. However, Warren just as soon drops Bernice when her haircut ruins her looks, despite having been one of the crowd pushing her to get her hair bobbed in the first place. Together with Marjorie, Warren illustrates the emptiness of social conquest for its own sake; the attention of someone so shallow and heartless, Fitzgerald seems to suggest, is hardly a prize worth seeking. - Character: Mrs. Harvey / Aunt Josephine. Description: Marjorie's mother and Bernice's aunt. Josephine Harvey is a middle-aged lady of considerable wealth and privilege. Representing an earlier generation, she gives voice to the conservative values against which the teenage characters rebel: prudence, reserve, marriage-oriented goals, and strict gender roles. Thus she informs a crucial part of the story's setting and main conflict. Mrs. Harvey is dismissive of her daughter's generation, unable to understand their values and tastes, which are so radically different from the ones she had been taught as a girl. She approaches the topic of this generation gap with a mixture of weariness, boredom, disdain, and mild amusement. Comfortable with their narrow perspective, uninterested in changing, she and her acquaintances—other wealthy older ladies, such as Mrs. Deyo—form an echo chamber of opinions, believing earnestly in the immorality and foolishness of youth. All of this having been said, Mrs. Harvey is not especially malicious. She praises Bernice not just for her manners and looks, but for her sweet disposition. Even so, it cannot be said that Fitzgerald depicts Mrs. Harvey or her views in a flattering light. - Character: Otis Ormonde. Description: A minor recurring character, 16-year-old Otis Ormonde is something of a laughingstock among his peers, being easily the youngest of the crowd attending the dances. His eagerness and immaturity in dating speaks to how the modern teenager is shaped by his social environment, and the older teenagers' opinions of him show how harsh this social environment can be. Both of these points illustrate the obstacles that Bernice faces in learning how to socialize with her peers. - Theme: Social Competition. Description: "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" tracks the social climb of its titular protagonist—Bernice, a teenage girl from a wealthy family who proves to be awkward, old-fashioned, and unsocial among her peers. In 1920, when F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote this story, teenagers had just come into their own as a distinct age group, with their own culture, values, and norms. For the first time in America, teenagers freely dated one another without adult supervision, and Fitzgerald saw how harshly teenagers judged each other's worth by their success or failure in this arena. Through Bernice's relationship to her cousin Marjorie, he explores the psychosocial effects of competing so viciously with one's peers. With Marjorie's help, Bernice rises to popularity—but she just as soon falls when Marjorie proves to be a competitor herself, and tricks Bernice into getting an unflattering bob haircut. Thus Bernice loses the attention of attractive young "stag" Warren McIntyre, but she also gains the confidence to strike back. Fitzgerald suggests that while competition seems inevitable in such a volatile social climate, its rewards lie not within the competition itself, but within the individual who rises above it. Marjorie, a foil to Bernice, is shown to be clever and socially savvy, but also insensitive, shallow, and cruel. Investing herself wholly in social competition has made her incapable of healthy interpersonal relationships. She professedly has "no female intimates—she considered girls stupid." Competing for boys' attention has made her hostile to her own gender and age group. The best she can muster is praise or condemnation based on social clout: Martha Carey is "cheerful and awfully witty" by Marjorie's estimation, and Roberta Dillon is "a marvellous dancer." These qualities help a girl win attention and praise—and therefore, they win Marjorie's respect. Little else seems to merit this response from her. Conversely, Marjorie dismisses her cousin's worth as a person because Bernice is unpopular, with old-fashioned mores and poor fashion sense. To the notion that her flirtatious, frivolous ways will lead to a bad end, Marjorie simply responds that "All unpopular girls think that way." For Marjorie, popularity seems to be a measure not just of someone's credibility, but of their character. This apathy to the thoughts and feelings of "unpopular girls" becomes outright antagonism towards anyone popular enough to compete with her socially. For years, Marjorie showed little overt interest in her childhood friend Warren McIntyre, who was always vying for her attention—but as soon as Bernice becomes his companion of choice, Marjorie goes out of her way to sabotage Bernice's looks and win Warren for herself. Warren himself seems to matter little here; rather, Marjorie craves the social status his attention represents, and she is willing to hurt others to get it. From the other side of this situation, Bernice experiences deep social anxiety as she fails to attract boys—and the more she invests in the race to do so, the more her mental state depends on it. At first, Bernice is caught between her old-fashioned principles and her desire for social validation, and the conflict is made all the worse by her lack of social grace. Out of nervousness, she mishandles Warren's first attempt at flirting, feeling "a faint regret mingled with her relief as the subject changed." When Marjorie later mocks Bernice for her social ineptitude, Bernice is reduced to tears and tantrums as she tries to justify her traditional feminine manners. She cannot engage this problem from either side without getting upset. Even when Bernice follows Marjorie's social coaching and wins many admirers, her emotions are still precariously balanced on whether she succeeds or fails in amusing her peers. She feels embarrassed when she makes a mistake—and when she succeeds, her mood reaches giddy, dizzying heights, such as when she falls asleep to fanciful thoughts of Warren. Neither state is healthy or sustainable. It is this insecurity that leads Bernice to accept Marjorie's dare to bob her hair. Though "she had known [the haircut] would be ugly as sin," Bernice fears losing her peers' approval still more. Her investment in the social competition with Marjorie, too deep to retract gracefully, is what leads her to harm and shame. Despite this, Bernice undeniably gains confidence and strength of character from learning how to navigate social situations, which Fitzgerald seems to suggest is a far richer reward than "winning" the social competition against Marjorie. Marjorie's lessons form "the foundation of self-confidence" for Bernice. Once she learns how to be witty and well-liked, she can do it herself, without Marjorie's explicit coaching. She doesn't merely follow instructions, but she learns, and in learning she gains strength of character. This newfound confidence serves her well, even when she is no longer popular. After the disastrous haircut, Bernice has the strength and forethought to return home in the dead of night, without seeking her aunt's or her cousin's approval—but not before snipping off Marjorie's pigtails while she sleeps, and tossing them onto Warren's porch with a laugh. Fitzgerald sets this final scene in direct contrast to Part III, in which Bernice cannot commit to her resolution to take a train home, crying when Marjorie reacts apathetically to her departure. Though she has lost her popularity and most of her hair, Bernice has clearly overcome the weaknesses that kept her so tightly chained to Marjorie's social expectations, and Fitzgerald frames this as the greater victory. Bernice's journey from weakness to self-confidence, including the pitfalls along the way, shows how the young people of the 1920s faced peer-to-peer social competition unlike any generation prior. Through Marjorie, the story also shows just how toxic this competition can be, even if participation in it is mandatory. Ultimately, Bernice is better for both her victories and her losses because she grows from them internally, and she is happier for having left Marjorie's social circle on her own terms. Fitzgerald clearly values this growth over the fleeting benefits of popularity itself, especially the fickle affections of cruel, shallow people like Marjorie and Warren. - Theme: Gender and Femininity. Description: "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" is largely a discussion of the value of femininity, and of what society expects of a young woman in 1920s America. Nearly every character in this story, major or minor, holds some opinion on the matter—and both Bernice and Marjorie evaluate themselves against the traditional feminine standard, to different conclusions. Fitzgerald uses this very difference to underscore the struggle that teenage girls faced in 1920: that is, being forced to define themselves as a demographic while lacking the maturity to do so in a healthy way. The older model of femininity, represented by Marjorie's mother, Mrs. Harvey, values women who are delicate, quiet, and marriage-minded. By the 1920s, this approach had become useless in preparing young women for the world. However, the new model that Marjorie represents—aiming to shock, amuse, and allure as many boys as possible—tends to reward only personalities like hers, and offers only shallow rewards at that. Bernice can find no comfortable place between these two extremes, and both sides threaten unpleasant consequences if she fails to conform. Ultimately, Fitzgerald doesn't propose a solution to this problem, but shows, in Bernice, the impossibility of perfectly conforming to society's standards of femininity. At the beginning of the story, it's clear that Bernice has inherited her view of womanhood—one which prioritizes quiet grace and delicacy above all else—from her mother's generation, and that it fails to serve her among her peers. Mrs. Harvey speaks rather highly of Bernice, yet none of her praise resonates with her daughter's generation. In Part II, Mrs. Harvey lauds Bernice for being demure and ladylike, "pretty" and "sweet," and able to cook—but Marjorie scoffs at all of this. She knows that these "feminine" qualities win Bernice no positive attention from her peers, not even kindness beyond the bare minimum of courtesy. They consider Bernice an old-fashioned bore, and mock her behind her back. She impresses a middle-aged woman, but not her own peers. Bernice's idea of femininity is informed by fiction more than anything else. For example, when appealing to Marjorie's sympathy, Bernice quotes Little Women (1868), thinking it a worthy example of camaraderie between girls because Louisa May Alcott's characters were "models for our mothers." Though Bernice's feminine ideal is not necessarily bad, it is disconnected from reality, and it grows more so with each passing year. Her faux pas with Warren on the dance floor, getting flustered and offended at his attempt to flirt, speaks to how ill-prepared she is for real-life social situations. Her outdated model of femininity, ostensibly meant to help young women find and please husbands, has left her unable to communicate with boys her age. Marjorie, meanwhile, rejects traditional femininity on the very grounds that it doesn't reflect her social reality. Though her concerns are ultimately shallow—popularity, attention, sex, and so on—her objections are well-reasoned, and clearly based in a higher sense of women's individual worth than what Bernice was taught. As cruel as it is, Marjorie's stance that ladylike girls like Bernice are jealous, full of "whining criticisms of girls like me who really do have a good time," nonetheless reflects the reality that she is successful while traditionally feminine girls are not. Marjorie dismisses the "inane females" modeled by Little Women, and moreover says that "our mothers were all very well in their way, but they know very little about their daughters' problems." In other words, while traditional femininity may have been appropriate for past generations, it now falls flat. By contrast, the qualities that Marjorie values, such as wit and fashion sense, contribute directly to her social success. Where tradition tells women to suppress their egos, Marjorie develops hers—and as a result, though she is vain and often insincere, she is also confident and self-sufficient. When she follows Marjorie into the public spotlight, Bernice's social status becomes wrapped up in one of her most feminine qualities: her hair. In her conflict over whether to bob her hair, either decision would be succumbing to pressure to conform to a certain model of femininity—and she only feels completely free when this feminine status symbol is lost entirely, and any expectations with it. Initially, Bernice disapproves of bob haircuts just like her mother's generation does; her opinion is informed by theirs. She "collapse[s] backwards upon the bed" when Marjorie suggests it the first time, and calls it "unmoral" even as she jokes about it. Later, Mrs. Harvey is aghast at the sight of Bernice's haircut, as her friend Mrs. Deyo has devoted considerable time to a public denouncement of bobbed hair. It is implied that she never expected such a thing from Bernice, who has always conformed to traditional ladylike ways. When Bernice finally agrees to cut her hair, she does so specifically to spite Marjorie and avoid shame. Though "she had known it would be ugly as sin," she commits to the haircut regardless because Marjorie has goaded her to it, escalating the situation to the point that Bernice couldn't change her mind without losing face. In that moment, conforming to her peers' expectations of a fashionable young woman is more important to Bernice than the certain reality that longer hair looks better on her. When her hair is ruined and she has no more dignity to lose, Bernice feels free to take revenge against Marjorie—and perhaps more tellingly, to laugh and show her emotions in an unladylike way, "no longer restraining herself." Fitzgerald seems to be suggesting that absolute freedom exists only outside of arbitrary gender norms, though he does not go so far as to advocate the abolition of these norms. Rather, he frames the trials leading up to this moment as an inevitable part of a girl's coming of age. Bernice, like Marjorie and Mrs. Harvey and all the other female characters, must navigate society's broad expectations of women for the rest of her life, even if she can enjoy the occasional moment of freedom. - Theme: Youth and Generational Difference. Description: Though the story's main conflict focuses on Bernice and Marjorie, a broader, subtler conflict is shown to play out between the older and younger generations. At the start of the 1920s, when Fitzgerald was writing, a new teenage culture was coming into being, and adults, especially of the conservative upper class, reacted with indignation and scorn. "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" uses this generational conflict to apply pressure to its protagonist, as Bernice must weigh the lessons of her upbringing against her desire to fit in among her peers. The difficulty of Bernice's dilemma, and the lack of a clear answer weighing towards either side, speaks to how deep the rift between generations ran at that time. Mrs. Harvey's generation not only fails to understand young people, but seems largely uninterested in understanding them. Never before had American teenagers been so united in their rejection of their parents' norms. It was, to all eyes, an anomaly, and so older adults dismissed it as such. The very first scene of "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" begins with observations of how each generation conducts themselves at a party. While the middle-aged ladies gossip and "the younger marrieds […] performed ancient waltzes and terrifying fox trots to the tolerant amusement of their younger brothers and sisters," the teenagers, caught in "the drama of the shifting, semicruel world of adolescence," make an elaborate social competition of the dance. The narrator muses that unlike these "younger marrieds" of the previous generation, who dance in set couples like their parents before them, "youth in this jazz-nourished generation is temperamentally restless, and the idea of fox-trotting more than one full fox trot with the same girl is distasteful, not to say odious." The teenagers act with different goals and priorities in mind, and so the space of the summer dance is fragmented between generations. This reflects the state of cross-generational relations at this time, which were likewise fractured. During her argument with Marjorie, Mrs. Harvey lazily ascribes her daughter's behavior and opinions to a generation-wide lack of courtesy. Fitzgerald makes a point to say that her tone of voice "implied that modern situations were too much for her. When she was a girl all young ladies who belonged to nice families had glorious times." The simple worldview afforded by age and privilege stays fixed in her mind, despite what her daughter tells her is happening to the contrary. As the narrator remarks later in this section, "At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide." The bob haircut in particular seems to draw the ire of the elder generation, likely because it so radically departs from any feminine styles seen prior in America. Somewhat comically, Mrs. Harvey's friend Mrs. Deyo wrote an entire paper titled, "The Foibles of the Younger Generation," of which fifteen minutes of speaking time were devoted to denouncing bobbed hair. The fact that this paper doesn't seem to have left "the Thursday Club," evidently a social circle of wealthy middle-aged ladies, speaks to how insular and close-minded that demographic often was. Against such opposition, the younger generation can only respond negatively. Marjorie carves out her own social space, away from her mother, and defends her control over it by any means necessary. She defends it from the outside by arguing persistently against her mother's way of thinking, and from the inside by deceiving and undercutting competition like Bernice. Warren McIntyre, meanwhile, asserts his independence by driving his own car wherever he chooses, to parties all over New England. Nowhere are his parents even mentioned. Bernice, on the other hand, is completely cowed by her elders' expectations, and winces in fear at the mere thought of her mother's disapproval. Her first conversation with Marjorie ends in sobs as she considers that "if I go home my mother will know" that something had gone wrong. Even after she becomes popular and gets her hair cut, it stings her when Mrs. Harvey asks, "Oh, Bernice, what'll your mother think?" Whether they share their parents' values or not, the young people of this story have largely negative relationships to the older generation. Obedience means internal conflict, while rebellion only makes that conflict external. Fitzgerald suggests somewhat bleakly that the relationship between generations—especially the power imbalance between parent and child—simply does not permit straightforward, healthy communication. - Climax: Bernice succumbs to pressure and gets a short bob haircut. - Summary: At a summer dance being hosted at a country club, teenagers from well-to-do families flirt, dance, and socialize in rituals incomprehensible to the older guests. Standing out from this crowd is Bernice, an awkward 18-year-old girl whose unworldly ways and old-fashioned values clash with the modern manners of her peers. She is staying with her cousin Marjorie for yet another summer—and though the vivacious Marjorie has subtly tried to set Bernice on the path to social success, Bernice continues to falter at every step. Despite her beauty, she is hopelessly unpopular, boring every one of her dance partners. Warren McIntyre, Marjorie's childhood friend, has made a habit of dancing with Bernice in order to win Marjorie's good graces—but even Warren, considered by all to be a handsome young man and a fine prospect, finds no success with her. Though they dance, Bernice cannot keep pace with Warren's attempt at flirting, and the two descend once more into dull, listless small talk. Late that night, after the dance has ended, Bernice overhears Marjorie and her mother, Mrs. Harvey, discussing her in private. Though Mrs. Harvey praises Bernice for her ladylike manners and sweet disposition, just as many adults have, Marjorie quickly dismisses these qualities as old-fashioned, unappealing, and indicative of a weak, self-righteous character. Bernice hears her cousin mock her, disavow her as a lost cause, and even indulge in some racist speculation on her ancestry. The following morning, Bernice confronts Marjorie about this conversation. She threatens to leave immediately—and Marjorie, far from feeling embarrassed about it, readily encourages her to do so. The two girls abide by opposite ideas of what femininity should be: in tears, Bernice invokes time-honored sentiments of female camaraderie, while Marjorie firmly states that the traditional "ladylike" woman is a bland, useless creature who lacks any real personality, and that whatever moral high ground Bernice claims over lively, flirty, opinionated girls like Marjorie is founded in mere jealousy. Bernice, devastated, secludes herself for some time, but eventually she returns to Marjorie with a proposal. Hurt though she is, Bernice admits to finding herself at a loss as to why she is so unpopular. Desperate for some relief, she agrees to unquestioningly follow Marjorie's advice on fashion, conduct, and anything else pertinent to solving this problem. In response, Marjorie raises the question of whether Bernice should get her hair cut in a more fashionable bob. Even though she's horrified at this prospect, Bernice agrees to consider it. Soon this hypothetical haircut becomes a tantalizing piece of gossip that Bernice, at Marjorie's instruction, can use to attract attention. Following Marjorie's precise coaching, including a script sprinkled with witty quotes from Oscar Wilde, Bernice soon achieves popularity among the other teenagers. Where before she had only a few dance partners, none repeating, she now finds herself "cut in" on constantly, the boys eager to listen to her. Though she falters a bit at first, she gradually learns self-confidence and an internal sense of social ease. Eventually Bernice comes to attract the attention of Warren McIntyre, who considers Bernice nearly as appealing as the ever-distant Marjorie. Jealous, and embarrassed by the ensuing gossip, Marjorie then turns against Bernice. She undercuts her socially wherever possible, and calls her promise to cut her hair a bluff. Embarrassed, and backed into a corner, Bernice agrees to get her hair bobbed, despite knowing that it will certainly not flatter her. A crowd gathers at the barbershop to watch the spectacle. In the end, it is Marjorie's goading smile that pushes Bernice to commit to the haircut—and when it proves embarrassingly ugly to all present, especially Warren, Bernice finds herself a social outcast once more. As the insidiousness of Marjorie's betrayal becomes clearer in the following days, Bernice decides to get revenge. Late at night, she packs her bags and writes a farewell note to her aunt, explaining that she will be returning home. Then she sneaks into Marjorie's room, stealthily cuts her braids off with a pair of scissors, and makes her way to the train station by herself. Free, happy, delighted at her mischief, Bernice tosses the cut braids onto Warren's front porch as she passes, and walks on with new confidence and strength.

- Genre: Humorous Short Fiction - Title: Best Seller - Point of view: Third-person omniscient - Setting: The Angler's Rest, a pub in an unspecified English village; London - Character: Egbert Mulliner. Description: Egbert, the nephew of narrator Mr. Mulliner, is the story's protagonist. He is an assistant editor with an aversion to female novelists, whose work he views as clichéd and badly written. At the beginning of the story, Egbert appears to be somewhat fragile; his contact with female novelists is enough to make him ill, yet this fragility is understood by and arouses the sympathy of his fellow male editors. While recovering at the seaside, he falls in love with Evangeline and proposes to her. Ironically, Egbert's words and actions as the relationship develops are just as clichéd and overwrought as the novels he despises, and it quickly becomes apparent that he is less sophisticated than he would like believe. When Evangeline writes a successful novel inspired by their relationship, Egbert is mortified. When she proceeds to spend a great deal of time with her agent, Jno. Henderson Banks, he becomes jealous and demands that she stop seeing him. Initially, his tone is imperious; as Evangeline's fiancé, he expects her to obey him. But when she refuses, he becomes much less domineering and begs her to do as he asks. It's too late, however, and Evangeline breaks off the engagement. This rejection changes Egbert: he can now interview even the most sentimental of novelists without becoming ill. Nonetheless, he is still in love with Evangeline, and when she asks for his help meeting her contractual obligations at the end of the story, he enthusiastically suggests passing off his own work under her name. This revelation that Egbert himself once had aspirations as a novelist suggests once again that, beneath his façade, he is just as sentimental as the female novelists he claims to hate. - Character: Evangeline Pembury. Description: Egbert's fiancée, Evangeline, inspired by her love for him, writes a novel. It's horrible—at once unoriginal and poorly written—but becomes a best seller nonetheless. At first, Evangeline isn't sure how to handle her success—she stammers when a reporter comes to interview her, for instance—yet she quickly learns to enjoy her fame. She gives lectures, sends letters to her fans, and learns to use highbrow jargon to describe her work. She also begins to spend a great deal of time with her agent, Jno. Henderson Banks. When Egbert objects to this, she breaks off the engagement, making it clear that she is not willing to conform to the role he has in mind for her. However, it turns out that although Evangeline enjoys being a literary celebrity, she doesn't actually like writing. She panics when she realizes she doesn't have it in her to produce the additional stories for which she has been paid in advance. When Egbert comes to interview her for the magazine at which he is an editor, she initially greets him with cool formality. Still, it's clear that she has feelings for him, and her distress eventually gets the better of her. She throws herself melodramatically onto the sofa and breaks into tears, showing that despite her pose of literary sophistication, she remains absurdly sentimental. She explains her predicament, and Egbert offers to solve the problem by allowing her to publish his work under her name. She accepts at once, and the story ends with the two lovers reconciled. - Character: Jno. Henderson Banks. Description: Evangeline's literary agent, Banks is handsome, fashionable, and overly reverential toward his female clients. Egbert becomes jealous when Evangeline begins to spend much of her time with Banks. It is Banks who arranges for Evangeline's work to appear in forthcoming magazines, prompting her horrified realization that she lacks the drive and talent to produce the stories she is contractually obligated to write. - Character: Mr. Mulliner. Description: Egbert Mulliner's uncle. Upon learning that Miss Postlethwaite is reading Rue for Remembrance, he tells the story of Egbert and Evangeline to the other patrons at the Angler's Rest. It's clear from his narration of Egbert and Evangeline's story that he finds their sentimentality silly. However, he also seems fond of them—he mentions that he has a particular interest in Evangeline's work, and he brings the story to a happy conclusion. - Theme: The Portrayal of Women. Description: Egbert Mulliner, the protagonist of "Best Seller," has one "pet aversion": female novelists. As an assistant editor at The Weekly Booklover, Mulliner has to interview the female authors of best-selling novels, a task that drains and humiliates him because he sees literary women as vain, haughty, and delusional, and he considers their work unworthy. Mulliner would like to believe that his condescending attitude is the result of his superior taste, but as the story progresses, readers begin to see that Mulliner himself is imposing his own stereotypes on the female writers he interviews. Furthermore, Mulliner is a failed novelist who possesses all of the negative qualities that he ascribes to female authors (namely, vanity and delusional ambitions to seek literary fame with no real talent), so his ideas about female novelists seem actually to have little to do with women—instead, they hold a mirror to his own flaws and his threatened ego, showing his insecurity. At the story's beginning, Mulliner's health is suffering, apparently due to the toll that interviewing silly female novelists has taken. He claims that their relentless sentimentality and clichés (listening to them discuss their "Art and their Ideals" and seeing them in "the cozy corners of boudoirs, being kind to dogs and happiest among flowers") have nearly driven him to an early death. In describing this, the narrator's tone is tongue-in-cheek ("The strain of interviewing female novelists takes a toll on the physique of all but the very hardiest"), but the other characters do not mock Mulliner's fragility—his coworkers and even his doctor take his "illness" seriously, prescribing rest in a seaside town to "augment the red corpuscles" in Mulliner's bloodstream. Therefore, even as the narrator's tone presents Mulliner's suffering as silly and overwrought, the story depicts a world in which men take themselves and their feelings quite seriously while dismissing successful women for allegedly being overly attuned to emotion. Wodehouse deepens the hypocrisy of his male characters by suggesting that the alleged sentimentality of female novelists (the same sentimentality that wounds the men so deeply) is actually a stereotype projected onto women by male writers like Mulliner. This is clearest at the end of the story when Mulliner interviews his ex-fiancée, Evangeline Pembury, the writer of a best-selling romance novel. Instead of asking about her writing (questions to which she might have interesting or unexpected responses), he asks pointed and trite personal questions—"Are you fond of dogs?" or "You are happiest among your flowers, no doubt?"—to which Evangeline responds with nonchalance. While Mulliner accuses female novelists of thinking only in clichés, this moment makes clear that it's Mulliner himself who lacks the imagination to ask Evangeline a question that might invite an original response. Further suggesting that female novelists are unfairly maligned for their alleged sentimentality, Wodehouse alludes periodically to the fact that the public wants sentimentality: after all, it's the public that makes sentimental novels best sellers. The effect of public demand is clear when Mulliner claims that his publication's readers want a picture of Evangeline with a dog (a sentimental and clichéd way to photograph a female novelist). It's not Evangeline herself, then, who loves dogs enough to want to be pictured with them; instead, she must fulfill the expectations of the public in order to please them and continue to profit from her book. While Evangeline is clearly not the sentimental, silly person that literary men believe her to be, Wodehouse suggests that this characterization might fit the same literary men who dismiss her. For example, Mulliner's marriage proposal to Evangeline appears verbatim in her novel and, upon reading it, Mulliner is mortified that he ever "polluted the air with such frightful horse-radish." Clearly Mulliner's own words are right at home in the types of novels he despises. Furthermore, the end of the story reveals that Mulliner himself wrote a few sentimental novels that he tried and failed to publish. This suggests that his highbrow literary taste disguises his lackluster capabilities as a writer, and also that the best-selling, lowbrow novels that the public sees as being the province of silly women are also written by men. Ironically, it's not until Mulliner tries to publish the novels under his famous fiancée's name that he finds success. The story therefore inverts the centuries-old phenomenon of a woman seeking literary recognition by publishing under a man's name; here, a failed male author uses his fiancée's name to achieve his once inaccessible dream of becoming a published author. While Wodehouse generally punctures the male literary delusion that female authors are silly and a drain on literature, he himself sometimes seems to believe his male characters' own misogynistic ideas. After all, the story ends with Mulliner saving Evangeline from writer's block by giving her his unpublished manuscripts—the implication being that Evangeline would have been ruined had she not been able to pass off Mulliner's talents as her own. Furthermore, the barmaid at the beginning of the story, Miss Postlethwaite, is reading the sequel to Evangeline's novel (which Mulliner wrote and published under Evangeline's name), and she claims that this novel (Mulliner's) is even better than the first (Evangeline's). "It lays the soul of Woman bare as with a scalpel," she says, which seems to be a female fan affirming that Mulliner's condescending and silly ideas about women actually reflect the truth. - Theme: The Absurdity of Romantic Conventions. Description: Wodehouse's humor highlights the ridiculousness of the social and literary conventions of romantic love. In moments of heightened emotion, Egbert and Evangeline play out the traditional roles of characters in a grand romance. However, each time their emotions swell, the narrator undercuts them with a moment of absurdity for comic effect. While this humor pokes fun at the characters' sentimentality and mindless adherence to social conventions, the narrator seems fond of Egbert and Evangeline despite his condescending tone. Even as Wodehouse pokes fun at his characters, he makes them likeable. In the first scene with Egbert and Evangeline, the setting is romantic, and Egbert seems nearly paralyzed by emotion. When the narrator interjects humor, however, the sentimentality seems suddenly ridiculous. The two characters are standing on a pier together on a quiet moonlit night, a scene that evokes those of the popular romance novels Egbert so distinctly loathes. They hear the sound of the town band playing part of Tannhäuser, an opera about romantic love, only for the music to become "somewhat impeded by the second trombone, who had got his music-sheets mixed and was playing 'The Wedding of the Painted Doll.'" The incongruent trombone punctuates the lovers' sincere conversation, highlighting the silliness of the way love is portrayed in popular literature. Wodehouse punctures romantic expectations yet again as Egbert prepares to ask Evangeline a question "very near to his heart," his voice husky and his body "strangely breathless." The strong suggestion is that he is about to ask her to marry him. It turns out, however, that he is about to ask whether she has ever written a novel—an objectively absurd thing to get so worked up about, and a bait and switch that makes the subsequent fervent expression of love feel all the more overwrought. Here, it is a social convention—the ritual of the marriage proposal—that is made to look ridiculous. Similarly, the description of Evangeline's suffering near the end of the story is played for laughs. Evangeline cries "a Niagara of tears" and flings herself onto the sofa, experiencing "an ecstasy of grief." The narrator's description of her emotional distress is hilariously over the top. She literally chews the scenery (in the form of a sofa cushion), and she gulps "like a bull-pup swallowing a chunk of steak." Just as Wodehouse undercuts the seriousness of Egbert and Evangeline's conversation on the pier, he uses an absurd simile to highlight the silliness of Evangeline's clichéd and melodramatic performance of grief. Although the narrator clearly thinks the main characters' conventional sentimentality is silly, his sense of humor is good-natured rather than viciously satirical. Egbert's uncle Mr. Mulliner, who is telling the story, says that he has "a particular interest" in Evangeline's work, suggesting that he cares enough about his niece and nephew to follow their achievements. Writers often use descriptions of characters in pain as a way to elicit sympathy, and giving readers direct access to the characters' emotions further heightens this effect. By the beginning of the final scene, when Egbert arrives at Evangeline's home to find her looking "drawn" and "care-worn," it's obvious that the narrator is rooting for these characters even as he pokes fun at the way their relationship follows the conventions of sentimental romantic novels. Wodehouse also gives his characters a happy ending—Egbert and Evangeline find a way to solve their problems, and in the final lines, they express their love for one another. Their silliness, then, does not seem to have any lasting negative consequences. Wodehouse uses humor to demonstrate the ridiculousness of romantic conventions both on the page and in society more generally. The narrator repeatedly develops an atmosphere of romance and heightened emotion only to deflate it—with hilarious results. His characters are made to look silly on nearly every page. At the same time, Wodehouse depicts his characters sympathetically (if also condescendingly); their silliness is presented as an amusing foible rather than a major character flaw. - Theme: Highbrow Versus Lowbrow Art. Description: Throughout the story, the narrator presents popular novels—and particularly novels written and enjoyed by women—as frivolous and unsophisticated. The reading public is portrayed as fickle, and popular taste as sentimental and clichéd. However, Wodehouse also gently mocks authors who have grand artistic aspirations. Finally, he bemoans the fact that poor popular taste and a profit-driven publishing industry make it difficult for high art to succeed. The narrator clearly believes that popular novels are formulaic and that the public's taste is unreliable at best. At the beginning of the story, the "sensitive barmaid" Miss Postlethwaite is deeply moved as she reads Rue for Remembrance, the novel that Egbert wrote and has encouraged Evangeline to pass off as her own. The scene that has brought her to tears is full of the clichés of popular romance novels, as the protagonist's love interest has just left her "standing tight-lipped and dry-eyed in the moonlight outside the old Manor." Miss Postlethwaite acts as a stand-in for the audience here; her sentimental tastes reflect those of the general public. Wodehouse also emphasizes the fickleness of popular taste ("these swift, unheralded changes of the public mind"). Readers seemingly are guided by their whims and emotions rather than any sophisticated sense of aesthetic value. Indeed, the narrative makes it clear that the success of popular novels has nothing to do with artistic merit—despite its best-seller status, Evangeline's novel is poorly written and autobiographical, suggesting a lack both literary talent and creativity. (In Egbert's opinion, it's a "horrid, indecent production.") At the same time, Wodehouse makes fun of writers who make grand claims about the value of their work. The female novelists Egbert interviews all want to talk about "Art and their Ideals." These novelists want to seem highbrow and sophisticated, but, at least to Egbert, their ideals are actually just as clichéd and predictable as their novels. Wodehouse also mocks "sensitive artists," stating that while they might like to be seen as inspired souls and certainly like making money, they don't actually like writing very much. The narrator observes, "It is not the being paid money in advance that jars the sensitive artist: it is the having to work." Highbrow or lowbrow, the story suggests, all writers are part of a publishing industry driven by economic gain, which makes it nearly impossible for high-quality art to succeed. For example, what appears at first glance to be serious social commentary about popular novels turns out to be a marketing ploy. Leading up to the publication of a romance novel titled Offal, publishers have arranged to have a newspaper discussion titled "The Growing Menace of the Sex Motive in Fiction: Is There to be no Limit." Ostensibly, this is a criticism of Offal and novels like it, but in fact it is intended to boost sales. Wodehouse also lumps popular novels together with more experimental or "literary" works. Egbert's editor, for instance, sends him to "the No Man's Land of Bloomsbury" to gather information for a column. Bloomsbury was known at the time as the home of a group of artists that included Virginia Woolf, whose novels were considered avant-garde. It also was the location of the publishing company Faber & Faber, which was well known for printing Modernist poetry and criticism. Wodehouse, then, is placing novelists from Bloomsbury on the same footing as Evangeline, as columns about both are published in the same magazine. This is a reminder that even though "serious" writers may look down on popular novelists, highbrow and lowbrow literature are part of the same industry—one driven by commercial concerns. By catering to popular tastes in order to increase profits, the publishing industry dissuades young writers from creating high art and forces them to seek more mundane employment. Continually shifting popular tastes cause "powerful young novelists to seek employment as junior clerks in wholesale grocery firms." Although Egbert derides poorly written popular novels, he is part of an industry that appears actively to inhibit the creation and dissemination of higher quality art.  While Wodehouse mocks the lowbrow preferences of the general reading public, he also satirizes the literary pretensions of so-called serious authors. Wodehouse himself, as a comedic writer, wasn't always taken seriously by the literary elite, so it's not surprising that he takes a jab at them here. Wodehouse further suggests that both lowbrow and highbrow works are part of a publishing industry that privileges commercial success over literary quality. As a result, the literary environment as a whole discourages the creation of high art. - Climax: Evangeline suffers an emotional breakdown, believing she will never be able to write enough to fulfill her obligations. - Summary: Miss Postlethwaite, the barmaid of the Angler's Rest, is so moved by the novel she is reading that she attracts the attention of the pub's patrons. Mr. Mulliner, a regular, recognizes the novel as the work of his niece by marriage, Evangeline, and tells the story of how she came to be married to his nephew Egbert. Mr. Mulliner's narration begins with Egbert at a seaside village, where he has come to recover from an illness caused by the strains of his profession: he is an assistant editor who must interview female novelists. Egbert meets Evangeline at a picnic and falls in love at first sight. Before proposing, however, Egbert makes sure that she has never written a novel (or a short story, or poetry, for that matter). She insists she has not and accepts his proposal. Unbeknownst to Egbert, Evangeline is so inspired by her feelings for her fiancé that she proceeds to write a romantic novel. When she tells Egbert what she has done and reads the book to him, he struggles to hide his distress. Her writing is both terrible and autobiographical: Egbert's proposal has been included word for word, and he can't believe that he ever uttered "polluted the air with such frightful horse-radish." Evangeline's publisher is focusing on promoting a different, more salacious book, but their marketing efforts are undercut by an abrupt shift in fickle popular taste. Readers have grown tired of sex and want wholesome love stories. As a result, Evangeline's novel becomes a best seller. Evangeline is unsure of herself at first, but she quickly grows more comfortable with her success. She writes letters to her fans and gives lectures instead of spending time with Egbert. She employs a handsome literary agent named Jno. Henderson Banks, and she begins to turn down Egbert's invitations so that she can go out for meals and to the theater with her agent. Egbert, jealous, demands that she stop seeing Banks. She refuses and breaks off their engagement. Egbert is heartbroken. In order to cope with his grief, he focuses on his work. His experiences have made him tougher, and he is no longer too fragile to interview female novelists. He wins his boss's approval by taking on especially difficult tasks, such as interviewing an author who has driven one of his fellow editors mad. Eventually, Egbert is assigned to interview his ex-fiancée, Evangeline Pembury. He hides his emotion as he arrives at Evangeline's home, and the two exchange formal greetings as if they are strangers. Egbert begins his interview, and Evangeline's answers are unenthusiastic until Egbert asks how her novel's sequel is coming along. Then she breaks into tears. Egbert moves to comfort her and asks the cause of her distress. Evangeline explains that her agent has committed her to publish numerous short stories and serials. She has already been given an advance, but she has realized she hates writing and can't figure out what to write about, so she doesn't see how she can fulfill her contractual obligations. Egbert has a solution: he himself is a failed author, and he has three novels and twenty stories that he never was able to publish. Once they are married, Evangeline can simply publish them under her name. The story ends happily, with Egbert and Evangeline reconciled.

- Genre: Historical Fiction, Young Adult Novel - Title: Between Shades of Gray - Point of view: First person, from Lina's perspective - Setting: Lithuania and Siberia - Character: Lina Vilkas. Description: Lina Vilkas is fifteen years old when she and her family are deported from their comfortable middle class home in Lithuania in 1941. Her father Kostas, a professor at the local university, is accused of the anti-Soviet activity of aiding in the repatriation of relatives back to Germany, thus branding the entire family criminals. Though young, Lina already knows that her passion in life is for drawing, and she is preparing to enter art school when she is ripped away from the only life she has ever known. Despite the hardships she endures upon deportation, she never ceases to stop her drawing. For Lina, drawing is a way to process the world, and is her best mode of expression. She is devoted to saving her family members, and risks her life multiple times throughout the novel in attempts to save her mother Elena and brother Jonas. She continues to document the horrors of the Baltic genocide through her drawings at the risk of certain death, and hopes to pass along the drawings to Kostas so that he may find out where she has been relocated. The entire novel is written from Lina's first-person point of view, and the epilogue reveals that the work has been created from her preserved drawings and writings discovered decades later. - Character: Elena Vilkas. Description: Elena Vilkas is Lina's mother, and is still a woman in the prime of her life when she is deported from her home in Lithuania. Though she is a homemaker and relies on Kostas' income from the university to support the family, Elena was sent to Moscow for her schooling and is considered highly educated. Elena's intelligence is revealed throughout the novel: she is shrewd in her handling of the NKVD guards, furthered by her fluency in Russian, and is intensely kind and caring towards the other passengers. More than once, she saves the lives of her children and of other deportees by bargaining with the guards using valuables she has hidden in the lining of her coat. Ultimately, Elena perishes due to her own generosity—during the polar winter in Siberia, she gives away most of her bread rations, leading to physical weakness, illness, and her untimely death. Her family, the other deportees, and even one of the NKVD guards, Nikolai Kretszky, mourn her deeply. It is ultimately the loss of Elena that leads Kretszky to understand the gravity of the genocide and defect from the camp to alert others of the horrors occurring. - Character: Jonas Vilkas. Description: Jonas, Lina's brother, is ten years old when he is deported. Sweet and caring in his nature, Jonas' purity is exemplified from the start of the novel, when he dresses neatly for school as the NKVD arrive at the home and demand that the family get ready to leave. The absence of Kostas weighs heavily on Jonas, as he is now the only male present in the family. Though he wants to protect Elena and Lina, his youth and naïveté make it difficult and often frustrate him. Jonas looks up to Andrius, who is older and assumes a paternal role for the young boy. Though Lina worries that Andrius is a bad influence for Jonas (the two rip pages out of Lina's copy of a Dickens novel in order to smoke cigarettes), Elena is relieved that Jonas has a male figure to give him strength and comfort. Jonas is forced to grow up very quickly over the course of the novel due to the extreme hardships he undertakes, becoming a valuable and resourceful member of the group of deportees. Despite his emotional strength, the physical difficulties of the camps take their toll on his young body, and he nearly succumbs to scurvy twice. He is ultimately saved by the timely intervention of Dr. Samodurov. - Character: Kostas Vilkas. Description: Kostas is Lina and Jonas' father, and a professor at the local university. Though he is only seen in one episode throughout the novel, Lina often reminisces of good times she had with her father, who was loving and supportive of her artistic talents. Elena, Lina, and Jonas grieve deeply over their separation from Kostas, as able-bodied men were sent to different locations from women, children, and the infirm. Kostas' brief words to Lina when she discovers him through the hole in a train car give her hope and inspiration throughout the most difficult of times in the labor camps. Kostas and his colleagues engaged in secret meetings where they discussed the impending political climate due to the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states. These meetings reveal Kostas' commitment to freedom and revolution against totalitarianism. However, when Lina exhibits similarly negative sentiments towards the Soviets, Kostas becomes angry and implores her to keep her opinions to herself for her own safety. Despite his revolutionary politics, Kostas' commitment is first and foremost to the safety of his family. - Character: Joana Vilkas. Description: Joana is Lina's elder cousin and best friend. Though Joana is not present in the novel, Lina recalls her blissful summers with her cousin and the letters the two exchanged. Joana is studying to be a doctor, and Lina learns throughout the course of the novel that Kostas was imprisoned—and thus Lina, Jonas, and Elena deported—due to the fact that he helped Joana and her family repatriate to Germany, where Joana's mother is from. Lina thus feels conflicted towards the memories of Joana, since she was someone who Lina once looked up to but who now seems to be reaping the benefits of Lina's family's misery. Joana represents the person Lina wanted to grow up to be, and the person she hopes to become if she survives the labor camps. - Character: Andrius Arvydas. Description: Andrius is the son of a military officer, and similar in age to Lina. The two teenagers meet on the train towards Siberia. Andrius' mother, who has spared her son from being imprisoned with the other able-bodied men by claiming he is mentally disabled, accompanies Andrius on the train. Though Andrius searches for his father in the other train cars, he fears that the NKVD has killed him. He is fiercely protective of his mother, and often helps Lina's family procure food and shelter. Andrius and Lina have an immediate connection, though the trauma of the camps pushes them apart at times. Andrius takes Jonas under his wing, offering protection and guidance that comforts Lina and her mother. Though Andrius and Lina are separated after Lina and her family are moved from the first camp, Lina's letter in the epilogue shows that the two survived, reconnected, and eventually married. - Character: Mrs. Arvydas. Description: Andrius' mother is the attractive wife of a Lithuanian officer who is believed to be dead. She and her son are extremely protective of each other, and Mrs. Arvydas agrees to sleep with NKVD officers so that they do not kill Andrius. Though this keeps the mother and son well fed, clothed, and sheltered, his mother's sacrifice takes a deep toll on Andrius. Like Elena, Mrs. Arvydas would do absolutely anything to save her family members. - Character: Mr. Stalas (The Bald Man). Description: Better known to Lina as "the bald man," Mr. Stalas is a postman who is placed in the same train car as the Vilkases when they are deported. He is an extremely pessimistic person, and throws himself from the train car in an attempt to commit suicide. He only succeeds in mangling his leg, which he uses as an excuse to lament and avoid work for the rest of the novel. Lina has an intense dislike for Mr. Stalas, as he says crude things that only succeed in frightening the deportee children. Yet despite his rude nature, Lina's mother Elena is kind to Mr. Stalas and frequently brings him food. He reveals later on in the novel that he is Jewish, which likely contributes to his pessimistic attitude, since Jews were one of the main groups targeted during World War II. Mr. Stalas functions as a foil to the little hope that the deportees inspire in each other, and often serves to bring together members of the deportees in retaliation to his flippant remarks. However, he unfortunately also often acts as a rude awakening to the reality of the grim situation of the Baltic genocide. - Character: Miss Grybas. Description: Miss Grybas is a strict teacher from the school that Lina and Jonas attend. She takes charge of engaging the children so that they have something to think about apart from the horror of their situation. Like Elena, she is characterized by her strength and willingness to help others, and refuses to sign a contract condemning herself and other deportees to 25 years of hard labor. - Character: Ona. Description: A young woman who is thrown onto the train car just moments after giving birth. Her newborn child dies on the train, and Ona goes crazy with grief. She attacks an officer who tries to control her in her anguish, and she is promptly shot in the head and left to die in the grass alongside the train tracks. - Character: Janina. Description: A young girl who is deported along with her family. Janina loses her doll, and often pretends that the doll's ghost speaks to her. She, like Jonas, develops scurvy and is only saved at the very last moment by Dr. Samodurov's intervention. Terrified that she and her child will die in the camps, Janina's mother has a moment of panic and nearly strangles her daughter. - Character: Nikolai Kretszky. Description: A blonde NKVD soldier who seems to take pleasure in torturing Lina, Elena, and the other deportees. Under circumstances Lina does not fully understand, Elena manages to strike up a friendship with Kretszky. When Elena dies, Kretszky expresses remorse at her loss, recalling how he felt when he lost his own mother. He ultimately defects from the class and alerts higher-ranking officials in the Soviet Union of the horrors in the camps, bringing relief that, although it does not immediately release the prisoners, at least saves them from imminent death. - Character: Komorov (The Commander). Description: The commander of the NKVD unit that deports the Vilkases. He is the personification of evil in Lina's mind. Komorov shoots Ona, demands that the deportees sign paperwork agreeing to their criminal charges and sentencing them to 25 years of hard labor, and tortures with sleep deprivation those who do not sign. When Lina's talent for drawing is discovered, he demands that she draw a portrait of him. Though Lina longs to draw him as she sees him—with snakes crawling out of his skull—she draws a flattering portrait to save her own life. - Theme: Morality, Integrity, and Sacrifice. Description: Between Shades of Gray takes its title from the complex nuances of morality that Lina, the teenage protagonist and narrator, experiences and must grapple with during her years of imprisonment in the harsh Soviet labor camps of Siberia during World War II. In 1940, Josef Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, annexed Lithuania to make it part of the Soviet Union. Lina and her family are Lithuanians, and shortly after the annexation she, her mother Elena, her ten-year-old brother Jonas, and her father Kostas are deported from their comfortable middle-class lifestyle in Lithuania due to accusations that they hold anti-Soviet sentiments. Men are separated from their families during the deportations, and Elena eventually learns from a solider that Kostas has likely perished in the Krasnoyarsk prison. The circumstances behind the family's deportation, which Lina only learns about later in the novel, illustrate the complexities of morality with which she must struggle. For much of the novel, Lina believes that she and her family were deported because of her father's close relationship with the local university (an institution the Soviets distrusted). But she eventually learns that her father had in fact actively helped targeted individuals of the Soviet regime escape to neighboring nations, and that it was for these actions that he and his family were deported. Lina's father helped others to escape, but at the expense of his and his family's lives. Even more specifically: while Lina, Jonas, and Elena starve in Siberia, and her father languishes in a prison, Lina's cousin and best friend Joana's family safely escaped to Germany through Kostas's help. Lina can't help but find it unbearably unfair that that her own family's kindness leads to their persecution, but Elena's mother teaches Lina and Jonas that it is their duty to help those around them to the best of their ability—even if it means sacrificing their own survival. Throughout the novel, there are many additional instances of complex issues of morality that arise almost constantly for prisoners in the labor camps. Often, characters are faced with the choice of preserving their integrity or preserving their lives. For instance, the NKVD, the secret police under Stalin's Communist regime, demand that Lina, her family, and the rest of the deportees sign documents accepting their status as criminals. Though limited freedom is granted to those who accept the charges, a handful of deportees, such as Lina and her family, refuse to falsely incriminate themselves even if doing so would ease their burden. Further questions of morality and sacrifice are shown in the case of Mrs. Arvydas, the wife of a member of the Lithuanian military, and her son Andrius. Mrs. Arvydas' husband is presumed to be dead, and without his protection, the NKVD threaten to kill Andrius if Mrs. Arvydas does not sleep with them. She and Andrius are thus kept clean and well-fed, much to the resentment of the other starving deportees. Still, despite the Arvydas' relatively comfortable positions in the camp, the other deportees have no wish to subject themselves to such whims of the guards in order to procure food and shelter. Ultimately, through its portrayal of the prison camps and the difficult moral choices that the prisoners must make to balance maintaining their self-worth and managing to physically survive, Between Shades of Gray shows that morality becomes fluid in matters of life and death. - Theme: Strength and Identity. Description: In sending deportees such as Lina's family to the labor camps, the Soviets desire to not only break them physically but also mentally and spiritually – to transform them from resisting Lithuanians (and people of other nationalities) into conforming Soviets. The excruciating work in brutal conditions are obvious means of weakening the deportees' physical strength and spirit, and the deportation to the isolated camps so far from their homes is in itself part of an effort to strip the deportees of their national identities. However, Lina and her fellow deportees from Lithuania resist Soviet assimilation by holding fast to their shared past, and their shared identity as Lithuanians. They share photos and stories of their families, keep holiday traditions alive, and remind one another about who they are and where they have come from. Lina derives strength from the memories of her life in Lithuania, shown throughout the text in italicized flashbacks from her previously comfortable life. Though the memories of warm baths and sumptuous meals are sometimes painful given the cold of the Siberian tundra and meager bread rations, they remind Lina that there is good in the world, and that she may one day return to such happiness. And through those memories and the collective effort of the Lithuanians to remain Lithuanians, the novel shows how maintaining an identity, as an individual and as part of a group, can give a person strength. More broadly, the novel shows how the brutal conditions of the camps also threaten to strip away prisoners' basic humanity by forcing them into constant zero-sum decisions, where they must act to save themselves by disregarding others or else put themselves at risk by helping others. It is an act of resistance, then, when Lina and the other deportees actively attempt to identify with one another and show kindness to those who are weak or ill. Lina's mother, Elena, is one character who is exemplary in her compassion for others, as she regularly deprives herself of food and clothing to assist younger or weaker people, ultimately at the cost of her own life. And yet, the novel presents such actions not just as acts of resistance but as sources of strength. Strength in the novel is ultimately derived through the power of identity with fellow human beings, and so such acts of kindness and unity are personal affirmations of humanity – of a shared humanity beyond even shared nationality – which even the horrors of the labor camp cannot break. - Theme: The Power of Art. Description: Art in the novel is powerful in a variety of ways. Lina is a talented artist, and much of the narrative of Between Shades of Grey is structured around her deep connection to drawing. Lina connects to the world using her art—she can best express herself using images, and understands her world better when she sees it out on the page. And, at the same time, art can speak the truth: as it does when Lina is asked to draw the portrait of an NKVD commander and her artistic vision sees snakes sliding from his skull; or in her caricature of Stalin; or even in the stick map that a man draws to communicate with a relative about where he has been enslaved. The testament to the power of art's truth is clear in the camp guard's reaction to it: Lina knows that if she were to actually draw the NKVD commander with snakes slithering from his skull it would result in her death; just as her father knows her caricature of Stalin, if seen, would as well; and just as the man who drew the stick map was killed by the guards. But art is powerful in the novel not just as a tool of truth-telling—it is also life-affirming, and life-giving. Though Lina knows it is wisest to stop her drawing based on the dangers her own art has exposed her to, and especially after the death of the man who drew the stick map, she cannot. For her, to draw is to live, and she does not want to live a life without art. In the novel, art is the flavor of life, necessary for a life worth living beyond the utilitarian needs of food and water and shelter. Though Lina is able to physically persevere through her Soviet enslavement, it is her connection to art—and what it means to both her and the people around her—that give them something to live for beyond the sake of survival. And finally, as shown in the epilogue of the novel, art both endures and connects: the novel is, in the end, a product of Lina's drawings: She documents her journey through the labor camps using sketches of what she sees and feels, and hopes to have these images passed along to her father to indicate her whereabouts and the fact that she is alive. Ultimately, under circumstances not explained in the narrative, the drawings end up in the soil, dug up forty years later and used as evidence (within the world of the novel) to reveal the otherwise hidden Baltic genocides and to return to the people who suffered that genocide a kind of eternal life in art. - Theme: Genocide. Description: During World War II, extreme atrocities were committed across the globe. Between Shades of Gray is the story of the genocide of the Baltic people of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union, one that is significantly less well known than the genocide of the Jews and other minorities in the Holocaust. Eager to institute Communist rule and reduce dissent in Baltic countries annexed by the Soviet Union during the war, Josef Stalin charged dissidents with crimes against the state and sentenced men, women, children, and the elderly to years in labor camps under inhuman conditions. The mass murder of the Baltic people is still not well known, in large part because, unlike the Nazis in Germany, the Soviet Union continued under Stalin's rule after the end of World War II, and former prisoners faced further punishment if they spoke out about their years in the camps. By writing Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys, the daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, hopes to bring awareness of the plight of the Baltic people during the Second World War—to memorialize their loss but also to capture them as real, living people, and to put them back into the history from which they were swept away. - Theme: Women and Mothers. Description: Though Lina's description of her life in Lithuania depicts traditional gender roles for men and women, such roles are often broken down in the camps. Lina's mother Elena, for example, becomes a matriarch and protector for their group of deportees. Though a homemaker back in Lithuania, she was educated in Moscow as a young woman. This means that she is fluent in Russian as well as Lithuanian, and therefore one of the only deportees who can communicate with the guards. Elena's strength and willingness to stand up to the guards render her an important figure in the community of deportees. Though there are men on their journey and in the camps, all look to Elena for strength and comfort in their difficult times. In the absence of able-bodied men, women in the labor camp generally become the providers of food and resources for the deportees. Mothers' devotion to their children in the novel is portrayed as almost absolute, as Lina's mother gives up her own food (and life) to protect those around her, and Andrius' mother Mrs. Arvydas does anything and everything to try and protect him: first making sure that the NKVD believed he was mentally disabled (the only way they would allow him to survive because his father had been in the Lithuanian military), and then prostituting herself in exchange for his survival. These mothers are willing not only to protect their own children, but extend their maternal instinct to others as well. The novel further portrays the power and influence of women and mothers to be universal, able to cut across even the chasm between Soviet camp guards and their prisoners. For example, Nikolai Kretszky, one of the NKVD guards who tortures the Vilkases most often, breaks down at the loss of his mother in front of Lina, who finds herself comforting the hand that beats her. The respect that children have for their mothers is a love that bonds people across enemy lines. The breakdown of traditional gender norms that view men as strong and women as weak is exemplified in Andrius' admiration and love for Lina. It is Andrius who first tells Lina that she is "Krasivaya," and challenges her to discover the meaning of the Russian word. Lina finally learns it from Kretszky, who uses it to describe Elena: "Beautiful, but strong." The women in the labor camp may no longer be conventionally beautiful because of their lack of food and resources, but their fierce will to live and preserve the lives of others makes them both beautiful and strong. - Climax: Towards the very end of the novel, Lina, Jonas, and the rest of the surviving deportees are facing a winter without adequate food or shelter. Nikolai Kretszky, an NKVD soldier who has spent much of the last year torturing Lina and the deportees, has a change of heart and defects from the camp to notify those who can help of the horrors happening to the Baltic people. A rescue team arrives, including a Dr. Samodurov, who nurses those on the brink of death back to health. - Summary: In June of 1941, fifteen-year-old Lina Vilkas is arrested by the Soviet Secret Police, the NKVD, from her home in Kaunas, Lithuania. She is arrested alongside her mother, Elena, and ten-year-old brother Jonas. Her father Kostas has been arrested earlier, and they don't know where he is. The family is given very little time to pack before they are loaded onto a bus full of other arrested civilians. They are then placed onto trains, where they remain in squalor with very little food for six weeks. Among them are schoolteachers, librarians, stamp collectors, and even a young mother and her newborn child. Lina meets a boy her age on the train named Andrius, with whom she initially has a rocky relationship, though over time they develop feelings for each other. Lina and Jonas find Kostas in another train car, and he encourages them to have strength despite their struggles. They are then separated, and Lina, Jonas, and Elena, along with the rest of their train car, end up in Siberia, where the NKVD attempt to sell them to local villagers as slaves. They are not bought, and are instead brought to a collective Communist labor camp, where they are forced to do backbreaking work while subsisting on only three hundred grams of bread a day. The Vilkases are forced to live in a shack with an Altaian woman named Ulyushka, who is rude and demands rent. Lina is a talented and avid artist, and draws the things she sees every day in the hopes that they will one day make their way to Kostas, so that the family can be reunited once more. In the camp, the NKVD continue to torture the deportees. Mrs. Arvydas, Andrius' mother, is forced to sleep with the guards in exchange for her and Andrius' life. Jonas almost dies from scurvy, and Andrius saves him by stealing a can of tomatoes from the NKVD officers. The NKVD try to force the deportees to sign a document sentencing them to twenty-five years of hard labor for their crimes against the state, but many of the deportees resist. Lina and her family are among them, and they are often punished for their resistance. After several months in the camps, a list is drawn up with the names of deportees to be moved to another location. The Vilkases are on the list, but Andrius and his mother are not. Having expressed their mutual feelings for each other, the Lina and Andrius are sad, but promise to find each other in the future. Lina and the other relocated deportees are put on trucks, and then barges, and after several weeks they arrive in Trofimovsk, in the Arctic Circle, very close to the North Pole. The conditions here are even bleaker than in the previous camp, and the deportees are essentially left to fend for themselves in the wilderness while the NKVD live in relative luxury. The polar night sets in—180 days of darkness—and snowstorms begin in September. People die from the harsh conditions. Lina learns that her family was deported because her parents helped her cousin Joana's family repatriate to Germany. Elena learns from a cruel officer that Kostas has died in prison, and Elena soon becomes sick and dies. Lina is left to take care of herself and Jonas alone. Jonas and other children begin to succumb to scurvy again. Miraculously, a doctor from the Soviet tribunal comes to the camp just in time, and brings medicine and supplies, saving their lives. Lina's story ends when she sees sunlight on the horizon, and she knows they have successfully survived the winter despite the best efforts of the NKVD to have them perish. In an epilogue, construction workers in Kaunas in 1995 find letters and drawings Lina has buried in 1954. She married Andrius, and buried the documents so that people would eventually learn of the Baltic genocide, long hidden by the Soviet Union. It is her hope that her story helps to ensure no such tragedy ever happens again.

- Genre: Short story - Title: Big Two-Hearted River - Point of view: Third person - Setting: The wilderness outside of Seney, Michigan - Character: Nick. Description: Nick, the protagonist of "Big Two Hearted River," is a recurring character in several Hemingway stories, many of which are set before, during, and after World War I. Though never explicitly mentioned in this story, readers can reasonably assume that Nick has just returned from the war and wants to put his traumatic memories behind him—he wants to leave behind his "need for thinking." When nick arrives in Seney, Michigan, where he has been before, he is unsettled to find that the entire town has been burned to the ground. He decides to embark on a solo fishing trip in the wilderness outside town. Nick he doesn't meet or speak with other people while he's hiking and fishing, which serves to highlight his sense of alienation. He does, however, encounter other living creatures as he walks through the woods and is always kind to them, suggesting that Nick's compassion likely makes him especially vulnerable to emotional suffering. He is careful when he picks up a black grasshoppers to examine it, and speaks to it before letting it go, telling it to "fly away somewhere." Later on, he ensures that the brown grasshoppers he plans to use as bait can breathe in the jar he puts them in, and while fishing, he wets his hand before touching a trout so it won't get a fungal attack. He has seen other fishermen who don't take the trouble to do this, and he finds their carelessness irritating. Although the grasshoppers and fish will die, it seems that Nick's time as a soldier has made him particularly sensitive to the pain of other creatures, and he wants to prevent suffering to the best of his ability. All of Nick's actions in this story are marked by careful planning and meticulousness, again hearkening to his implied time as a soldier. He has packed extensively for this camping trip (struggling, as a result, with a very heavy pack that mirrors his emotional burdens). He feels a sense of safety and satisfaction after he methodically completes a task, like setting up camp or accoutering himself to go fishing. His attention to detail gives him a sense of control that he enjoys, especially because he knows he lacks control with regard to his emotions. For instance, he struggles to rein in his disappointment when a big trout escapes while he's fishing, and he is overwhelmed by dread when he looks at the dark swamp by the river. However, by the end, he is optimistic that "there are plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp," suggesting that Nick believes his healing is imminent. - Character: Hopkins. Description: Though Hopkins doesn't appear in the story, Nick thinks about him at his camp by the river while making coffee "the way Hopkins used to." Hopkins was a friend Nick had "a long time ago," and Nick remembers that he was "a serious coffee drinker" and "the most serious man Nick had ever known." He recalls several things about Hopkins: he used to play polo, had made "millions of dollars" on an oil well in Texas, and had a girlfriend whom his friends nicknamed "the Blonde Venus." However, though Hopkins was rich, successful, and well-liked by his friends, he could not escape the tragedy of the war. Hopkins got a telegram and "went away," which suggests that he was drafted to fight in World War I. Before he left, he gave away his pistol to Nick and his camera to another friend, Bill, and the three of them made plans to go fishing together on Hopkins's yacht the following summer. Then, "[t]hey never saw Hopkins again," so he most likely died in the war. Nick drinks the coffee he's made and is amused to find that it is bitter, just like the end to Hopkins's story. But Nick doesn't want to think these sad thoughts about the death and destruction caused by the war, and he is glad that he tired enough to "choke" his mind from thinking more about these things. Nick's memories of Hopkins emphasize the tragic outcomes of the war and also reveal Nick's strategy to avoid dealing with his difficult memories by intentionally exhausting himself and "choking" his mind of all thought. - Theme: The Inevitability of Change. Description: In "Big Two-Hearted River," Nick, the protagonist, is constantly confronted by change. He arrives at the town of Seney, Michigan, on a solitary fishing trip and finds that the town has burned to the ground since he was last there. Seney is deserted, its saloons and houses are completely destroyed, and the fire has affected the landscape and wildlife. These specific changes are bleak and depressing, but Nick also appears to view change in general as unpleasant. Readers may already be familiar with Nick Adams, who is a recurring character in two dozen Hemingway stories. Many of these stories center around World War I and even feature Nick as a soldier. Given this context, readers can reasonably assume that in "Big Two-Hearted River," Nick has recently returned from the war. However, he returns to an unfamiliar home, which is deeply disorienting for him. By taking a nostalgia-fueled fishing trip in the wilderness outside of Seney, Nick attempts to return to a pre-war past, but the story emphasizes the impossibility of this since change is everywhere around him. Nick takes great pleasure in markers of constancy. He seeks out the things he remembers from his past to orient him when the changes around him prove to be too overwhelming. Yet Hemingway suggests that these things, too, are in flux, and that Nick is mistaken when he thinks of them as permanent or unchanging. When he gets to Seney, Nick "expect[s] to find the scattered houses of the town" dotting the hillside, and other landmarks like the Mansion House hotel. Instead, he finds the town to be burned to the ground and completely different from his memories of it: "The thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of Seney ha[ve] left not a trace" and the "stretch of hillside" that was once peppered with houses is now desolate and charred. Seeing this, he walks away from the destruction before him and heads towards the river. Compared to the devastating changes of the town, "The river [is] there." Its very presence is a comfort to Nick because it is unchanged from how he remembers it. Yet, since a river is constantly in motion, it is, in a sense, always changing too. When he gets to the river, Nick watches the trout swimming at the bottom with admiration because they keep themselves "steady in the current." They do not seem to move as the water rushes around them, so, to Nick, they appear to resist change. He "watche[s] them a long time," fascinated by their ability "to hold steady in the fast water," suggesting Nick's own desire to remain still while changes rush past him. However, their "wavering fins" do a lot of work to maintain the illusion of stillness, and the fish "change their positions in quick angles" before they settle into seeming tranquility. So, once again, Nick is mistaken when he thinks of them as static. In searching for some semblance of constancy, Nick is trying to return to his pre-war past. However, reminders of the war crop up all around him, suggesting that the war has profoundly changed the world and that Nick cannot escape this fact. For instance, Seney is completely scorched and obliterated, and even though this vast destruction of the landscape is attributed to a fire, it does look like a warzone. The description of the town makes it seem as if it were bombed out, and there is nothing left of it but the crumbling stone foundations of a hotel and the metal railroad tracks—everything else has vanished in the fire. This dramatic change in the physical landscape of Seney mirrors how the world has been forever changed by World War I. These wartime changes are also reflected in the strange phenomenon of the grasshoppers of Seney that have "turned black by living in the burned-over land." Nick initially assumes that they are a different kind of grasshopper, but on closer inspection he discovers that they are just "ordinary hoppers" that have been transformed by the destruction around them. Though it has been a year since Seney's fire, they are still black, suggesting that destructive events have the capacity to affect lives for a long time. Nick, too, has been changed by the war, and empathizes with these black grasshoppers. He wonders "how long they [will] stay that way," suggesting that he would like them to revert to their previous colorful selves. Perhaps he sees himself in them, and wonders how long it will take for his own marks from the war—his traumatic memories and unmanageable emotions—to heal over and disappear so he can return to his pre-war self. So, while Nick seeks markers of constancy amidst the clear signs of change that surround him, what he really seems to be searching for is his old self that he lost in the war. - Theme: Nature and Control. Description: Nick, the protagonist of "Big Two-Hearted River," has returned from World War I and intends to head to a familiar place he remembers—the wilderness outside the town of Seney, Michigan—so he can begin to collect himself. However, when he reaches Seney, he finds it has completely burned down, and is disconcerted by its unfamiliar, desolated landscape. As Nick makes his way down to the river, the rejuvenating power of nature soothes and revives him. In the story, when nature is predictable and pliable, it is a source of comfort and healing for Nick. However, Hemingway highlights that nature can also be untamed and uncontrollable—like the swamp by the river—and when faced with these aspects of nature, Nick comes close to losing the little control he has over his troubled emotions. When nature is constant and familiar, Nick finds it rejuvenating. Fishing for trout in this region is something he did before the war, and his pleasant memories of fishing connect him to a simpler past. Nick is so familiar with this landscape that "he [does] not need to get a map out. He [knows] where he [is] from the position of the river." He has returned from the war and is being assaulted by changes, so it is a comfort to him to return to a recognizable place where he "[knows] where he [is]." When he gets to the town of Seney and sees that it is "burned over and changed," he thinks that "it [does] not matter. It could not all be burned. He [knows] that." He is proven right when he walks on to the river and reaches the end of the fire line where he sees "sweet fern, growing ankle high […] and clumps of jack pines; a long undulating country […] alive again." The constancy of nature gives him hope—it signifies the beginning of life in spite of the surrounding destruction. Furthermore, Nick finds comfort in taming the landscape around him by turning it into a campsite. Though he is floundering emotionally after returning from the war, he feels an empowering sense of control as he goes about these tasks with precision and meticulousness. For instance, he takes a great amount of care just to lay his bed out when he is making camp: "Between two jack pines, the ground was quite level. He took the ax out of the pack and chopped out two projecting roots. That leveled a piece of ground large enough to sleep on. He smoothed out the sandy soil with his hand and pulled all the sweet fern bushes by their roots. […] He smoothed the uprooted earth. He did not want anything making lumps under the blankets. When he had the ground smooth, he spread his three blankets." Nick gets a deep sense of satisfaction from carving a spot out for himself in the wilderness, and he does this with great thoroughness. He is pleased when he accomplishes this: "Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent. […] Now things were done. […] He had made his camp. He was settled. Nothing could touch him." Nick feels powerful and capable after asserting control over the landscape, and this also gives him a sense of safety. However, nature in this story does not always make Nick feel safe. When confronted with aspects of nature that are uncontrollable, Nick feels threatened and struggles to rein in his emotions. For instance, when Nick hooks a very large trout in the river, it breaks the line and escapes. Losing this big fish to the depths of the river fills Nick with a staggering sense of disappointment because he wasn't able to assert his control over it. This causes him to come close to losing control over himself: "He felt, vaguely, a little sick, as though it would be better to sit down." In the story, the murky and uncontrollable aspects of nature are most powerfully represented by the swamp by the river that fills Nick with dread. He sees it as a dark place "where the sun [does] not come through," which is also hard to enter because the cedar trees grow together so thick and low that the swamp "look[s] solid." As he looks at it, he comes close to panicking at the thought of entering it: Nick "[does] not want to go in there now. […] He [does] not want it. He [does] not want to go any further down the stream today." When he thinks of fishing in the swamp, "He [feels] a reaction against deep wading with the water deepening up under his armpits, to hook big trout in places impossible to land them. […] In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it." He thinks that he will have no control when he fishes in the swamp, and this—combined with the low-growing trees, deep water, and darkness—fills him with fear. The swamp seems to symbolize the uncontrollable darkness and discomfort of Nick's thoughts, which is why he feels such terror at the idea of entering it and perhaps losing control of his tenuous grasp over himself. At the end of the story, however, Nick optimistically thinks that there are "plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp," implying that though he isn't yet ready for this adventure, he might be emotionally stronger later and take it on after some recuperation by the river. - Theme: Physical vs. Emotional Suffering. Description: In "Big Two-Hearted River," Nick arrives in the burned-down town of Seney, Michigan, on a hot day, ready for a solo camping trip. He walks uphill to set up camp the river, carrying not only a very heavy pack but also unpleasant memories and emotions associated with World War I, from which he has just returned. While Nick faces both physical and mental suffering in the story, he seems to prefer physical discomfort and even courts it as a means to distract himself from his emotional wounds, which are harder for him to face. Thus, Hemingway suggests that while physical pain is uncomfortable, it is ultimately a person's emotional wounds that cause the most suffering. Nick displays a wariness with emotions, suggesting that his mental scars are so deep and unmanageable that he doesn't intend to face them. For instance, he sees a kingfisher fly over the river, and a big trout leap out of the water right after. The trout manages to get safely back underwater without getting eaten by the bird, but when Nick sees this, his "heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling." The "old feeling" could be apprehension at the danger the trout put itself in, or joy that it escaped—but whatever it might be, it seems like Nick is wary of any strong "feeling." Also, it is an "old" feeling, implying that Nick hasn't felt these emotions recently, most likely because he is trying not to. He immediately turns and looks away from the trout, and when his feelings are under control again, he walks away from the river. Nick similarly avoids unpleasant emotions later in the story when he thinks about his friend Hopkins, who "went away when the telegram came" and whom he never saw again. Though not explicitly spelled out, Hopkins has most likely died in the war—World War I, the same war from which Nick has returned. At his camp by the river, Nick makes coffee like Hopkins used to, and laughs when the coffee turns out to be bitter because it matches the sad end to Hopkins's story. Nick realizes then that his "mind [is] starting to work. He [knows] he [can] choke it down because he [is] tired enough." His exhaustion comes as welcome relief to Nick because he doesn't want to deal with these difficult memories. Just like extreme fatigue helps Nick avoid his challenging emotions, so do physically challenging situations. For this reason, Nick seeks them out. The landscape of the story is harsh at the story's opening, and Nick struggles with his heavy pack through the burned countryside, the heat, and the uphill climb. He tries to balance out its weight by putting a strap across his forehead, but "Still it [is] too heavy. It [is] much too heavy." As he carries this pack uphill, "His muscles [ache] and the day [is] hot, but Nick [feels] happy. He [feels] he [has] left everything behind, the need for thinking […]." The discomfort of his physical struggle distracts Nick from the need to think, and this makes him happy. Though the environment softens as the story progresses, Nick seems to intentionally put himself in situations where he must encounter physical discomfort so it can distract him from his thoughts. Later, he is walking along the "shadeless pine plain" and he is "tired and very hot." Though he can head left towards the river at any moment to set up camp and rest, he keeps walking to the north on the plain to see how far upstream he can go in a day. He delays getting to the river so that he is famished and exhausted when he does finally reach it, and has no energy left for thinking. When Nick is focused on his bodily discomforts—exhaustion, hunger, aching muscles—he manages to successfully "choke" down his thoughts, which is why he pushes his body to endure physical suffering. He is pleased when he finally eats a big dinner after being hungry all day and thinks of it as "a very fine experience." The solutions to physical discomfort are simple and often pleasurable, unlike the more complicated problems of the mind. - Climax: Nick feels anxious about entering the swamp to fish for trout but decides that he doesn't have to hurry because he has plenty of time to make his way in there. - Summary: In Part I, a train drops Nick off at the station in the town of Seney, Michigan, and then curves around one of the burned hills and disappears. Nick sits on his pack and bedding and looks around him. Seney has been burned to the ground and there is no sign of the familiar landmarks Nick is used to seeing—the 13 saloons, the hotel, and the scattered houses on the hillside are all gone. Nick walks over to the river, which is still there, the way he remembers it. He watches the trout in the river, which seem unmoving despite the rapid current around them. Nick is happy as he walks back to pick up his pack, thinking that although Seney is destroyed, the country can't all be burned in the fire. He adjusts the heavy pack on his back and takes the road that leads into the wilderness by the river, climbing the hill that separates the railroad tracks from the plain dotted with pine trees. Nick struggles uphill—his pack is very heavy, the day is hot. Yet he is happy because he feels he has left behind many of his needs, including the need to think. A black grasshopper crawls up Nick's sock while he takes a cigarette break, and he realizes he has seen some of these creatures around as he hiked. He examines it carefully and sees that it is just an ordinary grasshopper that has turned black from living in a burned, ash-ridden environment. Even though it has been a year since the fire, the insect is still black, and Nick wonders how long it will stay that way. He speaks to it, telling it to fly away. He walks on and comes to the fire line, past which the land seems alive again, with ferns underfoot and islands of pine trees on the plain. Nick is very tired and could turn toward the river to set up camp at any point, but he wants to see how far he can go in a day. He takes a nap under some pine trees and wakes up when it is close to sunset. He begins to make his way to the river, which is about a mile away. When he reaches it, he sees the trout jumping out of the water to catch insects, and it looks to him like it is raining. Nick meticulously sets up camp between two pines, and is pleased with the end result. He feels a comforting sense of accomplishment, and also feels safe. He then realizes he is famished and warms up some canned food for dinner. He enjoys it tremendously when it is ready. While making coffee, he thinks about his friend Hopkins, whom he knew some time ago, and with whom he used to argue about the best way to make coffee. Hopkins was well-liked and rich. He went away when a telegram came for him, and Nick never saw him again. Nick thinks that the end to Hopkins's story is bitter just like the coffee. He feels his mind starting to work again, but knows that his exhaustion will put a stop to his thoughts. The night is quiet, and so is the swamp. He goes into his tent and falls asleep. Part II begins the next morning, when Nick is woken up by the sun warming up the tent. He crawls out and looks around him at the meadow, the river, and the swamp with its many trees. Nick is too excited to eat breakfast, but knows that he must. While the water for his coffee is warming on the fire, he catches brown grasshoppers to use as bait for fishing. He knows they will not hop away in the cold morning dew, but that they will be very hard to catch once the sun warms them. He puts them in a jar and corks it with pine bark, making sure to leave an air passage so they can breathe. When he goes to wash his hands in the river, he is excited to be close to it. After making and eating his breakfast of buckwheat flapjacks, he packs some onion sandwiches for lunch and then tidies up his camp. Nick then assembles his old fly rod that he's had for many years, and heads to the stream with it and his other paraphernalia: the jar of grasshoppers hanging from his neck, his landing net hooked to his belt, and an old flour sack strapped to his shoulders. He feels prepared and happy. When he steps into the water, it is very cold. The first trout he catches is too small. Nick wets his hand before he releases it back into the water because he knows that trout can get a fatal fungal infection if touched with a dry hand. Nick moves into deeper water because he wants to catch bigger trout. This time, he feels a pull on the line and struggles to reel it in—he sees that he has hooked a huge trout when it leaps out of the water. It is the biggest one Nick has ever seen, but it breaks the line and escapes. Nick feels shaky and a little sick with disappointment. He climbs out of the water and smokes a cigarette, watching the river until he feels all right again. He enters the water where it is not too deep, and fishes by an upturned elm. He lands a big trout this time and reels it in successfully. He puts the fish in the flour sack with the bottom of the sack dangling in the water so the fish can stay alive. It is getting hot, and Nick moves downstream. He puts a grasshopper on the hook and sends the bait into a hollow log on the stream, and immediately feels a bite. He sees the trout shaking its head to try and get the hook out, and he pulls it in with some effort. He puts this fish in the sack too. Nick sits on the hollow log and eats his lunch. He watches the river where it narrows and heads into the swamp. There are many trees in the swamp with low-growing branches, and it looks impenetrable. Nick does not feel like going into the darkness of the swamp. The water would be deep enough to reach his armpits, and it would be impossible to successfully catch trout there. He does not want to go further down the river today. Nick breaks the necks of the fish he has caught by whacking them on the log. He then cleans them and discards the innards on the shore for the minks to find. He washes the fish in the river, and then heads ashore to his camp. He turns and looks back at the river and thinks that he has "plenty of days coming" to fish in the swamp.

- Genre: Novella, historical fiction. - Title: Billy Budd - Point of view: The story is recounted in the first-person voice of an anonymous narrator, but one who often has the knowledge of an omniscient narrator. - Setting: Summer of 1797, aboard the Indomitable at sea in the Mediterranean - Character: Billy Budd. Description: Billy is the protagonist of the novella and a perfect example of the type of person the narrator calls the Handsome Sailor. His beautiful appearance reflects his upstanding character and because of this he earns the admiration of almost all of those he serves with aboard both the Rights-of-Man and the Indomitable. Billy is an innocent, child-like young man, whom the narrator often compares to Adam before the fall of man. His innocent nature ends up being a liability aboard the Indomitable, though, as he is unable to understand or even notice the wickedness of Claggart, who irrationally hates Billy. His death is represented as a tragic martyrdom by the narrator, and although the only official record of his death condemns him as a criminal, he is remembered more sympathetically in the sailors' ballad with which Melville's story ends, "Billy in the Darbies." - Character: Captain Vere. Description: The valiant, intellectual captain of the Indomitable, a bachelor of about 40 years of age. He has a strong sense of duty and is conflicted when Billy kills Claggart. His personal conscience tells him not to punish Billy, who he knows is an innocent, good soul. However, he is bound to obey maritime law and fears a possible mutiny, so he ultimately argues to the ship's drumhead court that Billy should be executed. - Character: John Claggart. Description: The antagonist of the novella and the Indomitable's master-at-arms, Claggart is a deceptively wicked character. He has an attractive appearance (except for a protruding chin) and is able to fit in with society at most times, which hides his inner anger and sinister nature. For reasons unknown, he develops a hatred of Billy and harasses him onboard. He falsely accuses Billy of plotting mutiny against Captain Vere and is accidentally killed by Billy in the ensuing meeting between Vere, Billy and him. - Character: The Dansker. Description: An old, wise sailor on the Indomitable, who had fought valiantly under Admiral Nelson. His years of experience have given him wisdom, and Billy seeks advice from him several times. He tells Billy to beware of Claggart, who is "down on" Billy, but Billy doesn't believe the Dansker. The Dansker does not otherwise intervene. - Character: The Surgeon. Description: The doctor of the Indomitable, who checks Claggart after he is struck by Billy and declares him dead. He also talks with the purser after Billy's death, refusing to see Billy's remarkable stillness while being hanged as an indication of his will power, which does not fall under the realm of scientific explanation. - Theme: Natural Character and Appearance. Description: Billy Budd begins with a lengthy description of the type of person known as the "handsome sailor" and the story's narrator often takes time away from the story to describe characters like Captain Vere or Claggart at length. As this suggests, the narrator of the story tends to see character as innate: people are either fundamentally good and innocent (like Billy Budd) or fundamentally sinister and bad, like Claggart. Thus, it is important for the narrator to describe characters fully before following them in the main story. Moreover, people's natural character in the story is closely connected to their physical appearance. "Handsome sailors" are admired both for their good looks and for their virtue. Billy Budd's handsome appearance signals to other sailors his good moral nature. The crew of the Indomitable (and Captain Vere) find it hard to believe that Billy would ever plan a mutiny largely because of his beauty, which they associate with innocence and upstanding morality. And when the narrator describes Claggart, the character's physical features are specifically related to aspects of his personality. The narrator says that Claggart's brow was the sort "associated with more than average intellect." But despite the narrator's concern for getting to the bottom of character's inner natures, some aspects of characters remain unknown. We never know Billy Budd's origins for certain, for example, while Claggart's motivations remain fundamentally a mystery.The story also offers examples of when behavior does not match one's character, and when physical appearance contrasts with inner nature. Billy Budd's sudden outburst when he strikes Claggart seems very out of line with his gentle demeanor. And his inability to respond to Claggart's accusations when Captain Vere questions him might seem to suggest guilt, but in Billy's case it is simply a product of nervousness. (Fortunately for Billy, Captain Vere recognizes his stuttering as such, and does not interpret it as an outward sign of guilt.) And Claggart deliberately dissembles his appearance to Captain Vere when he accuses Billy of mutiny. He attempts to appear to the captain as a concerned, dutiful member of the ship, while also claiming that Billy's good behavior hides his true, disloyal nature. But it is Claggart, not Billy, whose outward appearance and behavior does not match his true character. Thus, even while narrator insists on a close relationship between physical appearance and the innate moral qualities of a person, the story's events leave one wondering whether physical appearance is really a good indicator of someone's character. And in creating this question Billy Budd reveals a deeper level of exploration of the nature of appearances: the reliability of the narrator. While the narrator continues to espouse the belief in the connection between nature and appearance, the story continually calls such connections into question, suggesting that perhaps Melville as author does not actually agree with his narrator, and therefore further suggesting that the things that the narrator asserts are true, or are simple, may in fact be not true, or not simple. This is not to say that the narrator is purposefully lying, but rather that the narrator may be fallible and that his interpretation of the story may be affected by his blindnesses, including his faith in the connection between nature and appearance. - Theme: Duty, Loyalty, and Camaraderie. Description: Within the naval world of the story, almost nothing is more important than the camaraderie among sailors on the same ship and their loyalty to their captain. The close bonds between fellow sailors can be seen in the example of the handsome sailor that the narrator describes early in the story (surrounded by his proud, admiring comrades), as well as the reluctance with which the captain of the Rights-of-Man lets Billy go. In addition to this camaraderie between sailors, each individual sailor also has a duty to the ship's captain, which ultimately stands in for a duty to the king. Every sailor has his own individual duties, depending on where in the boat he serves, but all these individual duties are part of a larger sense of loyalty to one's ship and captain.In this naval culture, though, the specter of mutiny looms large. The story of Billy Budd takes place just after a period of time when the British navy had experienced a high number of mutinies, including the large-scale Nore Mutiny. Captain Vere is so careful not to have any kind of disloyal mutiny happen on his ship that he doesn't even permit Claggart to name the Nore Mutiny when he is accusing Billy of plotting against the captain. From the captain's perspective, mutiny is almost contagious: even a mere mention of the idea risks spreading disloyalty among the loyal comrades of his ship.The line between loyalty and disloyalty is not always so clear, though. Claggart's accusations against Billy and Billy's trial blur this distinction. The reader knows that Claggart is being disloyal, lying to the captain and spreading false rumors, but Claggart makes his accusations seem as if they are arising from his loyalty to Captain Vere. (And this is how he is remembered in the naval chronicle story about Billy and him.) Billy is loyal to Captain Vere, but his act of striking Claggart is in contradiction of his duty as a sailor. In pronouncing judgment on Billy, Captain Vere is also forced to make a difficult decision involving loyalty and duty. Condemning Billy to death is, in a sense, turning his back on his comrade, the innocent sailor of whom he is quite fond. However, it is his duty as captain to follow the law. Moreover, in case a prolonged trial might lead to any possibility of insurrection on the ship, he has to make a quick decision that will ensure the safe functioning of his vessel. Thus, while the concepts of duty and loyalty become somewhat confused in the story, in the end Captain Vere makes a decision that respects his ultimate duty—to his ship and to the king—by following the law and executing Billy. But in doing so, is he in some sense being disloyal to his comrade? - Theme: Justice. Description: Closely related to duty in the story is the idea of justice. While the two are very similar, duty and loyalty tend to have more to do with interpersonal relationships. They are how the community of sailors aboard the Indomitable hold each other accountable. Justice, on the other hand, is a more abstract concept, having to do with larger issues of right and wrong. Because the central event of the story is the false accusation of Billy Budd and his subsequent trial, one of the main questions in the story is whether justice is served to Billy. There is even some ambiguity in the story regarding who is fit to judge Billy. Captain Vere insists on assembling a drumhead court onboard the ship to have a trial immediately, even though others agree that it might be better to wait and have an admiral decide Billy's fate.In deciding the case, Captain Vere and his drumhead court have a number of aspects of the situation they can choose to consider or disregard. First, there is the personal conscience of those judging Billy, who are quite fond of him. There is also Billy's generally good nature and upstanding moral character. If striking Claggart was an unusual aberration in Billy's behavior, should Vere punish an ultimately good man? Most important, though, for Vere and his court, is the law itself and Billy's action. Regardless of Billy's intentions, his character, and other sailor's affection for him, he killed another sailor and under naval law has earned the punishment of death. But Vere's judgment is also motivated by practical considerations. He fears that if news of Billy's possible plot spreads or if Billy's trial is dragged on, dissent may spread among his sailors, potentially leading to a mutiny. He therefore wants to finish Billy's trial as quickly as possible, and this may be a motivating factor in the speed with which he decides that the court should not consider the circumstances and motives behind Billy's striking Claggart, but only "the blow's consequence, which consequence justly is to be deemed not otherwise than as the striker's deed." As this quotation makes clear, Vere adopts an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth idea of justice: for killing Claggart, Billy now deserves to be killed. But is this a just punishment? Earlier in the story, the narrator informs us that those involved with the Nore Mutiny were able to absolve their wrongs by serving valiantly afterwards. Why should Billy not get a chance to redeem himself with better future behavior? Part of the reason for his sentence may be to deter any other sailors from considering mutiny. After all, Billy Budd's good behavior was largely the result of his witnessing a sailor being harshly punished for bad behavior. Vere's sentencing of Billy might not be just, but it is practical, and ensures the continued well-being of his ship. Nonetheless, in attempting to be an effective, practical captain, Vere neglects broader questions of right and wrong; Melville leaves these questions open-ended, for the reader to decide. - Theme: Individual vs. Society. Description: The story's questions of duty and justice often center around a conflict between an individual and society. In deciding Billy's fate, for example, Captain Vere must decide between his own personal admiration of Billy's character and what may be best for the ship's community and the navy as a whole, as enshrined in naval law. And the entire story is set in the context of the royal navy, where sailors have all devoted their individual lives to serving the interests of their country. Throughout Billy Budd, Melville explores how individuals are often subsumed by the larger interests of society. Many of the sailors aboard the Indomitable are conscripted—that is, taken into service by force. This curtailment of individual rights is encapsulated symbolically when Billy is forced to leave his merchant ship, the Rights-of-Man, in order to join the Indomitable (in some editions, called the Bellipotent). The indomitable power of society—or, in the case of the Bellipotent (which literally means powerful in war), of war—is able to trump the rights of individual people. Captain Vere's main concern is in putting down any hint of mutiny, which means silencing individual, dissenting voices, in favor of obedience to the captain and the navy. Billy Budd himself must also choose between his own personal honor and the well-being of the Indomitable, when he is conflicted over whether to alert the captain to a possible mutiny. Doing so would be good for the community of the ship, but would compromise Billy's individual honor, making him a tattletale. Billy ends up choosing his own individuality in this case, as he remains silent, but by contrast Captain Vere sides with society, adhering strictly to the law and not letting his own conscience guide him in ordering for Billy's execution. Billy's death makes the loss of individuality considered by Melville more than a merely abstract notion: as an individual, Billy literally loses his life because the interests of society (his ship, the navy, and ultimately Great Britain) are deemed more important. Because of the tragic sympathy with which Billy's death is portrayed, Melville's story can be seen as lamenting this prioritizing of society and as criticizing the social structures that curb individuality. However, the Indomitable is a successful ship; it is also possible to read the story as showing the tragic, but necessary, sacrifice of individuals for larger purposes. - Theme: The Present vs. the Past. Description: The narrator of Billy Budd often contrasts the present time of his story with the glorious past—for example, as he admiringly describes the valiant service of Admiral Nelson and laments the introduction of guns and ironsides to naval combat. For the narrator, earlier forms of naval combat were more poetic and honorable. In his own time, the master-at-arms does not even instruct sailors in the use of weapons anymore (since swords are no longer used), but simply acts as "a sort of chief of police" on the lower decks. There is a general sense of decline throughout the story, an idea that the past was better than the present. Thus, when Billy Budd is praised, such praise is often in the form of comparisons to ancient things, whether Greek statues or even Adam, the first man. Closely related to the contrast between the present and the past is that between the young and the old, which the story also explores. The Dansker, for example, is admired by both Billy and the narrator for his wisdom, gained through many years of experience, in contrast to Billy's innocence and naïveté. Having served under Admiral Nelson, the Dansker is a vestige of an earlier, more valiant era in seafaring. In the narrator's conception of the world, characters are often praiseworthy precisely because of some association with the past, whether because they participated in it (like the Dansker), or, in Billy's case, because his innocence has kept him unaware of the declined state of the contemporary world. - Theme: Storytelling, Rumor, and Truth. Description: The clash between false rumor and truth is central to the plot of Billy Budd. The story turns on the false rumors that Claggart makes up and reports to Captain Vere, while Vere must decide between the truthfulness of Claggart's and Billy's stories. The distinction between truth and rumor is thus a matter of life or death for both Claggart and Billy. Moreover, the very story of Billy's tragic death is caught between these two categories. The naval chronicle that reports his death has authority and supposedly preserves the truth of the situation for posterity. However, the reader knows that the naval chronicle, which relates Claggart's version of the story, actually ends up reporting nothing more than a false rumor. By contrast, the sailors' ballad about Billy Budd, which sympathetically describes his final moments, can be seen as closer to the truth, even though such seafaring songs are usually less truthful and trustworthy than media like the naval chronicle.Even Melville's story itself plays with this tension between true and false stories. The narrator constantly draws attention to himself as telling the story, referring to himself with personal pronouns and addressing the reader directly. He calls attention to his frequent digressions from the main narrative of his story, as well as to his ability to fabricate and make things up. He says it would be easy, for example, to make up an incident explaining the malice Claggart had toward Billy Budd, though there was no such incident. In these moments, the narrator insists on his trustworthiness, but this actually has the effect of making the reader skeptical and more aware of the narrator's ability to stray from the truth throughout the tale. Moreover, he acknowledges the limits of his knowledge as a narrator, when he admits that he can only imagine how Captain Vere informed Billy of his death sentence. The entire story of Billy Budd thus comes to resemble the other stories told within it. Like other sailors' yarns, it hangs somewhere in the border between rumor and truth.Further, the narrator asserts a number of times that his tale of Billy Budd is a true story, an actual event. This assertion has the affect of separating the narrator from Melville, the author. Melville wrote Billy Budd, a fiction. But the narrator is telling a true story about a man named Billy Budd. The narrator, then, is a part of the world created by Melville, and the narrator exists at the same level as Billy, Claggart, Vere, and all the other characters. The narrator, then, is just as fallible as those other characters. And just as people may disagree about what happened even though they witnessed the same events, the narrator's story of Billy Budd should be seen not necessarily as the version of what happened, but as a version. - Climax: After being falsely accused of plotting mutiny, Billy hits Claggart, unintentionally killing him. - Summary: The narrator describes Billy Budd, a handsome, good-natured young sailor who is taken from his merchant ship, the Rights-of-Man, into service on a British Royal Navy warship, the Indomitable (in some editions, the Bellipotent). The captain of the Rights-of-Man, Captain Graveling, tells Lieutenant Ratcliffe of the Indomitable, who has selected Billy for naval service, that he is losing his best sailor. All the other sailors love Billy and would do anything for him. Before following Billy's adjustment to life on his new ship, the narrator describes Billy at greater length. Billy is innocent and naïve, and the narrator compares him to Adam in the Garden of Eden. He has "masculine beauty" and only one flaw: a tendency to stutter when nervous. The narrator's main story takes place in the summer of 1797, soon after a number of mutinies have beset the British navy, including the infamous Nore Mutiny. On the Indomitable, though, there was no hint of mutiny, as everyone obeys and respects the intellectual, brave captain, Captain Vere. The narrator describes the ship's master-at-arms, a man of uncertain origin named John Claggart. Aboard the Indomitable, Billy is widely admired, but often finds himself in minor trouble. He asks an older sailor, the Dansker, for advice, and he tells Billy that Claggart "is down on" Billy. Billy is confused, though, as Claggart always treats him politely. Billy is unable to see the signs of Claggart's inner dislike of him. One day, for example, Billy spills a bowl of soup in the mess hall and Claggart sarcastically congratulates him, "Handsomely done, my lad!" but Billy does not grasp the sarcasm. The narrator is unable to explain the reason for Claggart's hatred of Billy, but suggests that he was possibly envious both of Billy's handsome appearance and good moral nature. One night, an after-guardsman wakes Billy up, wanting to speak with him in secret. He asks Billy for help and offers him two guineas. Unsure exactly what is being asked of him, Billy refuses the money. He is confused by the incident and again asks the Dansker for advice. The Dansker sees this event as confirmation that Claggart is against Billy, but Billy doesn't want to believe this, thinking that Claggart is fond of him. Meanwhile, Claggart's hatred of Billy grows. When the Indomitable is separated from the rest of its fleet after pursuing an enemy vessel, Claggart goes to Captain Vere and tells him that he suspects Billy Budd of plotting mutiny. Captain Vere is inclined not to believe Claggart, as he admires Billy's good behavior and handsome demeanor. He sends for Billy so that he can get to the bottom of the matter. Captain Vere, Claggart, and Billy meet in the captain's cabin. Claggart repeats his accusation, and Billy is so stunned that he is unable to speak. He tries to speak and gesture violently, but his stutter stops him, and he ends up striking Claggart in the head. Claggart drops to the floor, dead. Captain Vere assembles a drumhead court and puts Billy on trial, hoping to resolve the matter quickly and privately, in case widespread news of Billy's deed might cause dissent and the beginnings of mutiny on the ship. Captain Vere and his court are troubled and conflicted, forced to decide between maritime law, which would call for Billy's execution, and their personal moral scruples and fondness for Billy. The court interrogates Billy and he tells them that he did kill Claggart, but not intentionally, and that Claggart was lying: he was not plotting mutiny. Captain Vere and the others believe Billy, who is taken away from the room so that the court can reach its verdict. Captain Vere insists that, although the court may have personal moral feelings in favor of Billy, they must make a decision based solely on the law and on Billy's actions. The court ultimately sentences Billy to execution. The ship's chaplain visits Billy the night before his execution, but can scarcely say anything helpful, as Billy seems at peace with his fate and entirely innocent. The next morning, the crew of the Indomitable is called to deck to witness the execution and Billy is hanged. His body hangs perfectly still and is illuminated by the morning sunlight, as if in a "mystical vision." Days later, the ship's surgeon and purser debate whether the stillness of Billy's body during execution is proof of Billy's exceptional will power. Regardless, after Billy's death the captain orders everyone to return to work. The narrator apologizes that he cannot offer a nice or symmetrical ending to his story, as is found in fictional tales, because he is giving a true account of actual events. He tells of Captain Vere's later death in combat. Just before dying, Captain Vere says his final words: "Billy Budd, Billy Budd." The narrator says that the only record of Billy's death was in a naval chronicle, which wrongly reported the story, claiming that Claggart had alerted the captain to the evil plotting of Billy, who had then cruelly stabbed Claggart to death. Finally, the narrator describes how the sailors of the Indomitable remembered Billy favorably, and memorialized him in a song that became a well-known ballad, "Billy in the Darbies." The narrator ends his story with the text of the ballad, which sympathetically narrates Billy's final moments.

- Genre: - Title: Bless Me, Ultima - Point of view: First person limited, from Antonio's perspective - Setting: Guadalupe, New Mexico - Character: Antonio Juan Márez. Description: The protagonist and narrator of the novel, a young Chicano boy growing up in Guadalupe, New Mexico. Antonio (or Tony) has a great desire for knowledge and wrestles with many difficult questions about life and religion. The novel follows his experiences facing tribulations and growing up, and also his relationship with Ultima. Tony sees death, has religious experiences, goes to school, and must choose between the conflicting dreams of his parents. The story is essentially Antonio building his own identity from life experiences, the cultures he comes from, and the beliefs he is exposed to. - Character: Ultima. Description: A kind, elderly curandera (healing-woman) who comes to live with the Márez family. Ultima has strange powers and shares a deep connection with the earth. She befriends Antonio and becomes his mentor and guide. Ultima symbolizes the mysterious powers of the indigenous peoples as well as the spirit of the land itself, although she is misunderstood by many to be an evil witch. Her owl acts as a protector and is also the embodiment of her soul, so she dies when it does. - Character: Gabriel Márez. Description: Antonio's father, a former vaquero (cowboy) of the llano. Gabriel prizes freedom above all else, and is often bitter against the town and his wife for taking him from the llano. He drinks whiskey, especially when dreaming of moving to California, but he is also a strong and level-headed presence in the face of danger. - Character: Tenorio Trementina. Description: The antagonist of the novel, Tenorio owns a saloon in El Puerto. It is implied that he practices witchcraft, and his daughters are brujas (witches). When Ultima turns their own curse against them he vows to kill her. He has no moral qualms and seems to thrive on his own hatred. He kills Narciso and Ultima's owl, but is finally shot by Pedro Luna. - Character: Florence. Description: One of Antonio's friends from town, a blond boy who doesn't believe in God. Florence perceptively points out the flaws in Catholic doctrine, and is bitter against God (or the lack thereof) for his harsh life and the evils of the world. He drowns before Antonio can show him the golden carp. - Theme: Growing Up. Description: The story of Bless Me, Ultima is built around Antonio's early coming-of-age experiences. The book is an example of "bildungsroman," or a tale of the growth of a character, though Antonio has to deal with issues that most six-year-olds don't have to, like magic, existential religious doubts, and murder. His largest childhood influence is his parents, and each parent has a specific dream for his life path; his mother, a Luna, wants Tony to become a farmer and a Catholic priest, while his father, a Márez, wants him to be a vaquero (cowboy) of the llano or help him move to California. Beginning with this inner conflict, much of the book deals with Antonio deciding what kind of adult he wants to be.There is also a recurring theme that growing up means a loss of innocence, or that adulthood is something inherently sinful. Antonio's mother wants him to remain a child forever, and even Ultima says "life is filled with sadness when a boy grows to be a man." His many painful experiences certainly destroy his innocence in many ways, but by the end of the novel Tony is wise beyond his years. - Theme: Punishment and Forgiveness. Description: Much of the plot is powered by different characters' desires for revenge and punishment. Chávez wants revenge against Lupito, Tenorio wants revenge against Ultima and Narciso, and even Ultima wants to punish Tenorio for tampering with fate. It seems that the gods also have a similar human need for punishment – at first it is only the Christian God with his horribly eternal Hell, but even the golden carp plans to drown all the sinners someday. The briefly-mentioned atomic bomb also represents a real-life cataclysmic punishment that echoes the apocalypses of the gods.In the end, Ultima and the Virgin of Guadalupe are the only compromising, forgiving alternatives. The Virgin Mary is a Christian symbol, but Antonio sees her as a mother-figure willing to listen and forgive, unlike the strict male gods. Ultima is also a mother-figure, and though she punishes Tenorio for his crimes, she also asks that he be forgiven, and accepts her own death to balance out his. - Theme: Knowledge. Description: The story of Antonio's coming of age is intertwined with his quest for knowledge. He is always asking questions, and is most excited about Communion because it will mean gaining knowledge of God. Ultima is a symbol of a different, mysterious kind of knowledge, as she knows people's fates, the ways of the earth, and healing herbs and magic spells.Throughout the book knowledge is also associated with growing up and losing innocence. Florence points out that Eve's sin in the Garden of Eden was wanting to gain knowledge of Good and Evil, and the atomic bomb is condemned as humans competing with God's knowledge. Tony's dreams and experiences with Rosie's brothel also imply that when he learns certain things he will lose his innocence and become a man. - Theme: Language and Culture. Description: Bless Me, Ultima is an example of Chicano literature, and one of Anaya's primary goal in writing it was to fashion a cultural identity for himself and his community. Much of Antonio's experience is based on a meeting of cultures and a search for identity among the Spanish, Native American, and English-American societies. Ultima is a symbol of indigenous influences and the supernatural, pre-Christian world, while Antonio's school represents the English-speaking society. The Luna and Márez sides of his family are also a meeting of cultures – Antonio's father is a restless vaquero of the llano, while the Lunas are quiet farmers and Catholics. Tony's religious struggle is also connected to his culture, as he vacillates between Spanish Catholicism and the golden carp of the indigenous people.The format of the novel echoes this clash of cultures as well, as it is written in English with many Spanish words interspersed, and some characters (especially Antonio/Tony) are referred to by both Spanish and English names. When Antonio resolves at the end of the novel to create a new set of beliefs and dreams, it is clear that Bless Me, Ultima itself represents a fulfillment of that intention. The reading experience mirrors Anaya's own cultural experience, and the novel becomes a tale of Chicano identity. - Theme: Christianity vs. the Supernatural. Description: Bless Me, Ultima is written in the magical realist style, where fantastical elements are treated as a part of daily life. Ultima's powers, the brujas (witches), and the golden carp all create a dreamlike feeling that emphasizes the blend of new and ancient cultures. Only Christianity seems free from the supernatural, which plays a major role in Antonio's doubts. Catholicism condemns magic as evil, but the priests fail at stopping Tenorio's curses, and Antonio's vision of the golden carp is contrasted with his anticlimactic first communion. The divide is most present in Tony's interior struggles. His mother wants him to be a priest, and throughout the novel Tony says blessings for Lupito, Narciso, and Florence, but at the same time he dreams prophetic dreams and is a part of some of Ultima's spells.One of Antonio's biggest revelations at the novel's end is that it does not have to be "Christianity versus the supernatural" at all, but that he can take elements of Catholicism and indigenous myths and make a new set of beliefs for himself. This new Chicano myth for Antonio is based more on the forgiveness of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Ultima's healing powers. - Climax: Tenorio kills Ultima's owl and then is shot - Summary: Antonio Márez is a six-year-old Chicano boy living in Guadalupe, New Mexico in the 1940s. He has a perceptive, questioning nature and vivid, sometimes prophetic dreams. His father Gabriel is a vaquero (cowboy) from the llano who prizes freedom and wandering, while his mother, María Luna, comes from a family of farmers and devout Catholics. Because of their conflicting personalities they have different dreams for Antonio's future. They take in Ultima, an old curandera (healing woman), and she and Antonio grow very close. Ultima teaches Antonio about herbs and the spirits of nature, and with her comes a watchful, comforting owl. Antonio's trials begin when he witnesses the death of Lupito, a man driven mad by his experiences in World War II. After seeing death Antonio begins to wonder about punishment and hell. He starts school, where he has to learn English and is made fun of by the other kids, but his mother hopes he will be a "man of learning" and a priest. Antonio's brothers Andrew, Eugene, and León return from the war and seem changed. Gabriel wants to move to California with them, but they no longer feel at home and soon leave again. One day a friend tells Antonio about the golden carp, a pagan god that lives in the river. Antonio also starts to feel more attached to the Virgin of Guadalupe than to God, who seems harsh and unforgiving. Tony's religious doubts grow when Ultima heals his uncle Lucas from a witch's spell after the priest failed to help him. The spell was cast by the daughters of Tenorio Trementina, a saloon owner who hates Ultima. Later Antonio actually sees the golden carp, and he feels a religious experience similar to what he had expected for his first communion. Then he learns that the carp also plans on punishing sinners with death, and he becomes more conflicted, as the carp seems like just another punishing god. Tenorio threatens Ultima, and the family's friend Narciso, the town drunk, defends her against accusations of witchcraft. Ultima's owl tears out Tenorio's eye and he vows to kill both Narciso and Ultima. Tenorio's daughters get sick and he blames Ultima for that as well. On the way home from a Christmas pageant Antonio sees his brother Andrew at a brothel, and then he watches Tenorio kill Narciso and go unpunished. Antonio prays for Narciso's soul and is again disturbed by seeing death so close. Antonio is excited about learning the catechism and taking his first communion, as he hopes for answers to his religious questions. His friend Florence is an atheist and raises many doubts about the unfairness of Catholic doctrine. Antonio finally has his first communion but is disappointed that no divine knowledge comes. Ultima dispels spirits from the house of one of Gabriel's friends, again succeeding where a priest failed. Antonio sees the golden carp once more and decides to show it to Florence, but Florence drowns in a swimming accident that same day. Antonio is disturbed by the death and goes to learn farm work with his uncles, the Lunas. He grows and gathers strength there, but one day hears that Tenorio is pursuing Ultima again. Tenorio tries to kill Antonio, who narrowly escapes, and Tenorio reveals that he plans to kill Ultima's owl, which is the embodiment of her spirit. Antonio runs the ten miles home to warn her, but just as he arrives Tenorio kills the owl. Antonio's uncle Pedro kills Tenorio. Antonio goes to Ultima on her death bed and she is able to comfort and bless him before she dies. Antonio buries the owl as she requested, and he knows he is really burying Ultima. He realizes he must choose from the dreams of his childhood or else build a new dream for himself, and he resolves to create a new life and religion from the blend of cultures and beliefs that are a part of him.

- Genre: Literary fiction - Title: Bliss - Point of view: Third person - Setting: A London townhouse in the early twentieth century. - Character: Bertha Young. Description: The protagonist of the story, Bertha Young is a wealthy, middle class woman who is married to Harry and has a young daughter, Little B. Bertha is a sociable woman who seems to feel things very strongly and who wishes to be open about her emotions. She is prevented from approaching life in this frank way, however, because of the rules of propriety governing British society of the period. She does not have a bold or daring personality and, for this reason, has trouble questioning the authority of people around her or being honest about her own wishes. Nevertheless, Bertha tries hard to communicate with the people around her and expresses her internal desires through her external appearance as well as through the thoughtful way that she decorates her house. Bertha, who is also interested in modern social questions and contemporary artistic movements, attempts surround herself with interesting and informed companions. Although Bertha is extremely excited by her feelings for Pearl Fulton, a friend whom she has invited to her dinner party, Bertha comes across as sexually naïve and seemingly does not recognize her attraction to Pearl as romantic. Bertha's sexual naivety, and potential homosexuality, also affects her relationship with her husband, with whom she avoids having a sexual relationship. Although Bertha is a grateful woman who works hard to be content with her life, she is burdened by the restrictive social conditions of the period she lives in and is often not able to recognize the true nature of her emotions. - Character: Pearl Fulton. Description: Pearl Fulton is a friend of Bertha Young's, whom Bertha has invited to her dinner party and who is secretly engaged in an affair with Bertha's husband, Harry. Pearl is a mysterious and reserved woman who is depicted ambiguously throughout the story. The reader does not receive much insight into Pearl's internal state, and most of the information the reader receives about Pearl is either about her external appearance or comes from Bertha's perception of her friend. Pearl is associated with beauty throughout the story. Named for a precious object, she is dressed in a silver outfit reflective of her name, and this silver outfit is further connected to the symbols of the pear tree and the moonlight in the story. Bertha describes Pearl as reserved and notes that there is a point of familiarity that Pearl will not go past with her. Bertha interprets this reserve as mysterious and believes that it implies that Pearl is feeling the same attraction to Bertha that Bertha feels for her. This is not confirmed by the events in the story however, and the revelation of Pearl's affair with Harry suggests instead that Pearl is a dishonest person who uses her friendship with Bertha, and Bertha's obvious admiration of her, to get close to Bertha's husband. - Character: Harry Young. Description: Harry, Bertha Young's husband, is having an affair with Pearl Fulton, with whom Bertha is also seemingly in love. Harry appears, on the surface, to be a frank, daring person who does not care about propriety and pushes the boundaries of social decorum through his controversial sense of humor. Bertha admires this quality in Harry, particularly when he makes irreverent jokes about Pearl that undercut Bertha's idealized image of her friend. Rather than being enamored with Pearl, as Bertha is, Harry claims that Pearl's beauty and mystery have nothing behind them but "a good stomach" or "pure flatulence," and Bertha admires such irreverence. Harry also seems to be a good husband and a sympathetic person because he has accepted the fact that Bertha is not sexually attracted to him and that they are merely "good pals" instead of lovers. However, Harry's openness and amiability are called into question by the story's ending, in which Bertha discovers that he is having an affair with Pearl. It then becomes apparent that much of Harry's behavior has been a façade to hide his real emotions, such as when he offers Pearl a cigar and appears to "really dislike her." This suggests that Harry is a manipulative person who understands how to construct his external appearance and manner so that Bertha will not suspect his infidelity. - Character: Eddie Warren. Description: Eddie Warren is a neurotic and fashionable writer whom Bertha Young has invited to her dinner party. Eddie Warren comes across as imaginative and easily alarmed, as exemplified in his interaction with a taxi driver whom he imagines has been transformed by the moonlight into a sinister, supernatural being. Eddie does not seem comfortable interacting socially and maintains both an expression of "anguish" and a nervous manner throughout the party. A playwright, his neuroses are comically exaggerated by Mansfield to suggest his artistic and highly-strung character. Although Eddie is famous within artistic circles, his artistic talent and depth of perception are called into question at the end of the story when he tells Bertha that he thinks the most profound sentence ever written is: "Why must it always be tomato soup?" Although Eddie feels that there is something "eternal" about this sentence, it is clear to the reader that it is a banal and meaningless phrase. This causes the reader to suspect that the attention given to Eddie Warren by the fashionable, London public has given the illusion that he is a brilliant playwright, when in fact he is quite an ordinary one, just as the taxi driver he is so afraid of is just an ordinary taxi driver who looks strange in the light from the moon. - Character: Mrs. Knight. Description: Mrs. Knight is the wife of Mr. Norman Knight and one of Bertha Young's guests at her dinner party. She presents herself as a bold, unconventional woman, making an entrance to the dinner party by complaining that "the middle-class is so stodgy" and "utterly without a sense of humor." She tells Bertha that she caused a scene on the train on the way to the party by wearing an orange coat decorated with monkeys. Instead of becoming embarrassed by the fact that people were staring at her, Mrs. Knight tells Bertha that she asked one woman if she'd "never seen a monkey before," drawing more attention to herself and her outfit. That she tells this story as a humorous anecdote implies that Mrs. Knight takes pride in her role as an unconventional, slightly shocking person and sees herself as more enlightened or original than others of her station. Mrs. Knight's behavior reflects Bertha's choice of "modern, thrilling friends," as well as Mansfield's own personal experience with bohemian socialites in London. However, although Bertha claims that her friends are interested in "social questions," Mrs. Knight gives little evidence of this throughout the evening and, instead, is associated with aesthetics and external decoration: she is interested in "interior design" and her unconventionality is a facet of her outfit rather than her behavior. - Character: Mr. Norman Knight. Description: Mr. Norman Knight is one of Bertha Young's guests at her dinner party and is the husband of Mrs. Knight. Mr. Knight comes across as a man who lives a conventional life but who is ironic and self-aware about the clichés that he embodies. Mr. Knight makes several ironic references to the middle-class conventions he follows—such as having nothing to do with his daughter until she has a suitor that he can object to—and seems to satirize himself and the society to which all the characters belong in a good-natured and undisruptive way. Like the other guests, who are described as "modern and thrilling" but who give little actual evidence of being so, Mr. Knight makes no reference to "social questions" throughout the evening. The only physical detail offered about Mr. Knight is the fact that he wears a monocle that keeps one of his eyes behind glass. This suggests that Mr. Knight is a detached personality who does not become emotionally involved in causes and who, in contrast to Bertha, does not have a strong emotional response to other people. - Character: Nurse. Description: Nurse is an employee of Bertha Young and cares for Bertha and Harry's young daughter, Little B. Nurse seems to have a very close bond with Little B, even though she is Bertha's daughter and not her own, and is resentful of Bertha's attempts to spend time with the baby. Although Bertha's wish to bond with her daughter is genuine, Nurse views her desire to feed her daughter as interference and this type of interaction, between an upper-class woman and her child, as unconventional and improper. - Theme: Sexuality and Desire. Description: Katherine Mansfield's short story "Bliss" chronicles a day in the life of thirty-year-old Bertha Young. Bertha's feeling of "bliss" in the story comes from her attraction to Pearl Fulton, a woman she has recently become friends with. Although Bertha is married, she comes across as sexually naïve and has never "desired" her husband. Not coincidentally, she feels sexually attracted to him "for the first time in her life" on the night of the dinner party when Pearl is present and when Bertha is in the throes of "bliss." Due to the conventions of the early twentieth century, in which homosexuality was neither legal nor socially acceptable and was rarely discussed in polite society, Bertha's sexual desire towards Pearl is depicted ambiguously and in terms of forbidden desire. This reflects the repressive nature of propriety in this period and Mansfield's criticism of a society in which people are forced to conceal feelings of love and desire for the sake of social convention. Bertha's attraction to Pearl is not explicitly referenced in sexual terms. However, Bertha's homosexuality is implied by the fact that she does not feel sexual attraction towards her husband, Harry, and the fact that her attraction to Pearl induces such a physical response. Bertha feels a "little air of proprietorship" toward Pearl "that she always assumed with her women finds," suggesting that she is possessive of Pearl in the way one might be over a lover. Bertha's excitement about the dinner party is also explicitly linked to Pearl's attendance: she feels that she has "fallen in love with" Pearl, "as she always did" with "beautiful women," and the "fire of bliss" that Bertha feels all day leading up to the party is increased by physical contact with Pearl. When Pearl takes Bertha's arm, Bertha wonders, "what there was in the touch of that cool arm that could fan—fan—start blazing—blazing—the fire of bliss that Bertha did not know what to do with?" This physical sensation is contrasted with Bertha's coldness towards Harry, which is evidently something they have already accepted as part of their marriage. Bertha even becomes panicked by the idea of being left alone with her husband and the thought the of "the dark room" and "the warm bed." This suggests that Bertha avoids having a sexual relationship with Harry—a sharp contrast from the glut of warm feelings and excitement she feels in Pearl's presence, underscoring Bertha's carefully concealed homosexuality. Indeed, she notably feels the first pangs of desire towards her husband only while she is immersed in the "bliss" brought on by Pearl's presence, suggesting this sudden desire for Harry is really just displaced longing for Pearl. The story, in turn, is implicitly critical of a society that represses these relationships and desires. Mansfield herself had relationships with women throughout her life and wrote about her female lovers. It is likely that Bertha reflects Mansfield's own struggles as a homosexual woman in Edwardian society, who would have been forced to hide her relationships with women. Mansfield's belief that homosexuality is natural and beautiful is reflected by Bertha's feelings of "bliss" and by Pearl's association with natural, beautiful things like the moon. The moon is associated with femininity in mythology, and silvery moonlight  infuses the night outside the dinner party—making Eddie Warren's socks appear whiter and seeming to transform his taxi driver into something otherworldly, just as Pearl's presence transforms the world for Bertha by intensifying her emotional response to ordinary things and suffusing everything with a sense of "bliss."  Pearl is also associated with the "silver" pear tree in Bertha's garden, which the two women gaze at in the moonlight and which Bertha views as a "symbol of her own life" with its "wide open blossoms." This suggests that Bertha is open to new possibilities—that is, homosexuality—in a way that "idiotic civilisation" is not. The fact that she and Pearl seem to share a moment of mutual understanding, "caught in the circle of unearthly light" of the moon shining on the pear tree, suggests the potential reciprocation of Bertha's feelings and supports the idea that the two women belong to a different world, separate from that of the heterosexual domesticity that so limits their sexual desires. Of course, given that homosexuality was not openly acknowledged in society in the Edwardian period and homosexual relationships often existed on the fringes of mainstream culture, Bertha has no frame of reference in which to think about her desire for Pearl, other than as something which must be concealed or expressed in an ambiguous way. The image of the pear tree is thus further symbolic of forbidden desire as it relates to the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, in which Adam and Eve were forbidden from eating fruit from the Tree of Life (but sinfully did so anyway). Although Bertha's life is very free in some ways because of her upper-middle class status and material wealth, the pear tree symbolizes the limitations in her life; the tree itself remains out of reach beyond the window, reflecting the social difficulty that Bertha would face being openly gay in this period and society. Even if Bertha did openly recognize her desire for Pearl as sexual, this is not something that would be accepted in Edwardian society. The fact that Bertha's desires remain mysterious and unexplained, even to herself, suggest the total repression and denial of homosexual desire by British society. Bertha's frustration with her situation is suggested by the story's ending. While Bertha is desperate for some progression in her relationship with Pearl, the story's ending is anti-climactic, and Bertha's desire remains unfulfilled. The still, untouched quality of the pear tree outside and Bertha's unanswered question of "what is going to happen now?" underscore Bertha's lingering lack of fulfillment. Rather than reaching a climax, Bertha's bliss remains unreciprocated and unexpressed, and the story suggests that this will continue as long as society represses certain sexual desires and emotional states. - Theme: Women's Roles and Social Constraint. Description: A large part of the narrative tension in "Bliss" derives from the fact that Bertha Young, the thirty-year-old protagonist, feels a great sense of joy that she wishes to express. However, the constraints of the society in which she lives, and the rigid constraints placed on women in this society in particular, prevent Bertha from expressing her titular "bliss." Mansfield extends her argument against the repression of homosexuality to show how Betha's entire life is strictly organized according to the rules of propriety, which defined social convention during Britain's Edwardian period. Despite Bertha's best efforts to surround herself with unconventional people and a spirit of individualism, social convention is too large and powerful to topple, and her life is rigidly structured around the conventions of middle-class womanhood. Bertha's antagonism towards the constraints of polite society is evident early in the story, as these constraints prevent her from expressing the strong emotion that she feels. Bertha feels that "although" she is thirty, she still has moments when she wants to "run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement […] or to stand still and laugh at—nothing—at nothing, simply." The use of the word "although" suggests that these expressions of joy are inappropriate for an adult woman and go against the grain of expected behavior. Bertha thus feels a sense of constraint because she cannot freely express herself and her own sense of joy. She is disdainful of social convention and thinks "how idiotic civilisation is" as it places restrictions on emotional freedom. Bertha feels this constraint so strongly that is manifests physically: she cannot "bear the tight clasp of" her coat and wonders "what is the point of having a body" if it is to be kept like a "rare, rare fiddle […] locked in a case." This suggests that social constraints infringe on Bertha's freedom and prevent her from doing what she wants with her own body. Although Bertha's life is very privileged in some ways, she is barred from fully experiencing certain parts of life because of social attitudes toward women in this period. Women of Bertha's class were viewed as physically and mentally fragile and discouraged from partaking in strenuous activities or from engaging with serious social or emotional questions. Bertha's comparison of herself with a rare instrument in a case reflects the idea that she needs to be physically protected from the world. This notion is further developed when Bertha goes to see her child, Little B, who is taken care of by Nurse. Although this arrangement was common in this period—most wealthy households employed a nurse or nanny so that rich ladies would not have to undergo the physical aspects of childcare—Bertha feels cut off from the experience of raising her child and questions societal conventions when she wonders, "why have a baby if it has to be kept—not in a case like a rare, rare fiddle' but in another woman's arms?" Bertha loves the physical sensation of caring for her daughter, and it fills her with "bliss" to see the baby's "exquisite toes as they shone transparent in the firelight." Despite this, Bertha is too timid to challenge the nurse. She hardly dares to ask if she can feed Little B and fails to criticize the nurse for introducing Little B to a strange dog. This demonstrates that Bertha has little sense of her own authority or responsibility for her child, and by extension has little authority in or control over her own life. Instead she feels like a "poor little girl," particularly when she sees the nurse caring for Little B and is envious of her because of the nurse's connection with the baby. She is only given access to a superficial side of motherhood and this makes her feel like a child playing with toys, or like a toy herself, "kept in a case." This emphasizes how women of Bertha's class were viewed as childlike and fragile, and that physical processes like nursing and childcare were viewed as jobs for lower-class women. The fact that women in the story are frequently compared with inanimate objects further underscores the objectification of women's bodies in the period and the tendency to view upper class women as beautiful or decorative rather than as full human beings. Although Bertha wants to rebel against this objectification, she is not quite brave enough to openly break with the constraints placed on women in the period. Bertha and Pearl are in a similar position in that both are objectified throughout the story. The use of the name "Pearl" itself suggests that women are like precious jewels—decorative and rare, to be guarded or "kept in a case." Yet Bertha seeks a tangible connection with Pearl because she is desperate to see beyond Pearl's decorative surface, which she believes "has something behind it." This reflects Bertha's desire to understand Pearl in more than just a superficial or idealized way. Bertha also demonstrates her desire to rebel against gender roles in society through her choice of unconventional friends, like Mrs. Knight. Mrs. Knight demonstrates her unconventionality through her fashion sense—drawing attention to herself by wearing a bright orange coat decorated with monkeys, which makes people stare on the train. Bertha, however, is not depicted as a bold character and, instead, only internally wishes to disrupt conventions. This is evident in her timidity in front of the nurse and the fact that, even though she "wishes to run instead of walk," she refrains from doing so. However strong her moments of bliss, at the end of the story she remains prisoner to the expectations placed on all women at the time. - Theme: Aesthetics, Appearance, and Performance. Description: "Bliss" is written in a Modernist style, reflected in the focus on aesthetics throughout the story. Bertha herself is preoccupied with external appearances. Although this may come across as shallow, Bertha's desire to make things beautiful is an attempt to express her feeling of "bliss." Bertha is also interested in interpreting the appearance of others; as she watches guests interact at her dinner party, Bertha makes assumptions about their internal states based on their outward appearances. She assumes that, because she tries to communicate her feelings through her appearance, others are doing the same. However, events in the story contradict this assumption and Bertha is proved wrong about the motives of Pearl and Harry, whom she has assumed are loyal and innocent but who are really having an affair. Instead of trying to communicate their internal states, Pearl and Harry are in fact trying to disguise them through their outward performance. Combined with the discussion of aesthetics, theatre, and performance at the party, "Bliss" gives the reader the feeling that nothing is quite as it appears. Bertha tries to use both her external appearance and the presentation of her home to communicate her feelings and personality to the people around her. For example, she has paid special attention to the appearance of her living room in preparation for the dinner party and has even ordered certain types of fruit to match the room's décor. Although Bertha herself acknowledges that this does "sound rather far-fetched and absurd," her attention to detail is in keeping with her interest in modernity and current artistic movements, which someone like Bertha, who has "modern, thrilling friends," would likely be aware of. She is "in her present mood" of almost delirious bliss when she buys the fruit, and this suggests that Bertha is trying to communicate her internal state through her surroundings; indeed, since she has no other way to communicate her feelings of joy and beauty to others because of social constraints placed on her ability to openly express her emotions. When Bertha sees the pear tree, which is white under the moon, "becalmed against the jade-green sky," she thinks that this matches her outfit—"a white dress" and "a string of jade beads." She notes that this "wasn't intentional" but feels it is fitting because she views the pear tree "as a symbol of her own life." This further suggests a correspondence between Bertha's internal emotional state and her external appearance and presentation. Although appearances initially seem to reflect reality, Mansfield complicates the concept of appearances at Bertha's dinner party. There, Bertha misinterprets her guests' behavior, emphasizing that not everything is what it seems. Throughout the evening, Bertha makes several assumptions about what Pearl is feeling based on the way Pearl presents herself. Interpreting the "strange smile" that Pearl gives Bertha across the table, Bertha decides that "the longest, most intimate look had passed between them," and that Pearl "was feeling just what she was feeling." Bertha also feels that she can read Harry's moods based on his actions. When he offers Pearl a cigar, Bertha interprets from his manner that he is "bored" by Pearl and that he "really disliked her." Similarly, when Harry goes to help Pearl with her coat, Bertha believes that Harry is "repenting his rudeness" towards Pearl and Bertha thinks affectionately how "simple" Harry is in some ways, like "a boy." Bertha's assumptions about Harry and Pearl are wrong, however, and they are presenting themselves in this way—Harry as innocent and Pearl as friendly—with an ulterior motive. Pearl's friendship with Bertha is possibly an attempt to get close to Harry, with whom she is having an affair, rather than a "sign" that she is in love with Bertha. This revelation highlights the idea that appearances can be deceptive and as well as Bertha's naivety in assuming that everyone around her is attempting to be as honest and transparent as she wishes that she herself could be. Ultimately, all the characters in the story—even Bertha—are merely putting on performances, as their appearances don't reflect their inner states. Although Bertha describes her guests as "modern, thrilling" people, who are interested in "social questions," they give little indication of this during the dinner, suggesting that this is merely a performance in keeping with fashion rather than a true reflection of their interests. During the party, Bertha describes her guests as a "decorative group" suggesting their superficiality and their lack of substance. Much of the conversation at the party also notably revolves around theatre and performance—reflecting both Pearl and Harry's performance (as a loyal friend and a loyal husband) to mask their infidelity. The idea of performance also corresponds with Bertha's performance as a woman who is happy in her life. Although Bertha does feel a genuine sense of bliss, there are indications throughout the story that her happiness verges on desperation and hysteria. Indeed, her frequent repetition of how happy she is gives the impression that she is trying to convince herself that there is nothing wrong with her life, despite the repression of her desires and the problems in her marriage, which become obvious as the story progresses. The revelation of Harry's infidelity with Pearl throws into doubt all of Bertha's, and the reader's, certainty about how the other characters feel and draws attention to the fact that, while Bertha wishes to be a frank, honest person, her own true desires are hidden beneath a veneer of respectability and her performance as a conventionally happy woman. - Climax: At a dinner party, which she is hosting, Bertha Young discovers that her husband, Harry, and her friend, Pearl Fulton, with whom she is secretly in love, are having an affair. - Summary: Thirty-year old Bertha Young is overcome by a feeling of excitement, or "bliss," while preparing to throw a dinner party for a group of her friends. Returning home in the afternoon before the party, Bertha thinks that, although she is an adult woman, she still has moments where she wants to "run instead of walk" or "take dancing steps" to express the great sense of joy that she is feeling. Bertha realizes that there is "no way" she can behave like this without being seen as "drunk and disorderly" and feels frustrated by this. Entering her house, Bertha asks her maid if the fruit she has ordered for the party has arrived on time. The maid tells her that it has, and Bertha says that she will go and arrange it before the guests arrive. Once in the dining room, Bertha throws off her coat and looks at herself in the mirror, realizing that the feeling of "bliss" is still there and that it is growing stronger as the evening approaches. She feels as though she is waiting for something "divine" to happen. Bertha arranges the fruit on the dining room table, thinking about how she has chosen certain fruits in certain colors to match the décor of the room. Although she thinks this is "rather absurd," she notes that it made sense to her earlier in the day, when she was picking out the fruit, and that the end result is "incredibly beautiful." Beginning to laugh, she feels that she is growing "hysterical" and rushes upstairs to the nursery, where her daughter, Little B, is being cared for by her Nurse. Nurse tells Bertha what she and Little B have been doing all day and, although Bertha disapproves of the Nurse letting Little B play with a strange dog, she is too timid to complain to her about it. Bertha asks Nurse if she can finish giving Little B her supper. Nurse reluctantly agrees, and Bertha enjoys feeding her daughter, which fills her with the same feeling of "bliss" that she experiences when she thinks about the upcoming dinner party. After feeding her daughter, Bertha thinks about the guests that she has invited to her party. She has invited Mr. Knight and Mrs. Knight, who are interested in theatre and interior design, a fashionable writer called Eddie Warren, and a "find" of Bertha's called Pearl Fulton, whom Bertha has "fallen in love with, as she always did fall in love with beautiful women who had something strange about them." Bertha thinks that she would like to get to know Pearl, but that Pearl is reserved and will not let people in beyond a certain point. Bertha wonders if there is anything more to Pearl's character. Her husband Harry has said that he does not think so and has joked that there is nothing but "a good stomach" behind Pearl's mysterious façade. Bertha likes Harry's jokes and thinks fondly about how she admires this quality in her husband. While Bertha is putting the finishing touches to the drawing room, she is surprised to find herself passionately hugging one of the sofa cushions that she is arranging. Bertha looks out of the window at her garden and admires the pear tree, which is glowing white under the moon. She thinks that the beautiful tree is a "symbol of her own life" and notes that the colors of the sky and tree match her outfit for the evening, even though she hasn't planned this. She turns away from the window when she sees two cats crossing the lawn and the sight of them give her a shudder. She is almost overcome by happiness thinking about her life and is only roused from this state by the arrival of the Knights. Mrs. Knight tells Bertha that her colorful dress made people stare at her on the train. Eddie Warren then arrives and complains that his taxi driver was "most sinister" and that, in the moonlight, this driver seemed to have something "timeless" about him. Harry arrives late, and Bertha is so delighted with her guests that she almost forgets that Pearl Fulton has not yet arrived. Finally, Pearl arrives, and the guests sit down to eat. Over dinner they discuss the theatre, as Eddie Warren and Norman Knight intend to write a play. Bertha thinks what a "decorative group" her guests make and feels almost overcome with tenderness for them. She is still thinking about the pear tree, which she thinks will have turned silver in the moonlight, like Pearl, who is dressed completely in silver. Looking at Pearl, Bertha feels that she knows exactly what Pearl is feeling and that the two of them have formed an unspoken connection, which sometimes happens between women but never between men. After dinner, Pearl asks Bertha if she has a garden and Bertha takes this as a "sign" of their connection. She takes Pearl to the window and shows her the pear tree. The two women look out over the garden and Bertha feels that she and Pearl understand each other perfectly. Bertha and Pearl rejoin the others for coffee. Harry offers Pearl a cigar and Bertha thinks that his manner indicates that he really dislikes Pearl. Bertha has a moment of panic when she remembers that her guests will leave soon and she will be left alone with her husband, with whom she does not have a sexual relationship. She has "desired" him for the first time in her life that evening, however, and this slightly allays her fear. The guests begin to get ready to leave and, as Pearl goes into the hall to get her coat, Harry follows her. Bertha thinks gratefully that Harry is doing this to make amends for being rude to Pearl. She goes to get a book for Eddie Warren to borrow and, on her way past the hall, looks up and sees Harry with his arms around Pearl. They are smiling and whispering to each other about arranging a time to meet. Bertha goes back into the living room and gives the book to Eddie. Pearl and Eddie make to leave and, as Pearl is saying goodbye to Bertha she whispers, "Your lovely pear tree." After they leave Harry goes to lock up and Bertha rushes to the window overlooking the garden, wondering what is going to happen next.

- Genre: Short story, science fiction - Title: Bloodchild - Point of view: First-person limited - Setting: An unnamed alien world, in a protected territory called the Preserve - Character: Gan. Description: Gan is the protagonist and narrator of the story. He is a Terran teenager who lives in the protected shelter of the Preserve and is the mate of the Tlic female, T'Gatoi. Gan has been promised to T'Gatoi from birth to be the host for her parasitic eggs when she is ready to have children as a part of the social contract that maintains peace in the Preserve. He was held by T'Gatoi within minutes of emerging from his mother Lien's womb, was at least partially raised by her, and was educated on the process that he would have to undergo as soon as he was old enough to understand. Because of this, Gan feels great affection and trust for T'Gatoi. At the start of the story, however, Gan has not yet truly reckoned with the sacrifices that will be demanded of him as the bearer of T'Gatoi's offspring. Though he has technical knowledge of how the birthing process occurs, he has never actually seen it and doesn't fully understood the mortal risk to his own safety that it poses. When Gan witnesses the traumatic and gruesome birth involving Bram Lomas, it fills him with revulsion and dread. It is not until Gan considers his feelings in the context of all of the people around him that he is able to face his fear and bear the weight of his responsibility. Upholding his duty is critical not only to honoring T'Gatoi, but also to protecting his family, maintaining peace in the Preserve, and contributing to society. When Gan understands this, he comes of age and leaves his childhood behind. - Character: T'Gatoi. Description: T'Gatoi is a Tlic female and Gan's lifelong mate. She is also a powerful politician and the ruler of the Preserve with authority to distribute or protect Terran families as she sees fit. T'Gatoi chose Gan as her mate and the host of her future children while he was still in Lien's womb and held him within minutes of his birth. She has cared and provided for Gan his entire life and has been very affectionate towards him while waiting for him to reach the age at which his body is ready to host her parasitic offspring. T'Gatoi's character is defined by her power. She controls her own political faction, having risen to the position of ruling the Preserve and the Terrans who live in it. She is also physically powerful, especially compared to her human counterpart. Although T'Gatoi truly seems affectionate toward Gan and Lien, she tends to exercise that power within her relationships as well, resulting in resentment from Lien and eventually fear from Gan. T'Gatoi was once close friends with Lien, though after she entered into politics they grew apart. T'Gatoi still cares for Lien and her family, watching over them, but never hesitating to exercise her control over them as well. - Character: Lien. Description: Lien is Gan's mother, a Terran. Though Lien was once happy and close friends with T'Gatoi, she now bitterly resents the Tlic leader for taking Gan from her. Lien chooses to defy T'Gatoi and all that she represents by rejecting the pleasant narcotic and life-prolonging effect of the sterile eggs, and instead choosing to suffer and let old age set in rapidly. This suffering is a point of pride for her and has stunted her ability to emotionally support or even show love to Gan, instead keeping her emotionally distant and cold. - Character: Qui. Description: Qui is Gan's older brother, a Terran. As a young child Qui witnessed a botched birthing in which a Tlic allowed her offspring to eat a Terran alive. This made Qui hate the Tlic and view them as monsters. For several years he tried running away until he realized there was nowhere else to go. Now, Qui tries to make himself as small as possible, shielding himself from the Tlic with Gan, and jealously seeking escape from reality through the narcotic of the sterile eggs. - Character: Xuan Hoa. Description: Xuan Hoa is Gan's sister and favorite sibling, a Terran. She also loves T'Gatoi and had hoped to be picked to be the host to her children, despite the fact that women are not often chosen to host. Had Gan decided that he could not bear T'Gatoi's offspring, Xuan Hoa would have done it in his stead. - Character: Bram Lomas. Description: Bram Lomas is a Terran and the carrier of T'Khotgif Teh's eggs. Since she is not present when the eggs are hatching inside of his body, T'Gatoi is forced to cut Lomas open while he is awake in front of Gan. This process horrifies Gan as it grants him newfound awareness of what is expected of him as a Tlic mate. - Theme: Coming of Age. Description: Set on an alien planet inhabited by a species called the Tlic, "Bloodchild" tells the story of Gan, an adolescent human facing a decision about which adult responsibilities he can bear. Humans (called "Terrans" in the story) have long lived among the Tlic, but their relationship is fraught: the Tlic protect the Terrans and permit them to live on the Preserve, a Terran habitat protected from the greater Tlic population, but, in exchange, the Tlic impregnate some Terrans with parasitic Tlic eggs that feed on their blood. Although Gan always knew that he would have to host his Tlic mate's eggs within his body, he is given a fuller understanding of the mortal risk and gruesome nature of the task after accidentally witnessing a birth gone wrong. His childhood security is replaced by fear, and for the first time he is forced to come to terms with his own role in society and what will be required of him for the sake of others. Through Gan's struggle, Butler suggest that an individual comes of age when they shoulder the weight of their responsibilities, and the sacrifices entailed, for the sake of the people around them. Gan's childhood is defined by the fact that although he had technical knowledge of his role in society, he lacked the experience to fully understand the importance of his task—or how much it would cost him. Gan notably describes the events that take place in the evening of the story as his "last night of childhood." When he is still experiencing that childhood, Gan is affectionate toward and trusting of his Tlic mate, T'Gatoi, reflecting his innocence. At this point, Gan has enjoyed the privileges of his position as T'Gatoi's mate (extra provisions, protection, and being excused from taking up his family's trade) without assessing the actual cost to his own body. Still a child, he has not yet questioned why he benefits from such unequal treatment. Gan is aware that his feelings toward T'Gatoi differ greatly from those of his mother Lien, who resents T'Gatoi, yet Gan has not seriously questioned why this is. In his childishness, he has only recognized the effect that his mother's attitude has on him: Lien is emotionally distant and resents the affection between T'Gatoi and himself. Butler uses these details to cast childhood as a naïve and self-absorbed state in which Gan has not yet considered the world around himself. Gan's childhood effectively ends upon seeing the gruesome reality of Tlic birth—and, by extension, the reality of the world he lives in. Such knowledge in itself is not enough to truly come of age, though, as is evidenced by Gan's initial refusal to accept the responsibilities of his future. Gan witnesses the traumatic birthing of Bram Lomas, a Terran who is mated to a Tlic partner in the same way that Gan is, which shatters his childhood security. Upon seeing her tear open Lomas, T'Gatoi goes from the most familiar person in his life to a creature that is alien and frightening. With his newfound knowledge of what will be done to his body and his own powerlessness to stop it, Gan's brief flirtation with suicide is his first reach for the personal agency that comes with adulthood. In his eyes, dying by his own hand is better than dying in the birthing process, for at least it will have been his own decision. Yet Gan is aware that if he were to somehow leave or be relieved of the responsibility to bear Tlic eggs, the responsibility would be passed on to either his brother, Qui, or his sister, Xuan Hoa. Fleeing from social responsibility would only shift his own burden onto someone else, and Gan's impulse to flee thus reflects that despite no longer being ignorant of the world around him, he has not yet truly matured. Gan truly enters adulthood when, realizing that dodging his own responsibility will hurt those he loves, he accepts the burden of carrying T'Gatoi's eggs. This reflects the story's assertion that coming of age entails both an acceptance of personal responsibility and a willingness to put others' wellbeing first. As such, Qui works as a foil to Gan. Qui witnesses an even more gruesome Tlic birth as a child and initially tries to run from reality. When he realizes there is nowhere to go, since leaving the Preserve means certain death, he makes medicates his fears with the narcotic effect of drinking sterile Tlic eggs. Qui, in contrast to Gan's shouldering of responsibility, prolongs his own childhood by shielding himself with Gan, knowing that so long as Gan is safe and healthy, Qui will never be forced to carry Tlic eggs. By contrast, when Gan realizes that if he does not willingly bear T'Gatoi's parasitic children, Xuan Hoa—whom he loves—will have to, he understands that she will then have to face the same fear and risk. If Gan were to pass that on to sister, not only would he be hurting her, but he would be shielding himself with her in the same way that Qui selfishly shields himself with Gan. By accepting the sacrifice of his personal freedom and the risks involved, Gan is protecting his family members and preserving the social contract that keeps the Terran population safe on the Preserve. By looking beyond himself, then, Gan has become a man. Butler thus argues that to come of age—to truly grow up—one must take ownership of the wellbeing of the people around them, even when that comes at the cost of personal freedom or safety. - Theme: Gender and Power. Description: Through the relationship between Gan and T'Gatoi, Butler uses an unfamiliar environment to critique familiar gender roles and the balance of power within stereotypical relationships. Gan, although male, is a representation of motherhood and traditionally feminine role (in human terms). By effectively gender-swapping these roles, Butler lifts them away from the reader's preconceptions about men and women so that these roles can be considered in their own right. Butler uses this conceit to highlight the restrictive and harmful nature of traditional gender dynamics, in particular the ways in which rigid adherence to masculinity robs others of agency and power. T'Gatoi, though female, reflects traditional masculinity. She is physically dominant, being ten feet in length and far more powerful than Gan. T'Gatoi never makes requests, but only gives commands, even when she is in Gan's family's home. When she brings sterile eggs for the family to drink, for instance, she dictates who gets how much. T'Gatoi is also socially dominant: she is a successful politician and the ruler of the Preserve, using this power to protect the Terrans from the "hordes" of desperate Tlic that would consume them. This reflects the dominance and responsibility that men have long held in patriarchal societies. By contrast, it's clear that Gan—occupying a traditionally female role—is not equal to T'Gatoi in their relationship. Gan has been chosen from birth to carry T'Gatoi's children in his body, without ever having any say in the matter, as a part of a social contract between the Terran and the Tlic. His singular function in life is to help T'Gatoi have children. This parallels the arranged marriages of certain human societies wherein young women were promised as future brides at a very young age. It is further significant that the children Gan must bear are literally parasitic, just as an unwanted pregnancy may seem like a parasitic attachment, a foreign organism draining a woman's strength and well-being. Until Gan comes of age, he has also been entirely submissive to T'Gatoi, doing whatever she asks and accepting whatever physical affection she gives. Even when T'Gatoi strikes him, knocking him across the room, Gan blames himself for not heeding her warning to obey her rather than blaming T'Gatoi for hurting him. It is also stated multiple times that Gan is T'Gatoi's property. This again parallels the traditional subservience of women within patriarchal relationships. T'Gatoi's unmatched power and strength are critical for the protection of Gan's family from the world, but cause inequity in her relationship with Gan. Butler uses their unbalanced relationship to critique the way that rigid masculinity often stunts relationships. Because T'Gatoi needs this power in the outside world to protect Gan and his family, she has not learned to show weakness or allow herself to be vulnerable within the relationship. This makes Gan feel powerless and drives him to suppress his own fears of her and what she will do to him in the birth process until it hardens into hatred. Gan even considers murdering T'Gatoi and killing himself, simply as an act of self-assertion. Butler here criticizes the exercise of traditional masculine power, which the story suggests creates a deeply unhealthy dynamic wherein men cannot admit vulnerability and women cannot exercise their own agency. Only by embracing vulnerability is T'Gatoi able to make space for Gan to confront his fears and take agency in their relationship. Butler is firmly arguing that is in the best interest of both men and women for men to let go of their power and for women to assert their autonomy. Although T'Gatoi chose Gan from birth, Gan is not able to truly choose T'Gatoi until Gan forces her to accept the risk of allowing Gan to have agency. This manifests specifically in his demand that T'Gatoi allow the family to keep their illegal rifle, despite the fact that that means her children will be around a potential weapon in the future. By allowing for that uncertainty, T'Gatoi joins Gan in feeling the fear of not being in control. He tells her, "Leave it here … Accept the risk. There is risk, Gatoi, in dealing with a partner." Gan's newfound ability to choose T'Gatoi for himself, rather than being forced to submit, gives him a personal stake in the relationship and the wellbeing of their future Tlic children. Not only is he willing to be with T'Gatoi, but he wants to be with her. He wants to honor her by caring for her young. Butler suggests that not only is a balance of power within the relationship more ethical, but it is also far more fruitful. When both parties accept the risk of dealing with a true partner—rather than a subordinate—they allow for the creation of genuine trust. Significantly, Butler's critique of gender roles does not aim to abolish them entirely. Indeed, by setting Gan and T'Gatoi's relationship against a hostile environment, the author shows the clear need for traditionally masculine power in some circumstances, such as T'Gatoi's use of political dominance to protect Gan's family and the other Terrans in the Preserve from the Tlic masses who are desperate for hosts. Even so, Butler strongly argues for equity within a relationship. This redistribution of power will be better both for each individual's development as well as their strength as a unit. - Theme: Interdependence. Description: In contrast to the modern western world that prizes individual autonomy, Butler places her characters in a choice-limiting society, forcing them to depend upon each other and accept the needs of others in their lives. The Terrans, being physically inferior to the Tlic, offer a member of each human family as a host to the Tlic's parasitic offspring. The Tlic offer to protect the Terrans in exchange for being able to dependably and safely birth their young. Although for the Terrans the arrangement is less than ideal, it is the cost of survival on an unforgiving planet, and some Terrans are even able to see the beauty of their mutual benefit. Butler uses this relationship between two starkly different groups to show the value of different parties being willing to forego their independence to preserve societal harmony, juxtaposing that against the selfishness of individuals who refuse to contribute to society or appreciate the contributions of others. The Terrans and the Tlic form a social contract that allows both races to survive. Butler asserts that there is a shared social responsibility between the two groups. Although the present situation is imperfect, both Terrans and Tlic have achieved stability in the face of death: Tlic, being parasites, need hosts for their eggs to gestate. Prior to the Terrans' arrival, the animals they previously used as hosts were becoming unable to keep Tlic young alive, and the Tlic were in danger of dying out as a species. Likewise, the Terrans fled from their homeworld, where they were being killed and enslaved by other humans. After the Terrans arrived but before the Preserve was established by T'Gatoi's political faction, the Tlic had been caging and breeding Terrans like livestock. The integration of Terran and Tlic families now maintains peace on the Preserve. Where once Terrans and Tlic had been killing each other, now everyone has a vested interest in preventing violence; any collateral damage would hurt both Terrans and Tlic. The two groups thus share the responsibility of supporting each other's wellbeing and are forced to set aside their own anger, aggression, and fear of that which is "other" within their society. In doing this, they also offer each other better odds of survival and a better, though definitely not perfect, life. The nature of life on the Preserve means that an individual can thrive when they are willing to live within the interdependent system, submitting to the greater needs of society along with accepting its offerings. This is clearly demonstrated by the members of Gan's family. Gan and Xuan Hoa both show affection for T'Gatoi and acceptance of their situation in the Preserve. Although Gan's affection threatens to turn into hatred and cynicism on the night of Bram Lomas's birthing, by leaning into his social responsibility and looking beyond himself, Gan is ultimately able to see the beauty in the relationship between Tlic and Terrans. He comes to appreciate the mutual benefit and the fact that the arrangement is able to exist at all.  Qui and Lien, by contrast, refuse to submit to the needs of their society and thus cannot see anything positive in their interdependent relationship with the Tlic. They both choose to suffer rather than embrace their situation. Qui, though he hates and fears the Tlic, is greedy for their sterile eggs as a means to escape his situation, enjoying the fruits of others' societal contributions. Lien, unable to accept that she must let Gan belong to T'Gatoi for the benefit of everyone, rejects even the eggs and chooses to suffer as much as possible; she will neither give nor take, refusing to contribute or to accept the gifts of others. Rather than appreciating the union of two families, Lien hurts herself and the people around her, becoming a cold and distant mother to her children. Butler seems to portray Gan's father as the ideal responder to an interdependent reality and a role model for Gan to live up to. He is the successful bearer of three clutches of Tlic eggs as well the father of four Terran children, making him incredibly fruitful in a world that strongly values reproduction. This fruitfulness is due to the fact that Gan's father accepted every egg offered to him by the Tlic, prolonging his life to twice its natural length. This suggests that the key to thriving in an interdependent world is to contribute to and make sacrifices for the good of the community, and to accept what is given by others in return. By embracing this economy, a harmonious society can be created and new life formed. Butler has created a complicated reality between the Terrans and the Tlic, one that is both touching and frightening. Rather than elevating independence and personal autonomy as many science fiction writers do, Butler recognizes the complex interdependence of relationships. "Bloodchild" praises the capacity of individuals to accept life on its own terms and lean into the reality that all lives are interconnected. When individuals sacrifice for others and accept sacrifices in return, they are able to create unions that once seemed impossible. - Theme: Passive Resistance, Suffering, and Oppression. Description: Lien is defined by suffering, "caged" within the confines of her family's situation and the knowledge that her own son has been taken from her and belongs to T'Gatoi. Since she is unable to resist through violence without endangering Gan, Lien resists by unnecessarily suffering in the face of T'Gatoi's efforts to pacify her pain, chiefly through the narcotic sterile eggs. Lien's struggle against T'Gatoi is also a struggle against the society she lives in. In this relationship, T'Gatoi embodies the state in its capacity to protect and pacify; Lien represents the citizen under the weight of society who refuses to be pacified by the stronger agent and voluntarily suffers, but whose suffering harms others as well. Butler thus complicates narratives of martyrdom by showing both the power and futility of passive resistance. Using the relationship between Lien and T'Gatoi and the pain that Lien's suffering brings her family, Butler offers a warning against "heroic" individual resistance—against a person, state, or circumstance of life—undertaken for selfish motives. Butler presents the Tlic as a governing authority that is both protective and oppressive. Lien tells Gan at various points in his life that he must respect and honor T'Gatoi and that he must take care of her, since she is all that stands between their Terran family and the "hordes" of Tlic outside of the Preserve desperate for viable hosts. Although Lien and T'Gatoi were childhood friends, as T'Gatoi's political power increased, they grew apart and the dynamic changed from true friends to ruler and subject. T'Gatoi eventually returned to claim Gan as the reward for her hard work. Though Lien could not refuse, she began to resent T'Gatoi, feeling that she was trying to buy her son with protection and eggs. T'Gatoi often, while laying with Lien, wraps her many legs around Lien's body. Although Gan enjoys the feeling of security this entails, Lien believes it feels like a cage. T'Gatoi knows this and does it anyway, exercising her authority by literally caging her subject. The nature of T'Gatoi and the Tlic's authority seemingly robs Lien of any control over her own wellbeing or future. Any individual in such a situation must choose whether to be broken by such a system or to rebel, fighting for the right to have control over their life. Lien chooses to fight. On top of offering protection, the Tlic use pacification as a means of control. Butler uses Lien to show that when pacification replaces violence as an oppressive tactic, the chief resistance becomes voluntary suffering. Death becomes its own assertion of freedom and independence. The Tlic offer the narcotic and life-prolonging eggs as incentive for good behavior, offering Terrans a drugged escape from the grim realities that come with life in the Preserve, along with the sedating venomous sting of their tails. When Lien refuses an egg, T'Gatoi stings her with her tail to force her to relax, never asking permission or consent. The pacification is literally forced upon her. Although Lien used to accept eggs, with the realization that Gan belonged less and less to her each day Lien chose to refuse the eggs and feel every minute of her suffering. Unable to protest verbally or violently for the danger it posed to Gan, Lien chose to impose her own suffering and refuse relief. In hurting herself, she also hurts T'Gatoi, who cares for Lien even while she tries to control her. Her resistance to T'Gatoi is also resistance to the social contract that they all must abide by that took her son from her. Lien's refusal of the life-prolonging eggs is rushing herself towards the martyrdom of an earlier-than-necessary grave. In a society that exerts control by keeping its subjects safe and healthy, bribing them with long life, Lien declares her ability to choose for herself by allowing old age to destroy her. Her self-destructive refusal of the eggs bears parallels to prisoners who undertake hunger strikes in protest of prison abuses, or self-immolating monks who took their own lives to protest oppressive regimes. Yet contrary to the popular concept of a heroic martyr, Lien's idealistic suffering also wounds the people she loves. Gan's resultant complicated and painful relationship with his mother calls into question whether such idealism is worthwhile. Though it was not always this way, Lien's current relationship with Gan is cold and distant. Gan's only comfort was to know that somewhere beneath the "duty and pride and pain" his mother still loved him. When Lien is under the sedate narcotic influence of T'Gatoi's sting and the eggs, Gan fantasizes about showing affection to his mother, in the hope that she would receive it and tell him that she loved him. However, he knows this would become a humiliation for her, so he chooses to let her keep her pride and remain distant. When Gan is struggling with coming of age, he does not go to his mother for support since she has not been emotionally supportive for years and is resentful of T'Gatoi as it is. Rather, he wishes his father were still alive to comfort him. Although Lien's voluntary suffering could be seen as heroic, it ultimately comes off as selfish for the unnecessary suffering it imposes on Gan and his family. Rather than a supportive parent, Gan is left with a prideful shell of a mother who can offer no emotional support at all and who, by dying, will voluntarily remove herself from his life. Butler draws on the familiar themes of an individual resisting a repressive power at the cost of great personal suffering. However, Butler is much more critical of the idea of martyrdom, using Lien to show its cost within an interdependent world. When everyone around an individual has chosen to live within an oppressive—or constrictive—environment, such idealistic resistance often brings pain to everyone. "Bloodchild" is a story about individuals who learn to live within difficult circumstances, and Lien's "heroic" suffering ultimately undermines their efforts to take life on its own terms and take responsibility for the interdependent relationships around them. - Climax: Gan and T'Gatoi's conversation in the kitchen, wherein Gan decides to shoulder the weight of his responsibility to bear T'Gatoi's eggs - Summary: On an unnamed alien planet, a group of humans (referred to as Terrans) live in a protected community called the Preserve, along with a segment of the ruling alien race, the Tlic. The Tlic, who are large, intelligent, centipede-like beings, are parasitic and need host animals for their eggs. Since the Terrans are ideal hosts, the Tlic of the Preserve have formed an arrangement with them: the Tlic offer protection and the Terrans offer one male from each family to serve as a host to Tlic eggs. The Tlic and Terrans have formed an interdependent relationship around this arrangement, and live peaceably amongst each other. An adolescent Terran named Gan, who is mated to a female Tlic named T'Gatoi and will soon be implanted with her eggs, is visiting his family at their home. Gan and his family are drinking sterile Tlic eggs, which for Terrans have a narcotic, pleasant effect, while T'Gatoi sits with them and talks. Gan's mother, Lien, initially refuses to drink the egg until T'Gatoi pressures her to, chiding her for suffering needlessly and allowing old age to take her earlier than it has to, since the eggs also have a life-prolonging effect on Terrans. Gan's father frequently drank eggs and lived to twice his natural lifespan, bearing three clutches of Tlic eggs and siring four Terran children. While they are sitting, Gan reflects about how T'Gatoi, as ruler of the Preserve, protects all of the Terrans from the masses of Tlic, and how they are all indebted to her. Indeed, Gan was promised to T'Gatoi out of the gratitude of his mother before he was even born. T'Gatoi senses that something is wrong and rushes outside, finding Bram Lomas, a Terran who has also been impregnated by a Tlic and whose eggs are ready to hatch. He is in great pain and great danger—if the eggs are not removed before the gestating Tlic eat through their egg shells, they will begin to eat their Terran host from the inside out. T'Gatoi orders Gan to go call for help, but he argues that he should stay to help her; instead, Qui, his older brother should call for help. T'Gatoi relents and sends Gan to go slaughter an animal for the Tlic hatchlings to eat once they are removed from Bram Lomas's body. As Gan does so, he realizes that he is afraid to participate in the process that is about to happen, but events are by this point moving to rapidly for him to back out. He returns to T'Gatoi with the dead animal to find that she has stripped Bram Lomas's clothing off and is securing his legs. Bram Lomas is still awake, unable to be fully sedated without killing the eggs that are living inside of him. Although Bram Lomas's Tlic mate should have performed the procedure, she is nowhere in sight, so T'Gatoi is forced to do it herself. Using one of her claws, she cuts open Bram Lomas's belly and begins retrieving the Tlic grubs out of him. Bram Lomas is screaming in pain, and though Gan understands that what is happening is unavoidable, he feels as if he is helping T'Gatoi to torture the man. T'Gatoi is unbothered by Bram Lomas's pain and wholly focused on the job of retrieving eggs from his body, licking the blood off of them as she works. Seeing that Gan is horrified and sickened, however, she sends him outside to vomit and catch his breath, Gan does so and begins to wander off, not sure of where he is going. He happens upon Qui, who has sent word to Bram Lomas's Tlic mate. Qui starts pressing Gan for details of what happened, but Gan is mostly unforthcoming. Qui reveals that he too saw a birthing process when he was young, but the one that he witnessed was far more disturbing: an impregnated man was also ready for his eggs to hatch, and though his Tlic mate was there with him, there was no secondary host animal for the Tlic grubs to eat once they were removed from the Terran host, meaning that they would die. Rather than saving the Terran but risking her young, the Tlic refused to open the man up and instead let her offspring eat him alive. Eventually, the Terran begged the Tlic to kill him by slitting his throat. The Tlic grubs then ate their way out of his corpse. Gan is horrified by this story and by the birth that he just saw, plagued by visions of Tlic grubs engorged with blood climbing through human flesh. His former trust and affection for T'Gatoi turns to revulsion and fear. Though he tries to leave, Qui will not leave him alone. Qui himself hates the Tlic, having tried to run away until he realized there was nowhere to go. Qui also knows that so long as Gan is safe, he himself will never have to be a host. After a brief fight with Qui, Gan returns to the house, arriving late in the night. The house is mostly empty, and he goes into the kitchen alone and removes his father's contraband rifle from its hiding place. Though he had intended to clean it, he loads it with ammunition instead. T'Gatoi finds him in the kitchen with the rifle. She knows that he is upset, admitting that that is not how the birthing process was supposed to go and that Gan should never have had to see such a thing. T'Gatoi sees the rifle, and though she thinks that perhaps Gan means to kill her with it, he puts the gun to his own head. He bemoans the fact that he was never given a choice in the matter of bearing T'Gatoi's eggs and that he does not want to be just her host animal. The act of suicide seems to him the only way to make a choice for himself. He demands that T'Gatoi ask him not to follow through. T'Gatoi offers to impregnate Gan's sister, Xuan Hoa, instead. Xuan Hoa likes T'Gatoi and would be willing. Gan initially accepts the offer, but quickly realizes that he is only using Xuan Hoa, whom he truly loves, as a shield in the same way that Qui uses him. As T'Gatoi is leaving to go to Xuan Hoa, Gan stops her and insists that she impregnate him as had always been planned. T'Gatoi wants to confiscate the rifle, since it is illegal and poses a threat to her future children, but Gan demands that she leave it in the house, even though that makes her afraid. Gan insists that T'Gatoi accept the same risk that he is accepting, and that she treat him as a partner and an adult, rather than as a subject or as property. T'Gatoi eventually consents, relinquishing control and accepting the risks to show that she is willing to trust Gan. They both go to Gan's room. He undresses and lies with her, and she implants an egg in his abdomen. As they are lying there together, Gan admits that he did not truly hate T'Gatoi, but he was afraid of her and what she would do to him. He also admits that he was afraid of losing her or letting her go to someone else; he wanted her for himself. T'Gatoi is pleased with this and promises that she will never leave him alone the way that Bram Lomas was left alone. She will protect him.

- Genre: Short story, Naturalism - Title: Boule de Suif - Point of view: Omniscient third-person - Setting: A carriage traveling between Rouen and La Havre, and then an inn in Tôtes - Character: Miss Elizabeth Rousset (Ball-of-Fat). Description: Miss Rousset, the story's protagonist, is a young woman who works as a prostitute. Her nickname is Ball-of-Fat, due to her robust figure. Passionate and patriotic, Miss Rousset chooses to leave her home in Rouen because she loathes the Prussian occupiers. She leaves the city in a carriage with nine others; among them, Miss Rousset has the lowest class status, and the wealthier travelers (who see her profession as disreputable) are scornful and cruel. Despite this, Miss Rousset behaves kindly—she shares her food with them when they're hungry, for example, and she treats them with deference. Maupassant uses Miss Rousset's superior moral character to show that virtue is independent of social class—or perhaps even that virtue is more common among the less fortunate (such as Miss Rousset) than it is among the wealthy. Miss Rousset's virtue, pluck, and independence, however, cannot overcome her vulnerability as a member of the lower class. When the party becomes stranded at an inn, held hostage by a Prussian officer until Miss Rousset agrees to sleep with him, Miss Rousset's companions turn on her. Out of self-respect and patriotism, Miss Rousset insists that she will not sleep with the officer, but the others in her party—prioritizing their own freedom over her integrity and wellbeing—manipulate Miss Rousset into going through with it for the good of the group. This sacrifice devastates Miss Rousset and, despite her generosity on behalf of the group, her companions once again ostracize her as they leave the inn. Miss Rousset's tragic fate shows the cruelty of class hierarchy. Simply by virtue of their social standing, the other travelers have undeserved power over Miss Rousset, which they use to destroy her for their own gain. - Character: Mr. Loiseau. Description: Mr. Loiseau is a crass, lower-middle class wine merchant from Rouen who is traveling in the carriage to Havre. He sells "bad wine at a good price," and he has two principal interests: making a sale wherever he can, and cracking crude jokes whenever possible. His face is ruddy, and he has big hands and a big belly. Mr. Loiseau and his wife, Mrs. Loiseau, are traveling to Havre for financial reasons: to collect on a huge purchase made by the French Supply Ministry during the war. Mr. Loiseau is the least wealthy out of the group's three married men (Mr. Carré-Lamadon and the Count clearly have more "dignified" upbringings), and this places him in a unique position. He aligns with the other two against the democrat Cornudet, as democracy can be bad for business, but he is the only traveler to repeatedly cross unspoken social boundaries between the "society side" of the carriage and the remaining passengers. He is the only one to accept rum from Cornudet, for example, and he is the first person to eat some of the provisions that Miss Rousset offers to share. Despite his total lack of refinement and obvious opportunism, Mr. Loiseau comes across as the least hypocritical in the story because he never tries to act classier than he is. - Character: Mrs. Loiseau. Description: – Mrs. Loiseau, one of the travelers in the carriage to Havre, is the sturdy brains behind her husband Mr. Loiseau's sociable lifestyle. She runs the numbers for their wine business and is far more serious than her gregarious, vulgar husband. She does not even like to listen to jokes about money being wasted. Mrs. Loiseau bonds with the other married women in the carriage over their total distaste for the prostitute, Miss Rousset. But, just like her husband, Mrs. Loiseau is lower than Mrs. Carré-Lamadon and the Countess in status, which creates some distance between them. Mrs. Loiseau mirrors her husband's brazenness when she voices sentiments that others are thinking but refuse to say. For example, she is the first to suggest that Miss Rousset should not refuse to sleep with the German officer, since that is Miss Rousset's profession. Unlike her husband, Mrs. Loiseau's bluntness isn't redemptive; near the end of the story, she makes a cruel and clearly backwards remark about "some women" (Miss Rousset) preferring a man in uniform no matter what side they are on. - Character: Mr. Carré-Lamadon. Description: Mr. Carré-Lamadon is a rich cotton merchant traveling to Havre in the carriage. With a beautiful young wife, plenty of money, and a few titles, he is perfectly comfortable financially and thus he is a supporter of the status quo. He is a member of the Legion of Honor, but this is an empty label, as he never fought in the war and he favors economic interests over patriotism. Mr. Carré-Lamadon has neither the grand superiority of the Count nor the brash honesty of Mr. Loiseau; like his financial standing, he sits right in the middle. In this way, Mr. Carré-Lamadon is not an antagonist in any scene in "Boule de Suif," but he does go along with the other two married couples in their plan to convince Miss Rousset to sleep with the officer. His ineffectual presence symbolizes the complacency of the middle-class even as others suffer. - Character: Mrs. Carré-Lamadon. Description: – Mrs. Carré-Lamadon, a traveler in the carriage to Havre, is the model bourgeois wife—dainty, young, and wrapped in furs. Like her husband, she represents a middle ground between the boorish Mrs. Loiseau and the ethereal Countess. She and her husband are outwardly the ideal French provincial couple; Maupassant suggests that she is consistently unfaithful, though, as she favors young French officers over Mr. Carré-Lamadon. In fact, when the group is stranded in Tôtes, she feels an absurd disappointment that the devious Prussian officer "chose" Miss Rousset instead of her. Despite her own affairs, she judges Miss Rousset harshly just the like the rest of the "high society" travelers and she faints in the carriage out of hunger because she refuses to eat the food of a prostitute. Mrs. Carré-Lamadon is as ineffectual as her husband, happy to go along with the rest of the group as they pressure Miss Rousset into giving into the officer. - Character: Count Hubert de Bréville. Description: Count Hubert de Breville is the wealthiest among the travelers in the carriage to Havre. With one of the most "ancient and noble" names in Normandy, this man has been (and will be rich) for the rest of his life. The Count and Countess are a sublime pair—they seem to embody all of the dignity that comes with status. But, like so many things in Maupassant's story, these appearances are only surface-level—the Count and Countess prove to be the most sly, shrewd, and opportunistic out of all of the married couples. The Count's opinions plainly carry the most weight with the group, and he uses this to his advantage in pivotal moments, particularly when he convinces the tenacious Miss Rousset to go against her instincts and beliefs. Whereas Mr. Loiseau is brash but predictable, the Count is outwardly refined but truly cunning on the inside. Maupassant makes it clear that the Count abuses his awesome power and he is the most to blame for the tragic ending of the story. - Character: Countess Hubert de Bréville. Description: – Countess Hubert de Breveille, one of the travelers in the carriage to Havre, is the daughter of a small Nantes ship owner, although she married into nobility through her husband, the Count. In her position as Countess, she is regal and sophisticated, nonchalant about status in a way that Mrs. Loiseau and Mrs. Carre-Lamadon cannot afford to be. The Countess, like her husband, has a lot of sway with the other characters and, like her husband, she uses familiarity and friendliness to get what she wants. The Countess makes Miss Rousset feel welcomed into the group after Miss Rousset shares her food in the carriage, and while Miss Rousset thinks that she enjoys an affinity with the Countess, the Countess is only too willing to sacrifice her to the German officer so that the group can be on their way. The Countess's two-faced behavior, in light of her appearance of geniality, makes her a crueler character than either Mrs. Loiseau or Mrs. Carre-Lamadon. - Character: Cornudet. Description: Cornudet, a traveler in the carriage to Havre, is a ruddy, red-bearded French democrat. He is the only single man traveling from Rouen to Havre, and the only politician, openly opposing Napoleonic imperialist rule and excited for the return of a French Republic. Maupassant shows, though, that although Cornudet is supposed to have a revolutionary mindset, he is still opportunistic and selfish like many of the others. He did assist in building defenses around Rouen, but then he retreated into the city as soon as the Prussians came (he never fought). He loves to drink and talk politics, but he has never really sacrificed anything for his country. He neither stands up for Miss Rousset nor shares food in the carriage with her once the trip recommences. Ultimately, Cornudet is a narcissistic character, full of hot air. - Character: The German Commander. Description: This unnamed Prussian officer is the story's antagonist, as he holds the French traveling party hostage at an inn in Tôtes until Miss Rousset agrees to sleep with him. He is young, gawky, and off-putting with a "thin mustache" that denotes his incompetence for his position. The officer treats all of the travelers with contempt and, of course, shows outrageous disrespect towards the vulnerable Miss Rousset. Maupassant uses the terrible and casual behavior of this upper-level officer to contrast with the kind-hearted foot soldiers working hard alongside the French townspeople. The commander used the war to benefit personally and economically, conduct which Maupassant shows as inexcusable. - Character: The Two Nuns. Description: The two nuns in "Boule de Suif" are unassuming and demure women of faith who are riding in the carriage from Rouen to Havre. Both women spend much of their time with their heads bent over, praying Hail Mary's and Our Father's into their rosary beads. Still, somehow, they play a huge role in convincing Miss Rousset to sleep with the Prussian officer, as they tell a story from the Bible that the Countess interprets as meaning that Miss Rousset should do as the officer wishes. One might think that two sisters of faith would share food with Miss Rousset in the second half of the journey, but they keep their provisions to themselves. Maupassant, who famously rejected religion when he intentionally got expelled from a seminary, consistently shows the nuns either failing to stand up to injustice or actively (if accidentally) furthering injustice, thereby critiquing religious faith. - Theme: Wealth and Hypocrisy. Description: Set during the Franco-Prussian war, Guy de Maupassant's "Boule de Suif" depicts a group of French travelers who become stranded at a Prussian-occupied inn. Stuck in close quarters in a stressful situation, the group's class tensions come to a boil: they are mostly upper-class couples, except for Boule de Suif (Ball of Fat), a prostitute whose real name is Mademoiselle Elizabeth Rousset. The wealthier members of the party condescend to Miss Rousset and treat her cruelly, only changing their tone when she can be useful to them. Consistently kind yet relentlessly taken advantage of, Miss Rousset is shown to be the only brave, honorable, and generous member of the group. By showing the cruelty and hypocrisy of the wealthy French elite—and the courage and dignity of the poorer Miss Rousset—Maupassant rejects the conventional wisdom of his day that wealth translates to good character. Even among people of mixed social classes, it is obvious that Miss Rousset, as a prostitute, is at the bottom of the social ladder in the carriage. Because of this, the others treat her with scorn. This is first shown when the three married women quickly take offence to Miss Rousset's presence, uniting in "married dignity…in opposition to [those] sold without shame." As they are all in the same situation—traveling uncomfortably in a small carriage—the only way that they can demonstrate their superiority is to shun and ignore Miss Rousset. At the end, the group uses a similar tactic in which no one will speak to Miss Rousset, even though she has just made a tremendous sacrifice for them. The women sing the praises of their other "high society" friends, which is meant to remind Miss Rousset that, no matter what she has done for these women, she is not one of them. The wealthy travelers only drop their scorn of Miss Rousset when she is useful to them, which shows their hypocrisy and selfishness. During the carriage ride, the group grows hungry. When they learn that Miss Rousset is the only passenger with food, they accept her offer to share, breaking with their previous attitude. Even so, when Mr. Loiseau says, "[e]verything goes in time of war, does it not, Madame?" he is explicitly remarking on how the wealthier travelers would not normally be speaking to a prostitute, and it's only the extreme circumstances—their unusual desperation for food—that change their behavior. Similarly, when the group arrives in Tôtes and the inn owner announces that the German officer in charge would like to speak to Miss Rousset, the wealthier travelers have no problem asking her to put herself in a potentially dangerous situation. The group had been kinder since she'd shared her food, but, as soon as their well-being is threatened, they have no issue with "asking, begging, beseeching her to go," since they "feared the complications that might result from disobedience." This dynamic recurs when the wealthier travelers come together and convince Miss Rousset to sleep with the German soldier so that he will let them all leave. Despite thinking and saying cruel things behind her back, the group bands together and pretends to reason kindly with Miss Rousset to manipulate her into going against her own moral code.  Even though Miss Rousset sacrifices her morals and dignity for the group, they turn on her afterwards, which is the story's clearest demonstration of their cruelty and selfishness. As they journey home, they realize that everybody has brought provisions except Miss Rousset, but nobody offers to share with her, even though her sacrifice is what freed them. Despite that Miss Rousset is considered the least respectable member of the group, Maupassant depicts her as the story's most generous, kind, and dignified character. Miss Rousset can feel the coldness coming from her wealthier companions, but she still offers to share her food in the beginning of the trip. She says, "Goodness…if I dared to offer anything to these gentlemen and ladies I would," which is a polite way of acknowledging her lesser social status while still offering to be kind. Additionally, when she is propositioned by the democrat Cornudet on their first night in the inn, Miss Rousset rejects his advance because she can't imagine sleeping with somebody when an enemy Prussian officer is in the room next door—she'd consider it shameful. Although later she is tragically convinced to sleep with that very officer, Maupassant is showing that she is firm and patriotic, and even the egotistical Cornudet understands this and leaves her be. Finally, when the group leaves Tôtes and hypocritically refuses to share their food, Miss Rousset is devastated but tries not to show it. She ends the story crying quietly, "mak[ing] terrible efforts to prevent it." In the face of the wealthier travelers' disgust, she tries to maintain her dignity. Miss Rousset tries, over and over, to act honorably, even though she is the butt of relentless cruelty and has the lowest status of the group. The others not only ignore her virtue but take advantage of it every chance they get. Maupassant, in this way, sidesteps the ideology of 19th-century French society and refuses to depict dignity as being tied to wealth or class. His conclusion is that the exploitative and selfish upper-classes lack, by nature, any claim to virtue, whereas dignity, honor, and kindness are more often found among the poor. - Theme: Class Division in Wartime. Description: Guy de Maupassant was a patriot; he fought in the Franco-Prussian war and, in "Boule de Suif," he extends the most sympathy towards characters who have strong patriotic beliefs. Still, this short story is in no way a celebration of war. Set in 1880 as the war is ending, with the Prussians victorious, "Boule de Suif" demonstrates how the gaping class divides within an army make the concept of "victory" empty, since the poor foot soldiers on both sides suffer greatly and gain nothing, even if they ostensibly win. Maupassant's most evident takeaway concerning war, likely inspired by his own experience, is that soldiers on both sides of a conflict have more in common with each other than with their wealthier leaders. In wartime, no matter who is victorious, it will always be the poor who suffer the most. Maupassant's depiction of the Prussian general shows how the wealthier officers (as opposed to the poorer soldiers) are cruelly exploiting war for their own gain. When the carriage first encounters the arrogant commander, he is described as having "an enormous mustache of long straight hairs…seem[ing] to weigh heavily on the corners of his mouth." Since Maupassant had earlier mocked the French generals for being chosen as officers "on account of the length of their mustaches," it is clear that this description is meant to signal that the Prussian officer (like the French generals) is decadent and unqualified for his position. Maupassant underscores this when the three wealthy men from the carriage confront the officer and ask him why he won't allow them to leave Tôtes. The officer receives them "stretched out in an armchair, his feet on the mantelpiece…enveloped in a flamboyant dressing gown." This image of an officer during wartime is striking: he is idle, disrespectful, and luxuriating while his troops are suffering tremendous violence. The French already see the Prussians as insolent invaders, and this general is confirming their beliefs. Finally, Maupassant shows the dynamic of wealthy officers exploiting the poor in wartime through the officer's demand that Miss Rousset—the poorest and most vulnerable among the travelers—sleep with him. Since he refuses to free the other travelers until she does, it's clear that this upper-level military commander is abusing his power and profiting from war in a totally inappropriate way. However, Maupassant makes it clear that there is another side to the Prussians: unlike the cruel, exploitative general, the poorer foot soldiers act kindly towards the French townspeople. Despite their perception that the Prussians are an awful enemy, a group from the carriage come across soldiers in Tôtes being extremely helpful to the working-class French people with whom they're supposedly at war. They see soldiers "paring potatoes…cleaning the hairdresser's shop…even washing the linen of…an impotent old grandmother." None of these images line up with the stereotype of a cruel and lazy enemy. In fact, when the richest traveler questions a poorer townsperson about what is going on, the French townsman replies "those men are not wicked; they are not the Prussians we hear about…they have left wives and children…it is not amusing to them, this war…they work [here] as if they were in their own homes." By showing the kindness and sacrifice of these soldiers, Maupassant contrasts the cavalier, disgusting behavior of the privileged German commander with the hardworking and solemn attitude of the poorer Prussian soldiers. This dynamic of the poor suffering disproportionately while the wealthy profit does not only exist on the Prussian side; it's true for the French, as well. For example, the poorer Miss Rousset left Rouen for very different reasons than her wealthier traveling companions. Her house was stocked with food and she could have stayed, but she felt so patriotic that looking at the Prussians made her "blood boil with anger." Her choice to leave her life behind was, in other words, a sacrifice made for moral reasons. By contrast, the wealthier travelers talk vainly about the "havoc" the war had caused on their businesses and the "losses" they suffered. They are leaving because they think there are better commercial opportunities in La Havre, which shows the wealthy finding ways to profit in wartime. In terms of the French army, Maupassant opens "Boule de Suif" by describing the "long and filthy" beards of the French army men—with their "uniforms in tatters," their bodies "worn-out and back-broken." This physical suffering parallels the grief of the Prussian foot soldiers in Tôtes, who have left their families and "weep for their homes." This demonstrates how there is shared pain among the poorer members of both countries in times of war. In the army, as in the carriage, the wealthy have only selfish concerns while the more moral poor suffer physically and mentally. War is complicated and horrible, but Maupassant wants to make it clear that it is far worse for some than it is for others. The Prussian and French foot soldiers leave behind their lives to wear ragged clothes, bear the brunt of the fighting, and serve lazy, selfish generals—all without the promise of any personal gain. Meanwhile, the French and Prussian officers are underqualified for their jobs, spared the worst of the fighting, and they personally benefit from the luxuries that their roles afford. From this, it's clear that the main division in the story is not one of nationality, but of class. The poor French and Prussian foot soldiers, in other words, are collectively the victims of a war fought for the benefit of the wealthy. - Theme: Gender, Power, and Sacrifice. Description: "Boule de Suif" is fundamentally a story about power, and the women Maupassant depicts enjoy very little of it. Six of the story's ten French travelers are women: two nuns, three married ladies, and a single prostitute—Miss Rousset, or "Ball-of-Fat." All of these characters suffer for being female, although they suffer differently based on their class background. Miss Rousset, who is poor, disreputable, and unmarried initially has more autonomy than the married women around her because she has no husband to control her life. However, being unmarried also makes her vulnerable; the group targets her, first with their scorn and then with their demand that she sacrifice herself by sleeping with the Prussian officer—both of which would be unimaginable were she traveling with a husband. By showing men manipulating and exploiting Miss Rousset—and by showing the wealthier women around her aligning with the men—Maupassant suggests that male power damages women twofold: by subjecting them to manipulation and violence, and by undermining the possibility of female solidarity. The initial carriage ride depicts Miss Rousset as having more autonomy than the married women around her, since she has no man to control her. The three married women in this story are literally "installed" into the carriages by their husbands. They have no say as to whether or not they leave their homes in Rouen—instead, they are uprooting their lives because their husbands decided that they should. By contrast, Miss Rousset herself has chosen to leave, and she explains this choice to others, showing that she is independent in her actions and thoughts. That the married women do not weigh in suggests that their opinions about the move don't matter. In addition to being more autonomous than the married women, Miss Rousset seems to have more power than the two other single women in the carriage, who are nuns. These women have given their lives to religion (and to a church hierarchy controlled by men). One is "pitted with smallpox" while the other has "a disease of the lungs," descriptions that make them "appear like martyrs" for their religion. Maupassant does not develop the characters of these women beyond their martyrdom, which draws out Miss Rousset's vivacity and self-sufficiency by contrast. Perhaps most important, when Miss Rousset produces a basket of food that everyone eventually shares, she experiences a brief moment of unusual power, as the whole group—even the wealthier men—are dependent on her. While Miss Rousset initially appears to be the most powerful woman in the party, her unmarried status eventually makes her vulnerable to predatory men. When the slimy German officer demands that Miss Rousset sleep with him, he is not seeing her as an autonomous businesswoman: he sees her as a lowly prostitute, a woman without a man to defend her. He does not care that she despises him, demonstrating how he places no importance on her desires or opinions. The Count—a member of her own traveling party—degrades Miss Rousset in a similar, albeit subtler, way. He consistently reminds Miss Rousset of her "place," bending her to his will by emphasizing how little power she actually has compared to the men around her. When she at first refuses to even meet with the Prussian officer, the Count says "[i]t is never worth while to resist those in power." He is referring to the officer, but he also means himself. This foreshadows when, towards the end of the story, the Count is the critical voice pressuring Miss Rousset to sleep with the officer for the benefit of the group. As the men exploit and manipulate Miss Rousset, the other women never stick up for her; in fact, they support the men. Mrs. Loiseau, for example, tries to justify the situation by saying that the Prussian officer "respects married women." This implies that Miss Rousset, as a single woman, has no right to her own body. Implicitly, Mrs. Loiseau wants to believe that her marriage protects her from male violation, so it's not in her interest to stick up for Miss Rousset. In addition, Mrs. Loiseau says of the officer that "we must remember too that he is master. He has only to say 'I wish,' and could take us by force with his soldiers." This shows that, deep down, Mrs. Loiseau understands the gendered aspect of the officer's demand; he is simply asking from Miss Rousset what he could otherwise violently take from any of the women. In the face of this threat, though, the women choose not to stand up for their collective interest, but rather to protect themselves by justifying Miss Rousset's sacrifice. Mrs. Carré-Lamadon, for instance, tries to convince herself that sleeping with the officer isn't so bad: she thinks to herself that it is a pity the German is "not French, because he would make a pretty [well-dressed commander], one all the women would rave over." While the married women's choice to throw Miss Rousset to the wolves is cynical and self-serving, it does, sadly, protect them: by sacrificing Miss Rousset and aligning with the more powerful men, all of the married women emerge with their bodies and dignity intact. This bleak ending, in which Miss Rousset has lost control of her body while the married women still cannot control their lives, shows how men maintain power. They encourage the divisions between women, all the while controlling those women for their own benefit. - Theme: Exploitation and Class Hierarchy. Description: The beginning of "Boule de Suif" is tepidly optimistic about class mobility. While the ten French travelers sharing a carriage adhere to their society's strict class hierarchy, the lowest among them—the plucky and defiant Miss Rousset—nevertheless earns the grudging admiration of the others. For a moment, it seems that she might be included in higher society by sheer force of personality. However, as the story progresses, it becomes clear that the class hierarchy will not be bent. The wealthy include Miss Rousset when she can be useful to them, manipulate her into a devastating decision that benefits them, and then discard her when she is no longer of use. By showing the wealthy exploiting a poor and vulnerable woman so ruthlessly, Maupassant suggests that class mobility is an illusion, and that the exploitation of the poor for the benefit of the rich is at the very heart of class hierarchy. The prostitute, Miss Rousset, begins the story passionate, resourceful, and defiant, giving the impression that her inferior class position does not define her. While one might expect that Miss Rousset would be shy in the presence of wealthier companions, she "[thows] her neighbors…a provoking, courageous look" when she hears them whispering belittling things about her. This stuns them all into silence, which suggests that her fortitude might change their behavior. Additionally, when Miss Rousset speaks up about political issues in the carriage, her courage earns the admiration of some of her companions. The wealthy women "[feel] themselves drawn, in spite of themselves, toward this prostitute so full of dignity." In this moment, Maupassant leads the reader to believe that perhaps the force of Miss Rousset's personality will transcend her class, convincing others to treat her as an equal. This seems, for a moment, to be possible when the German officer first proposes that Miss Rousset sleep with him in exchange for the group's freedom. Initially, "indignation is rife" among the group, and there is a "blast of anger, a union of all for resistance, as if a demand had been made on each one of the party." In this fleeting moment of solidarity, it seems that Miss Rousset's wealthier companions see their fates and interests as shared, despite Miss Rousset's lower class status. Quickly, though, the wealthy close rank, deciding to make Miss Rousset sleep with the officer in order to protect themselves. The morning after their show of solidarity, "it [becomes] apparent that a coldness had arisen toward Ball-of-Fat." The travelers all resent the very determination and defiance that just days before they had admired. Hypocritically, they now wish to tame that defiance to serve their own desires. To manipulate her into doing as they wish, the group attempts to reason with her while simultaneously isolating her. The women take to calling her "mademoiselle" instead of "madame" to show their disdain for her refusal to do the group's bidding. Meanwhile, the wealthiest traveler, the Count, asks Miss Rousset "you prefer to leave us here, exposed to…violences…rather than consent to a favor which you have so often given your life?" reminding her of her inferior social position and framing her resistance as immoral. The group's crowning achievement is creating an explicit "plan of attack, [a] ruse to employ" to manipulate Miss Rousset into sleeping with the officer. They pretend they're having a regular conversation in front of Miss Rousset, while steering the discussion towards ethics and making the pointed suggestion that "any action blamable in itself often becomes meritorious by the thought it springs from" (in other words, that a seemingly immoral act is moral if done for the right reasons, or that the ends justify the means). The group pretends that they are allowing Miss Rousset to make up her own mind, but truly they are telling her that she must make the choice to harm herself for the collective good. After this, Miss Rousset caves. Miss Rousset's sacrifice earns the French travelers their freedom, but it does not earn Miss Rousset an equal place among them; in fact, as they travel home, the others treat her coldly and she is devastated by shame. The ending, then, makes it clear that Miss Rousset was exploited: she made a horrific choice for the benefit of a group to which she presumably believed she now belonged. In the aftermath, though, it becomes clear that her companions—despite her sacrifice on their behalf—have no plans to reward or include her, even with the basic kindness of sharing their food. As the wealthier members of the traveling party stand in for French elites overall, this ending can be seen as a commentary on the predatory nature of rigid class hierarchy, which offers the false promise of social mobility so that the poor are willing to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the wealthy. - Climax: Ball-of-Fat (Miss Elizabeth Rousset) agrees to sleep with a cruel Prussian officer - Summary: As tired French soldiers trudge back from battle, residents of the French town of Rouen anticipate the arrival of the occupying Prussian army. Once those Prussians arrive, the townspeople's fear dissipates—some of them even befriend the Prussian soldiers, while others despise them and even murder occupying soldiers occasionally. There is much animosity in the air—but, still, life has to go on, and eventually people start planning for the future. Three well-off men (Mr. Carré-Lamadon, Mr. Loiseau, and Count Herbert de Breville) decide one night to leave Rouen and pursue commercial interests in La Havre, where there is no Prussian occupation. The next day they gather their wives and meet outside a stagecoach, which is ready to take the six of them and four others through Normandy. The other four passengers include two nuns (who say quiet and mumble prayers most of the ride), one republican (Cornudet), and one prostitute, Miss Rousset. Miss Rousset (also known as "Ball-of-Fat") quickly becomes the object of interest and scorn in the carriage, as the other women make it clear she is not welcome and her presence is an embarrassment. However, hours later when the coach is stuck in snow and nobody has eaten all day, Miss Rousset produces a basket of food and wine that has been underneath her skirt. Inevitably, the rest of the carriage changes their attitude towards her and one by one they accept her kind offer of food. Suddenly, everyone is amicable, and the group talks about politics and Prussians for the rest of the journey. Miss Rousset impresses the group with stories of her resistance against the occupying soldiers, and she chastises Cornudet for his republican sympathies and lack of loyalty to Bonaparte. Still moving much slower than expected, night falls and the group comes upon the town of Tôtes and finds an inn. Here, they are greeted by a terrifying sound: broken French spoken with a heavy German accent. There is a Prussian commander waiting for them, asking them to exit the carriage. While all are traveling with the permission of German officers back in Rouen, the group is still nervous. They share their papers (which have their names and occupations on them) with the commander. The group enters the inn and sits down for dinner, fairly happy even though everyone is tired. Then the inn-keeper enters with a strange request: the Prussian commander has asked to see Miss Rousset alone. She at first refuses, but the group pressures her into going. "It is for you that I do this," she tells the group. She comes back flustered but mum about what he asked for, and the topic is dropped as everyone eats dinner. There is more discussion about politics, the war, and the bad behavior of the enemy. The next day, the group finds that the stagecoach has not been prepared for them. No one understands why it would not be ready, so Mr. Loiseau, Mr. Carré-Lamadon, and the Count walk into town to find the driver. Along their way, they find French townspeople cohabitating with the Prussian soldiers, and the Prussians doing kind favors for the townspeople. The men are shocked and a little disdainful, but a townsperson explains, essentially, that these soldiers are people too and that the poor—of any country—must look out for one another. The men move on and find their driver, who informs them that the Prussian commander had ordered him not to ready the carriage. No one understands why. Later that night, Miss Rousset tells the group that the Prussian officer demanded that she sleep with him, and everyone reacts with outrage. The next morning, however, the six wealthy travelers are disgruntled and grow resentful. They are annoyed at Miss Rousset for being the reason that they are stranded (even though it is clearly the fault of the officer). Remembering her lower social status and her profession, the wealthier members of the group come to a mutual, damning conclusion: "Since it is her trade, why should she refuse this one more than another?"(In other words, that she should sleep with the officer, against her principles, so that the group can go free.) The next day, determined to get Miss Rousset to do what they wish, the wealthier travelers confer with each other and decide that, rather than asking her outright, they will work the topic into conversation over dinner and discuss how, throughout history, sacrifices have been made for the greater good. Even the two nuns (albeit accidentally) add to the pressure by assuring Miss Rousset that, in religious life, an act is judged by its intention. Miss Rousset is solemn and quiet. Later that night, she gives in and does what everyone had hoped: she sleeps with the German officer. The group finds out while she is doing it, and they crassly celebrate their clever plan. The next day, the group leaves. In her rush to get ready in the morning, Miss Rousset forgets to pack food. The rest of the group all have baskets of provisions, but nobody will even look at Miss Rousset, let alone share their food with her. The three married ladies talk emptily of high society chatter just to specifically exclude the prostitute. Miss Rousset is heart-broken by the hypocrisy of the rest of the group and by the act she had to endure, and she ends the story quietly crying the corner of the carriage headed north.